Your Bread Epiphany

Great topic!  I had many failures when I was younger - periodically I would attempt bread and I got bricks - in retro, it was because I though everything had to be as warm as possible, so I put in quite hot water, had the bread rise in a VERY warm oven, and just murdered my yeast with affection.  Then to correct this, I would try to proof it longer.  Ha ha!  VERY discouraging - tried it once every 2 or 3 years!  But it kept calling me.....

 Mid thirties - 2 things spurred me again.  One: the beautiful, magnificant artisan loaves at the local farmer's market.  Not your usual homemade loaves (which are delicious too), but real organic, original, slow fermented, crusty, etc, etc ARTISAN bread.  I've travelled a little bit, and they're still some of the most wonderful bread's I've ever tasted.  Anyway, I read an interview with the couple in a local paper - and they mentioned their inspiration, the "Bread Alone" cookbook.   I got it, read it, savoured it..... and dreamed....

 Two:  I got a bag of that Amish starter for making amish loaf from a friend.  You know, the friendship loaf that you pass around the starter and the recipe.  As delicious as the loaf is, the recipe calls for "instant vanilla pudding mix" and baking soda/powder.  I thought, "this can't be a real traditional recipe?!"  And I was off.....

 Turned out my first sourdough bread using this starter.... tried again with the "bread alone" cookbook - but kept things cooler and trusted in ovenspring instead of overproofing and I was off!

to bake cinnamon rolls.  I think I was about 10 or so.  I baked them from then on until I went into the service.

Last year, at age 70, I decided to see if I could duplicate them.  That got me started. I got into sourdough by making my own starters.

Now I bake anywhere from 8 to 20 loaves of bread a weekend, which is shared with neighbors and fellow workers (I still work full time).  I also spend a lot of time on several sourdough and kefir Yahoo groups.

And I lurk here every day.

 Bob

I was a late entrant to baking. I have always enjoyed cooking in a grand manner and tried to teach myself French Cuisine with Julia's Mastering book. An old friend of mine is a European trained Chef and has run some very fine kitchens. He taught me the disciplines needed to work in a high end culinary environment even if only at home. The funny part is he wanted desperately to get out of the kitchen and into aviation. So I taught him to fly and he taught me to cook. Today he is the corporate jet pilot out of Aspen CO and I'm happily churning out delicious bread. We traded professions sort of.

My mother first called me to tell me she broke down and bought a bread machine some 20 years ago. She enjoyed the smell of fresh bread in the house and found she could make better bread than at the grocer.In small town Michigan that's not hard to imagine. Eventually I bought a small bread machine and learned to understand the proper stickiness of the dough to not make door stops. Then one day I ordered a stone from the KA catalog and tried it free hand. Those first attempts were pretty rough. I still remember how confused I was about how to handle the dough. Eventually I found my way to Mike's Sourdough Home and things started to click. It was being able to try something and get feedback from the expert that really launched me into the next level. Eventually I found TFL and I do enjoy the interactive aspect of this site. Being part of this community is allowing me to give back some of what I received when I was still making mostly weapons.

Eric 

1. I Love my husband
2. We Love sourdough
3. I Love to cook
and I can't do anything half way so I did an extensive research on the internet and found TFL a couple years ago. Then it was lots of trial and error.. Mike Avery is right when he says find one guru and stick with them. I spent lots of time trying a little bit of everyones techniques! Not a good thing to do..and then SourdoLady got me on my way. Now that I've conquered sourdough..wholegrain bread is next and I'm going to follow Jmonkeys lead and see where I end up....

I used to spend my weekends baking when I was in high school, to unwind and take myself as far away from that convent as was possible.  The more I baked, the more complicated recipes I wanted to try, and that meant the yeast-risen coffee cakes I found in cookbooks.  As I grew older, I didn't bake nearly as much, though I learned how to mix and knead bread from my mother and her sister.  Then a French bakery where my father used to buy his whole wheat bread closed and the hunt was on to duplicate, if we could, Dubois brown bread, and I went through cookbooks trying everything I found.  One day I hit on it, in a Family Circle cookbook, a buttermilk ww bread with cracked wheat.  I baked it about 16 times before my father decided he'd take over which he did; he kept notes on every aspect of every batch that he made (I've still got his notes.) and he was still making it until about a year before he died.  My next Epiphany was when my sister gave me "The Great Canadian Bread Book" and that was it; I'm still baking all our bread years later.  When I have to stop is the day they can cart me away!

about  30 years ago, while visiting her one day, she announced that she needed to get her dinner rolls started, I followed her into the kitchen and found myself in utter disbelief.  I'm sure I must have said something along the lines of, "How can you do this?"  .. Doing anything with yeast had always made me cringe, well, maybe that's not the right word.  Let's just say I was always very humbled, a bit perplexed, and OVERWHELMED.  Yeah, that last one is the word I was searching for.   There was something about putting yeast into warm water, being patient, and then proceeding toward the finished product.   In that kitchen, on that very day, I would find myself forever changed.  Can you imagine how I must have felt when that very sister visited me recently, accepted a loaf of sourdough from me, ventured homeward and emailed me only to beg for the recipe?  I was OVERWHELMED.  Yep, there's that word again, but it's true.  I found myself in awe, first thought being, 'This is where I gathered my courage, with this very person, and now she would like my bread recipe?'.....I even wrote about it here, just a week or so ago. 

Fate, I tell 'ya, it's fate.

