Breadlover in Saskatchewan!

Great thread

YOU KNOW YOUR A BREAD MAKER WHEN....

Your 2 year old can says the word "artisan" when refering to bread.

You dissect every bread recipie you see and convert it to bakers %

Scoff at Jack in the Boxes fake ciabatta burgers.

You feed your starter before yourself in the morning.

Da Crumb Bum

King Arthur, and Monty Python is the second thing you think of---you can't leave home without finding a piece of dried dough stuck to you SOMEWHERE---you see a picture of somebody else's dough rising, and it makes you feel happy, and a little jealous...

...and you can't get to sleep at night because you're thinking about your starter and timing the next bake. 

...You're out to dinner and you can't stop thinking about your starter, lovingly, I might add.

...You're at the movie theater, thinking about your starter, again, lovingly (lol) and modifying recipes in your head.

...You're planning the next bread you wish to bake and meticulously trying to plan your schedule around it.

...You decide to finally put your starter into the fridge but realize you really feel something is missing when you didn't have to feed it on your regular schedule.  Get it out the next day, feed and feel lots better.  Ahhhh...

...You dream about huge containers for more flour.

...You dream at night (literally) about baking bread and, of course, your starter. :o)

When you have more pictures on your camera of starters and bread than of your kids!

You can't remember your kids name but mistakenly call him by your WW starters name!

You remember the first time you heard bread sing! (crackle)

Felt like a goof when defending white bread!

Fun! 

- You plan your meals around the bread you want to bake this week

- Friends/family apologize to you for serving "wonder" type bread and/or expect you to bring your own when you visit.

-  Definitely agree with the "find dough stuck on your clothes" and also flour on the front of your shirt.

- Oh and there's a fine layer of flour dust in hard to reach places in your kitchen that you only notice when your dog is trying to lick under the cabinet.... 

- You can't remember the last time your bought bread.

- Even after a few hundred loaves your find yourself making "awww" and cooing noises when you peek in the oven halfway through baking...

- Relatedly, you make scoffing and/or clucking noises at the "french bread" at the grocery store bakery AND Bonus Points if your family members also make disparaging comments! 

- You have an excel spreadsheet with all your favorite formulas so you can make whatever batch size you want--wait, maybe that's just nerdy me!

Ooo... can you share your spreadsheets?

(PS.  my oven has been out of service for the past week... I'm dying here.)

...you try all kinds of different lighting exposures to photograph your latest loaf

...you search the web to find all the latest bread porn

...you scan all your bread books to find a one-day recipe you can squeeze in somewhere

...you find ways to include 'diastatic malt' in everyday conversation

...the family loves whatever you bake, but you know it's not good enough yet

...you go to Sam's Club and come home with 100 lbs of flour (25 lb bread flour, 25 lb all purpose flour, and 50 lb high gluten flour, because high gluten doesn't come in 25 lb bags and bread doesn't come in 50 lb bags)

...you bake more bread than your household can really eat, but there are always friends willing to take some off your hands

...you bring someone a loaf of bread as a gift, and have extra bread knives to go with them (thank you Dollar Store!)

...you kind of snort when you see a quickbread recipe and think "Whimp!"

...you have more than 1.5 lbs of instant yeast in your house most of the time

...you can't justify spending $2500 on that 1951 Chevy that you lust after, but that $2000 wood burning bread oven kit is still looking pretty good

...you make 10 lbs of dough in one batch, just because your new mixer says it can (it says up to 15 lbs, but I'm working up to it)

...your guests are suprised when there aren't fresh loaves of bread waiting for them.

...you spent more on bread baking supplies in the last year than you did clothing your children (to be fair, my parents buy all the kids clothing, so I kinda cheated on that one)

You guys are hilarious!  There are so many points here that I can relate to that I'm embarassed - and I'm just a beginner!  I don't have the bread yet, but I've got the obsessing part down pat!

Half the freezer is taken up with ziplock bags of sliced bread---but you are baking more today because you can't wait to try that new method you saw in The Freshloaf.

