Introduction

I think I forgot to post in the Introductions Forum, so I'll make up for that here...

I'm Keith, and I live in Long Beach, CA, near the Orange County border. That puts us about 40 ft. or so above sea-level, if you find that interesting!

I have one adult son from a previous marriage, and am currently a stay-at-hom pop with a 3 yr old boy (Patrick Keith aka Bunka Bunka) and a 4 month old precious little girl (Samantha Jeanne aka Tweety Bird). I retired from a business telephone systems installer to my computer, where I design websites and write web scripts in PHP. I also do a fair amount of database work in MySQL. This transition took me out of the field and into my home, where I'm afforded the opportunity to care for my children. When my adult son was growing up, I was obsessed with career and the usual rat-race stuff, and didn't really get the chance to enjoy fatherhood. This time around, I enjoy every minute of it, every day.

I've approached my daily cooking and baking from both a hobby perspective and one of necessity. The health benefits are also factored in. I was raised by a grandmother who meticulously cooked all things from scratch. The memories of the smell of fresh spaghetti sauce simmering all day are well-branded into my gray matter. As I went on into the rat-race of young adulthood, I became a fast-food junkie. It was never satisfying to drive through some place, toss whatever I bought down the gullet, and move on to the next event. Food became an annoying necessity. After 5 or 6 years, I grew tired of this, and started slowly learning to cook on my own, unfortunately without the help of my grandmother who had passed away. She left me several old (1950's) Better Homes and Gardens Cook Books and a recipe box stuffed to the brim with chicken scratched recipes on them. Everything that comes out of my oven to feed my family and friends I lovingly dedicate to her.

It has been a long journey to bread baking. Although from pie crusts to specialty cookies, I was very flour-friendly, I always avoided any recipes that contained that dreaded word 'yeast'. How easy all of this eventually was underscores the silliness of my avoidance of it for a good 20 yrs or more. What eventually got me to break down and buy a packet of Active Dry Yeast was my obsession with the common waffle. I had this recipe for a State Fair type of belgian waffle, and it stared at me for probably a year or more before I decided to give it a go. It went wonderfully, they were excellent, and thus I realized that yeasted recipes aren't voodoo at all... but it still took another 2 or 3 years before I tried my first loaf of bread.

Fast-forwarding, and skipping the chase altogether, today I bake almost all of the bread our family consumes. I maintain 3 active sourdough starters, and it is the sourdough journey that eventually brought me to sourdoughhome.com, wildyeastblog.com, and here to TFL. While both of the previous sites and owners have tremendous gold mines of information respectively, the interaction between them and the fan base was very limited. TFL was obviously setup for the specific function of user-to-user interaction, so I found myself posting and getting involved. My inability to afford hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on bread making equipment led me to a belief that making good bread was not possible without these things. The internet proved me wrong, and challenged me to try. I was amazed to find that by perfecting my technique, I easily bypassed all of that expensive equipment to begin turning out wonderful healthy breads. It never really dawned on me that 'technique' was the only tool available to our ancestors, but I completely understand all of that now. My only real 'technological' tool is my digital scale. The rest of my equipment is rather sparse... my mixer cannot accomodate any attachments other than standard beaters, so I have no use for it in bread making. I use bowls, spoons, and a 14" x 18" pastry board. I recently went out and bought a Wilton dough cutter/board scraper, but that's about it. I also could not afford a $40 or more baking stone, so a $12 box of Saltillo tiles came in to line my oven. I couldn't be happier with the changes it made to my oven, as those changes taught me to actually 'operate' an oven versus just turning it on. My wife's not so happy... heheh

I have to close this first entry... Tweety Bird has popped an eye open and will be expecting a bah-bah within about 2 mins, or nuclear warfare will ensue. She likes her food. ; D

Thanks Floyd, for TFL.

Peace.

- Keith