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Well, I had a birthday party to go to (pool-side at my Brother-In-Law's house) and I wanted to do something a little different than the standard birthday cake...so I decided to make a giant chocolate chip sandwich cookie. It's about 12 inches in diameter and contains about a pound each of semi-sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips. At the end of the mix, I fold in about 4 ounces of walnuts. The cream filling consists of powdered sugar, egg white, shortening, and vanilla. The cookie dough is from a recipe you can find on any Toll-House chocolate chip bag.

This is the second of my reviews on artisan breads available at my local Whole Foods Market. Actually, I visit three locations in my area (Raleigh/Durham, NC) and they are all the same because the are all baked in the same "bakehouse" which distributes them to all of the area stores. As many of you commented in my previous post, nothing quite compares to what you can produce at home....however, there are good bakeries out there and some of this retail stuff is pretty good.

The oatmeal bread that was exhibited on The Fresh Loaf a few days ago inspired me.  I made my first attempt at this bread:

Bread Ready for Baking

Bread Out of Oven

Another View

There is a bakery in my neighbourhood called Baker's Delight which is a chain all around Brisbane.  They have a bread with a surface that looks like mottled skin of a tiger and it's called Tiger's Bread!  It looks most unusual and every time I walked past that bakery I wondered how it got that spotted skin on top.   

Ten Teachers, Ten loaves, Ten days.

I am going to give all of the teachers who have impacted me each a handmade loaf of bread. I need to find recipes for visually appealing, distinct loaves so that I can express my appreciation, and of course so that I have an excuse to try new recipes!

If any one has any suggestions, Id love to try them. I also plan on using some of the recipes on this site and in the BBA. And of course, as my graduation present was a new camera, I'll share all of my experiments.

Happy Baking.

A friend of mine, who is a great baker, sent me this recipe that she adapted from a clipping that she cut out of the Chicago Tribune in 1994. She's getting ready to move and discovered it when cleaning out her files. She had kept it for 15 years but never tried it (just how many of us have recipes lying around for decades that we've never tried?) The recipe from the clipping was from The Bread Book by Betsy Oppenneer.

I just finished a loaf of sourdough from this recipe http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4737/finally-100-whole-grain-hearth-bread-i039m-proud

I was inspired by David (dmsnyder) and his 5 hour baguettes. I needed a sandwich bread that was as lean as I could get it but was still very much soft crusted and soft of crumb. I've found it, I think, by slightly modifying the 5 hour baguette idea and adding one enrichment: olive oil.

Stephanie’s Simple Bread
Makes 1 small loaf

Like many of you, I don't always have time to bake my own bread and I buy artisan bread where I can find it; sometimes from chain deli-bakeries and sometimes from independents. This is the first in a series of  retail bakery artisan bread reviews I will be publishing. I'm most interested in hearing your comments and learning where folks who appreciate good bread buy there loaves. First up is Whole Foods Market Ciabatta. The bread you get from Whole Foods will vary according to your region. Each region has a bakehouse that supports several stores.