You are thinking of buying a second freezer!

George

- It's been months since you used the word flour without at least one adjective in front of it.

- You scan this website anxiously waiting for the next "BBA vs. Glezer" recipe challenge thread.

- You know how to pronounce the word couche.

- Your friends have stopped asking for you to share your recipes because everything is in grams.

• Your colleagues at work call you, "The Bread Guy"
• You have more pictures of your bread than you do photos of some of your relatives.
• You've broken your oven at least once trying to steam it.
• When you heard about the guy who disabled the safety lock on his oven for the clean cyle so he could pump up his oven to about 975 degress F to get the "perfect pizza", your first thought wasn't, "This guy's frickin' insane," but, "Hey, that's kinda cool."

So I guess I am not the only one who has worn out their library card.

My wufe says I have a problem but thats dosen't stop her from eating the bread 

Well at least I have baked something besides bread lately

I've no library and I love cookies!  Mini Oven

This thread is brilliant (and a little scary)!

 ....when your only birthday present to your brother is to send him the link to The Fresh Loaf and

....when your husband asks what you want for your birthday, all you can think of is scales and bread books.

It's both a relief and a little disturbing to find that every point made above applies to oneself!

edh

How about when you find yourself driving over 3 hours to buy 50 pound bags of KA flour because no other food supplier near you carries it?  Or spending each night reading a little bit of a bread book while your partner reads a romance novel?  

Ah, even better...You know you're a breadmaker when you trade hard red winter wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade (agriculture futures market).   :)

you know you are a breakbaker when you are away from your kitchen for three weeks and a week before you get home - because you just can't stand it anymore - you go on the King Arthur site and order $50 worth of all different kinds of flours and grains - just to make sure you'll have it when you get home!

oh, and there will be a couple more bread books wating for me in an amazon box when I get home too.

 (all I can say is at least it beats race car driving - that would be a REALLY expensive hobby, and more dangerous,  although the steaming process is a bit parilous at times!)

those cookies looks so good I would eat the whole batch if they were in front of me right now!

Well they (the cookies) are a slightly modified recipe from the Cook's Illustrated Baking Illustrated book.  The best part about them is instead of the standard 1T measurement for the dough to shape the cookies it uses 1/4 cup.

...when your shirts don't stay clean for more than about 3 hours after you put them on. They have starter, flour, dough, or all of the above on them because you were so involved in massaging dough that you forgot your apron.

*Looks at her shirt* yes, I think I am on my way to becoming a breadmaker :) 

*laughs so hard tears roll down her face*

This is SOOOOOO hilarious!

I am not an artisan baker yet, but I have been know to dance with my bread on occasion (well a little more frequently), AND can relate to almost all of those comments!

My Partner refers to The Fresh Loaf as "Nadias Bread Porn Website"

If he walks past the PC and sees me on it and if there is a picture of bread he always says, "She's at it again....bread porn"

I have a flickr site dedicated only to my bread addiction and photo folders only of bread. :)  

My name is Nadia, and I am a breahaholic.

Thegreenbaker

- you have a separate hamper for floured drenched white clothing.

- your hands have calouses in the shape of a hearth oven peel handle.

- your friends have flour on their clothing from coming within five yards of you.

- the bread you make CUTS YOUR HANDS when handled.

when...

your sister invites you over for Easter dinner and says "can you bring some French bread with you?"  Not, "have you baked bread lately."  No.  She just assumed I had.  She did this today, I have some dough resting as I type this.

Too scary.  I'm a novice and I can relate to almost everything posted here.

Steph

LOL, I can relate to *everything* others posted! A few more...

when...

> you can't fit anything in your freezer because it is full of speciality whole grain flours and frozen preferments

> you *seriously* consider spending $3000 on a new stove just to have a better oven for baking

> you spend your time on the web looking up the specs for flours marketed to professional bakers

> you won't even try a bread recipe (much less buy a baking book) unless it gives the ingredients by weight (rather than by volume)

> you consider your bench scraper an essential kitchen tool

and last, but most important, you make bread because, well, you just like to! Friends, family, co-workers, neighbors are the recipients of your loaves. Isn't it nice that we're such a sharing bunch!

if you find yourself so wrapped up in your passion for breadmaking that you forget to eat.  That reminds me, I've been meaning to grab a sandwich.

