Hello from Boston
...or near Boston, rather (Somerville). I'm finally getting serious about bread making. I've made the occasional loaf over the years and about 15-20 years ago was on a kick for a while to make a good french bread. The best I arrived at was using Julia Child's slow ferment recipe, but I never did get a really good crumb but in those days I didn't have access to the ingredients (like, say, bread flour!) or information that I do now. I've been making a lot of corn bread and graham quick bread lately and I guess it was inevitable that I jump back into yeast bread finally.
I've been using Peter Reinhart's BBA, and repeatedly making the Pain de Campagne so I can compare apples and apples from one batch to the next as I get the basics down of dough feel, kneading, etc. I'm up to batch numnber 6 or so now, I think.
I've learned a lot by browsing and searching on here already. I feel like I'm in the right place because a lot of you folks are as obsessively detail-oriented as I am! I have some questions but I'll post them in the relevant topics rather than here.
Eric
Hi Eric,
I'm from Metrowest and have found this site to be a tremendous wealth of info. I am allergic to gluten but make gluten free sourdough bread. I have used many bits of trivia from this site to successfully improve my bread.
Good Baking,
sharonk
www.glutenfreesourdough.com
Greetings, Eric! I'm right over the river from you in Brighton!
The BBA book by Reinhart has really helped get me moving forward from the basic sandwich loaf and horrible pizza dough I'd been making for years. It's a great start.
I started out with the ciabatta from the book and have gotten CLOSE to what I'd like to be seeing. Need to move onto others soon, though. The foccacia (poolish version) comes out excellent!
The Fresh Loaf has been an excellent resource for information and feedback, and I inevidibly spend a little too much time during my work day clicking on the links that come in the daily update e-mail.