Hello from east Tennessee

I am glad to have found this site and hope I can both contribute and learn. (I'm not really this boring.)

The first bread I ever made, I didn't know that yeast would die at certain temperatures and the loaf was so dense that even when I broke it up, winter birds wouldn't eat it.

Since then I've had successes and failures. Timing of rise and temperature of rise are some of my main causes for failure (nothing like a deflated loaf) and my attempt to capture my local wild yeasts here led to an alcoholic mixture that could have taken paint off an old car. 

Some successes include pretty good bagles, potato breads, and beginning to work my way through several of Peter Reinhart's books as well as Beard on Bread and some very old cookbooks.

Probably one of my mantras would be: If I'm going to get the calories from bread, those calories are going to be delicious.