Oooh, I'm loving this!

I have one (and it points to my lack of attention doing laundry):

Your mate complains of tiny grayish bits of dough stuck to all his/her laundry, and although you suffer from the same, you don't mind a bit.

 Oh, and, you don't mind running a few errands in town with flour on your clothes, because that shows you're a baker!

You know you're a true breadmaker when:

-your wife schedules her activities and social life around your breadmaking.

-your daughter calls to find out when the next loaf will be ready to slice

-your son decides to call a date and tell her that he'll be late because a loaf of bread will be coming out of the oven in just a few minutes...

-your son's girlfriend asks to come over for some fresh baked bread... 

-the neighbor comes over because he caught a whiff of bread baking, again...

-the dogs start fighting over the crust

-you decide that TV commercials need to be longer so that you can knead the dough longer

-you buy a kitchen with a pass-through so that you can see the TV while you prepare your bread dough - incidentally a new house came with the kitchen...

-the new range/oven unit that you want costs over $5,000 and your wife doesn't object.  She just wants to know how soon it will arrive...

Cliff. Johnston
"May the best you've ever seen,
 Be the worst you'll ever see;"
from A Scots Toast by Allan Ramsay

°Your partner comes within view of your laptop screen and you find yourself turning it sideways to block his view of yet another picture of bread!  ..And you tell him it's a screen saver.    Closet baker?

°In my case, you want to throw egg whites into everything you bake because it's become a habbit.

°Your partner asks if you have any money and smiles after you reply,  "got no money, honey, but I got the bread"    

Another devotee: 

A friend told me that she was disappointed when she went into (2 weeks overdue) labor with her fourth child: she was enjoying using her new sourdough starter too much.

I overheard the neighborhood talking about us, that we were that weird family who has doesn't have even storebought bread. They have to make their own, and some of it had HORSE FEED on it! (oats and grains I assume?)

                                                                        Audra

.......When your first stop when you log on the web is The Fresh Loaf.

And your second is Dan Lepard's site.

...Your 7 year old son names your sourdough starter "Perky", and he reminds you to feed it like it's the family pet.

I went to grocery store very available lunchtime to look for different types of flour.

Ask my friend to bring back flour everywhere from the world. 

test and try different recipes and dispatch all the end product to friends for comments.

That's my living!

Your husband sees you buying so much flour, he suggests that the bottom 30 inches of the new pantries be devoted to huge flour bins... and instead of rolling your eyes at his intended sarcasm you take him seriously ... and go on to explain that most of your flours need to be stored in the fridge, but that when you get your grain mill that would be a great place to store the wheat kernels.

I live alone and eat most of my own bread.  So I scheme to make smaller loaves so I can eat fresh bread just about daily (but not get fat).  Also, I just went online and ordered 75 pounds of whole grains.  And, yes, TheFreshLoaf.com is a several-times-a-day indulgence.

Rosalie

Birds and squirrels hang out where you toss the scraps

while you're on vacation, you stop into every bakery you see.

when I sat down at my home computer this morning and there was a hunk of dried starter on the chair.

When even your girl friend puts flour at the top of the shopping list ahead of 'food".

 STOP!  You guys are killing me.

Bob

I'm new at this, but the obsession is already clear to others:

-My co-workers are surprised when the baked goods in the kitchen weren't made by me.

-I am expected to bake for co-workers birthdays: cinnamon rolls, cake, etc.

-I owe a co-worker bagels. I promised I'd share, then I kept them all for myself and lied and told him they didn't come out well.

-My boyfriend doesn't think it's weird that bread can't be sliced and pizza can't be cut until I've taken a picture. The other night, he stopped me before I took a bite of burger on a homemade bun and said, "You should take a picture of that."

