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My grandmother cooked professionally. I may have mentioned this before on these pages. She was not the "trained in culinary school" type of cook, she was a professional in the sense that a poor woman would be paid to cook in the home of a wealthy woman. As part of the whole "American Dream" experience for my family (a belated American dream perhaps as my ancestors were in America before the War for Independence) she cooked for many years in the home of the president of the university from which my brother and I obtained our undergraduate degrees.

So this enthusiasm about bread caught me quite off guard. If you had asked me two months ago if I wanted to start making my own bread, I probably wouldn't have paid much attention.

But things have quite changed. And it all pretty much started when I did my taxes. Much to my relief, my tax return was quite good (at least I got SOMETHING out of my schooling). And so upon receiving said tax return, I immediately purchased two things. One was a 70s vintage road bike in orange. The second, was a Breville stand mixer.

 Sometimes I get giddy - and that isn't a pretty sight.

HI All,
Lately I've been asked many questions about various technical aspects of making my bread. It seems the universe decided to remind me of some of the challenges so I could answer your questions from the best experience possible.

I'm preparing to vendor at a conference in a few short weeks.

Let's set aside that I decided to revise my book so the books I sell will be the most current and needed to have that done in time to self-print many books.

Let's set aside that my editor had to let go of my project about 10 pages into the book.

I've been wanting to make this Hamelman bread for a while. I was hoping that the wheat germ would bring nutty wholesome flavors and the oil would soften the crust some.

I wasn't disappointed by the results, except for the crumb. I was careful in my non handling of the dough and it looked good before baking but I must have man handled it when transferring and inverting the three loaves.

The flavor is good and it's going to make a good sandwich later tonight.

Eric

So... time to try something new and the pictures of the pita breads on the right side of TFL has always appealed to me.

Being European, I had to use some other measurements and didn't bother getting the exactly like the recipe, so here's what I did, inspired by http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pitabread.

Ingredients: (Made 8 pita breads á 50g)

I've been a long time viewer of this wonderful bread site and after much consideration I thought I'd post my own message. The bread bug has bitten me hard and I've been afflicted for the last 3 years attempting to make beautiful and tasty bread.

Good Morning - what have we learned so far?  NOT to complete the first step BEFORE having your first cup of tea.  This morning, I mixed the starter, flour and water together... went back to read the directions, realized my mistake, cussed, added the salt and stuck it all in the fridge.  Sigh.  We will see what I have when I get home.

So in a recent thread I posted a recipe that I based on a bread someone had seen on TV. I just did my best guess, based on provided ingredients and my own experience. 

I figured I should post the results, because it was mostly theoretical, but I believed it would work. The goal was yeasty, soft, fluffy bread, and use of a preferment. 

Here's the recipe, makes eight (8) 92g rolls/buns, or one good-sized loaf of bread...hence BreadBuns!

Hello all,

Most of you will not recognize my username, since I last posted here in March of 2008.  But I've been reading TFL daily for years now, since I first searched online for a good pretzel recipe, and found this one.  The combination of TFL, BBA, and Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America got me to the point where I could bake bread that I was proud of.