When I was little, my aunt would occasionally give us a loaf of her freshly-baked bread.  My mother would also occasionally make baguettes out of James Beard's book.  I thought that fresh bread was so wonderful, I wanted to learn to make it myself.  So when my husband and I got married, I thought I would impress him by making some rolls to go along with dinner.  I didn't really understand what the purpose of kneading was, so I didn't.  Needless to say, the bread was terrible.  I kept making bread, though still feeling like I was walking in a fog.  Then two things happened: While I was staying in the hospital once, I saw Alton Brown demonstrate windowpaning.  And my aunt showed me how she made bread, leaving the dough much moister than I did.  So my bread improved, bit by bit.  I learned how to use a sourdough culture, how to see if a loaf is fully proofed, the importance of dough strength.  When I needed to get a job after my kids were all in school, I wanted one that allowed me to work around their schedules, so decided to make bread and sell it in a local grocery store.  When the store closed three months later, I used a few months to upgrade equipment, and worked like mad to be able to make my first artisan loaves.  I worked so hard the next year (which actually, was last year) to bring as much bread as I could to sell at the Farmers' Market.  I had my share of mishaps along the way, but I would just tell myself that it's from failures that we learn, not success.  It's the start of the new season, but yesterday, at the local Farmers' Market, I sold all my 100 loaves by 10 am.  A local paper is going to run the second story in as many years about my breads on Wed.  I also distribute bread through two local stores.  I use much of my earnings to re-invest: a bigger mixer, more bannetons, another refrigerator.  I am working to save now for a separate kitchen, just for making bread (and with another electrical service!).  I am very proud how far I have come after those first lumpy dinner rolls!

SOL

I started on yeast breads after finding a copy cat recipe for outback bread (I think they have changed their recipe though, last time I had the bread in the restaurant, it was a plain wheat--good but not what I make and not what I had remembered).  I digress...

Anyway, having more ambition than ability, I just started doing it.  After the wheat gluten fiasco, I became determined to cook as much as I could with ingredients that I source (as much as I can).  My bread used to be so so, but a friend of mine worked briefly at a bakery and the only thing I remember was her telling me that a wetter dough made a moister bread.  That helped my baking GREATLY.

Then I found this place and have been picking and learning my way through.  It is still sort of a pleasure than a passion (I prefer to cook by feel instead of by recipe...much to the chagrine of my sweetie when I am not sure how to duplicate something I did that was good lolol).

Currently I have a loaf that is waiting to go into the oven.  I was thinking "OH! I could post pics of this one!" but then I figured people might ask me how I made it.....and I have no idea.  No measurements, just "dumping" lolol.  I DID try slashing....um...I think the dough is too wet to do that!  Oh well we will see how it tastes--at least it is wet enough that it should not be a door stop.  A pancake, maybe, but not a door stop.

Maybe I will just call it my ciabatta lolol.

What a great thread!  As I mentioned in a post yesterday, part of my interest in baking has to be genetic.  My great grandfather owned a bakery in Austro-Hungary.  My grandfather (his son in law) was an enterprising young man looking for a business.  He bought the bakery and got the baker's daughter to boot!  (I was named for her).  The kneading board that I have was made by my grandfather (2nd career as a woodworker) and my grandparents' spirits are certainly looking over my shoulder as i bake.

When my parents came to the states, they both worked for Wonder Bread (yea, I wonder that they can call that stuff 'bread') but at home we ate heavy German ryes imported from Canada, and the same breads that Dan Leader talks about from his childhood...I wouldn't be surprised if I learned I was eating Masterman's breads at the same time as Dan (I was probably in line next to him at the Broadway Market!).

I started baking as a teen--it was my regular Saturday activity...yes, I was weird.  Worked my way thru Beard on Bread.  Baked on and off during the early years of marriage and kids, but as the kids have become teens (and as my oldest is a cancer survivor and we're very preservative-averse) I've baked more frequently, but American-style loaf breads from Farm Journal.

What finally did me in was a visit to Switzerland this past December.  My kids went bananas over the varieties, the crust, and the flavors of breads.  Once back home (and after all the laundry got washed), I started raising my little pet, the stater.  Now I've got it bad, real bad.

My parents gave me birthday money--y'know, buy a suit, a nice briefcase.

 I bought Reinhart's and Hamelman's books instead.

I am supposed to be writing up 2 presentatations for work today.

I am currently rising a Rosemary Filone from "Local Breads" instead.

Yeesh.  I don't think there's a cure. 

Paula F

Philadelphia PA

Interesting thread- I thought I'd add my thoughts as I feel I've just "gotten" it.

I have made bread or seen bread made my whole life. My mother was the youngest of 12 kids.She watched her mother make bread for the whole family every week but being the youngest, did not have the same benefit over time as her older siblings. Some of her older brothers were pretty good bakers but they looked at it as a chore-a necessity. Very little true enjoyment that I witnessed. My mother had 5 kids and while she didn't make bread often, she made it often enough and tried to teach me about how to make bread. Looking back, she didn't have the experience or understanding of the science of bread that is available now and I would call her bread "ok" but very inconsistent. BUt it was enough to instill an interest in me and gave me some very basic techniques.What she passed on was more "rote" knowledge and she didn't have any particulare recipe she made-she tried many. I was the baker in our family but until recently, I had not focussed on bread.

Then I found  The Fresh Loaf. What a difference! About 6 months ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to make bread and to understand what was happening.My inspiration was a timing of need for a new focus/activity/accomplishment and a loaf of homemade bread from my friend's mother-who grinds her own wheat.Wow!

I have been baking every weekend since-I now grind my own wheat-I am beginning to understand how simple and complex bread is. I have consistenly progressed in my knowledge and experience-thanks to everyone here.

Life is good.