-You're planning your next baking project while the current dough is rising.

-You promised yourself no more baking on weeknights. You immediately broke the rule 3 days later, but thought it wasn't that bad because you pulled the bread out of the oven at midnight.

You've just baked 3 entirely different breads, and are sorry that you don't have time for that last formula you want to try.

 Your nickname was "slidething" becauce you play guitar and do a lot of slide style blues ~~ BUT lately it`s cuz you have a peel in your hands instead of a guitar - LOL have 8 guitars and 4 different peels - the better half likes the peels - she says they are cheaper to buy -

My lap-top went from guitar related to bread related sites.

 Slide__Out

...you go to the hardware store for paint and screws and whatnot, but your wife ends up buying all the manly stuff while you're in the hand tools section considering which ones would make good dough implements.  

...you consider those little sachets of instant yeast to be insultingly small. 

...you spend several hours on the web searching for the perfect mixing bowl for your next birthday...which is 8 months away. 

Prandium longa. Vita brevis.

My dogs recycle quite a lot of my bread-- they are tuned to the sound of a bread knife too. I dice up old bread and leave it to dry for mini-treats, and my homemade dog biscuits always include a generous dollop of starter discard, as well as the occasional mush made of 'failed' bread (thanks for the tip Mini Oven!)

who had delayed mourning when a small building was torn down and leveled. When you were offered free bricks for your garden sidewalk, the foundation was only knee high and then you found out it was the old villiage bakery!

My dogs also come to "PIZZA" They love the edge pieces.

... you're thinking what bread to bake tomorrow, eventhough you haven't actually started baking some for today....

 ... you noticed since you started baking, your family hasn't bought any bread from the store...

... you look in the mirror and wonder if you're starting to look like a bread...

 =)

I just inventoried today.

I have dough or flour on my cell phone and my house phone.  My brother invariably calls when I am mixing.

I have flour on my mouse, from running back to Floyd's recipe for blueberry cream cheese braided bread to check my braiding techniques.  Mine suck!  But the bread was good.

 I have dough on my computer chair.  There is flour or dough on the stove dials, the microwave (from reheating coffee when I didnt get a cup finished because the oven timer went off.)

Every cabinet door as well as the refrigerator doors have flour smudges.

It's a good thing my SO likes my baking products, or I would be in deep doo-doo.

You can't stop thinking about the next bake.

You wish there was a sourdough 911 line.

You're obsessed with your new oven but glad you don't have to change your handle because it's still a mini oven.  :) 

Mini O

-your math (and calculating w/o calculator) has improved considerabily because of baking

- i second flour and clay (dried sourdough) almost everywhere

-your english has improved because of english bread-sites

- you have friends from xxx-in-the-world at your place and when asked where on earth you know them from you answer "i know them from this baking club on the internet"

plus all you've mentioned before...i'm still trying to figure out how to get my obsessions with plants, dogs and bread into one life..

... to add

-you can't wait to slice a loaf of bread just baked, not to eat it in the first place, but to take a look at the crumb

...at just the height of the oven's window so you can sit and watch the first 10 minutes (with bated breath and fingers crossed) for that marvelous oven spring.

Your children know what a couche is (other than a diaper), prefer sourdough light rye to store bought sandwich bread and critique each new bake.

Jane 

Thanks for a bunch of LOLs, people ;-)

 Ok, here goes...

... your freezer is full of your *competitors* products awaiting forensic analysis

... your sole topic of conversation for the past six weeks has been the price of second-hand steam ovens on eBay

... your cats run screaming when you open the flour cupboard

... it makes your week when you find exactly the right size of proving box at your local office supply store

... your major use of Excel is in roughing out new bread recipes

... you travel to the next county for the sole purpose of buying someone's sourdough

... you ring the yeast manufacturers to enquire about bulk prices

...you have to get a joiner to make you a new bookcase for the bread books

...you call your new cat "Fougasse"

 BakerSteve