Mid-Michigan check in.

It's a long story shaping my bread history. Beginning in NorthEastern Pa. (home of great bread), then Southern Fla. (home of no good bread), to the hub of the Universe, Clare Michigan (home of some really nasty Amish bread baked by folks with no hot water in their kitchen).

If you followed along with my geographic handicaps, you can see that I started baking bread out of the need to eat "Great" bread again. I've been gaining on attaining my goal of "world class" breads from a home kitchen for about 12 yrs. now. I would guess that in a year I bake around 200 loaves, that includes some 30 or 40 loaf batches for parties. My old standby has been the BBA Ciabatta, I can do that one in my sleep, Pain le Ancienne from BBA, is one of my favorite crowd-pleasers, and the ABAA version of Kossar's Bialy is made on a weekly basis in my kitchen. Lately, I have been producing some wonderful one pound Rye boules, from Rose's Bread Bible. The Rye has been great, folks request it more than the Ciabatta, I extend the sponge overnight, retarded in the fridge, substituting maple syrup for the malt syrup.

I've come to this site to develop my natural yeast starter recipes. Books are okay, but the folks here are a wealth of real information. "Sourdough Lady's" pineapple starter is bubbling away in my basement kitchen, and I am looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

Mike