Hello from another Canuck
Hi all!
After years of dreary supermarket loaves, I've recently discovered the joy - and the Art - of baking really good bread at home. My European childhood left me ill-equipped to deal with the bland, cottony lumps on offer at local supermarket bakeries, so in self-defense, I began to bake at home. It has been a fairly rapid progression from simple, direct method yeast loaves, to breads made with sourdoughs, poolish, pâte fermentée, etc. But for every little thing I've learned, there is a mountain still left to learn. I have read a number of great books, but I have never been to a class, met a pro, or gotten the inside track. I just remember from my childhood what good bread should look, smell and taste like, and that's what I strive for. I look forward to learning a great deal here!
Cheers,
V,
I must have missed your initial post. You deserve a better welcome than some troll trying to foist of essay writing services.
Welcome to TFL. Your experience with European breads, even if only as a consumer, can provide a valuable vantage point. Even better if you can locate some recipes for breads that taste like home.
There are a couple of things that will make your experience here more helpful. If you click on any of the Lessons, Handbook, Videos, or Books links in the black menu bar at the top of the page, you will find all sorts of resources that can help you develop as a baker. At the far right-hand side of that same black bar there's a white box with the word Search beside it. Type in a term, such as whole rye, or stollen, or ciabatta, or whatever else you are curious about and then click that Search button. You will get page after page of posts which reference your search term; enough to keep you busy for days if you want.
Hoping to hear about your baking adventures.
Paul
Welcome, Vivien!
Thank you both for the kind welcome. Being welcomed by a troll was a wee bit disheartening at first, but I guess that's the way of the internet.
Paul, thank you also for your helpful tips. I've already snooped my way through several lessons and videos, and there is an amazing wealth of knowledge and information here! I look forward to learning much to help take my bread baking to the next level. As long as my dear, long-suffering husband keeps on eating the results, I'll keep on baking. :)
Cheers,
Vivien
When I started out, I managed to bake quite a bit more than my wife and I ate by giving loaves (and sometimes half-loaves) to family, friends et al at almost every opportunity. To help avoid disasters, I stayed away from recipes and methods that were completely unfamiliar, which still left me plenty of room to experiment / learn by using different flours and proportions of flours, different add-ins, varying the hydration %, baking more or less bold, etc.
Thanks for the welcome! It's wonderful to have "subscribers", isn't it? My family and friends are kept well stocked also, so that I can keep on baking. Thankfully, they seem to be quite happy to take the extra bread off my hands.
Yay, another baking Canuck! Which part of Canada? And which part of Europe? Good bread is absolute heaven, isn't it? I started baking for about the same reason - couldn't find decent bread that I could afford regularly. Now I have customers of my own!
Wendy in Victoria, BC
Hello, fellow Canuck! Glad to meet you! I love Victoria in particular, and Vancouver Island as a whole. I've spent many happy days on the island, hiking, camping, discovering, and photographing a plethora of amazing creatures en route. Your home is one of the many jewels of this astonishing country. We are so, so lucky, you and I!
Personally, I'm docked in a small "nest" in a northerly part of Ontario - which means we mostly have black bears and a gaggle of 'coons, chipmunks and pine squirrels to make it feel like home ... with a few gregarious Blue Jays in for good measure. :) Don't get me wrong: I love every square inch ... err ... centimeter of the cedar thicket I now call home. It is a wonderful place of peace and purity rapidly becoming extinct on this planet.
Since you ask, my European background is quite a patchwork quilt, but my immediate parentage is equally divided between Austria and Germany. There is a rich and strong history of breads, cakes, and other baked goods in my family, firmly lodged in that part of my brain and heart. I bake many traditional breads and buns from this area, like "Bauernbrot", Heurigenbrot", "Wachauer", "Salzstangerl", etc. Almost as strong, though, are the memories of the markets and Boulangeries-Patisseries in France, Languedoc-Rousillon especially. Many happy childhood memories are anchored in that part of the world, and the scent emanating from those bakeries in the mornings will stay with me forever. So you see, I'm a bit of a Geographic mess, with a very strong affinity for all things bread. :) I'm sure I will meet many mentors and kindred spirits here, who love good bread as much as I do.
Cheers,
Vivien
My background is plain old English (all 4 grandparents came to Canada from various parts of England), so maybe not the best bread heritage, but I do remember 'helping' my grandmother bake bread in her sawdust and coal fired oven. I always got a little loaf to knead and shape, and then to eat fresh and warm! Plain stuff, but awesomely good compared to the chemical soup stuff in a lot of supermarkets.
Like you, I also helped my Austrian grandmother with the baking, and I often got a small piece of dough of my own. Those baking days are some of my most precious memories of my grandmother.
One of my recent masterly crafted posts was also answered by a person who said I needed to take their essay class or have one write my blog for me who knew what they were doing. So I said yes sir and they never answered back! Half my family is from Germany too and one of my Grannies made some nice SD rye breads from the Black Forest region . Her maiden name was Doerschlaht. Can't get more German than that. \
Happy SD baking Floyd runs the show here and he also lives in Vancouver BC after a recent move.
Thanks for the welcome! Yeah, you gotta love spammers, but good on you for answering back! LOL! That obviously sent them scurrying back into their holes. :) You're right, Doerschlaht couldn't be anything but German, but there is such a wonderful, rich bread history there - especially with sourdoughs. I'm very grateful for the bread "roots" my childhood and family history have given me.