For some time our "Introduction to Sourdough" booklet was our hottest download. The book was, and still is, an integral part of our "Introduction to Sourdough" class, and the recipes have been student tested. However, we pulled it off the web page about a year ago because we wanted to make it better. And now, it's better than before, and it's ready for you to purchase on the Mike's Bread Shoppe page. The free sampler is our way of letting you take a look at parts of the book to see if you want to spend money on the book. The sampler is actually part of the previous version of the book... we plan on updating the sampler "real soon now." In any case, we hope you'll like the sampler enough that you'll want to buy the new book. The sampler is available here. We feel the sampler is enough to get you started, to help you a lot, and to whet your appetite for our full book with more recipes, more pictures, and more hints.

Our three stage converter spreadsheet let's you convert the three stage French Pain au Levain process outlined in "The Bread Builders" to manageable quantities. Of course, if you want 168 kilograms (370 pounds) of dough perhaps you don't need this converter.... just check out the three stage French recipe. The spreadsheet has been re-designed to allow you to change the amount of dough you want to produce at each of the three stages of the recipe, and to change the hydration of each step. This will let you play with the recipe and create the bread you want to make more easily.

Mike's Breads Worksheet For some time, we've worked on recipes scribbling notes on any sheet of paper that was handy. After a while, it got old, so now we use this handy worksheet we created. Each sheet lets you track 5 trials of a recipe, with up to 10 ingredients. It's a good, old fashioned kitchen-friendly printed paper solution. Just download our pdf files, print 'em, and enjoy 'em. All we ask is that you not remove our nifty logo. We have also made available a sample worksheet used to work out a recipe for our sourdough bohemian rye bread. Just right click on the link to download the worksheet or the sample worksheet. If you have suggestions, just drop us a note from our "Contact Us" page.

Sourdough Converter Speadsheet In response to a number of requests, we've added the ability to work with weights instead of just volume measurements to Mike's Sourdough Converter Spreadsheet. This makes it easier to scale professional recipes you might encounter. This is on top of the fairly recent extensive re-write of Mike's Sourdough Converter Spreadsheet. It's as easy to use as ever, but now it lets you convert yeasted recipes to sourdough, convert from one starter to another, change the amount of starter you use in your recipes, and also adjust the batch size so you can make more, or less, of your favorite breads. Also, I've added the "loaves" line, so you can easily tell how many loaves you are making. The spreadsheet supports the use of up to four flours in your starter. Comments are, of course, welcome.

A note to frustrated visitors. Not all browsers will automatically download the XLS file. They will try to open them. In that case, you'll see a couple of letters on screen. The work-around, until I figure out how to handle the downloads better, is to right-click on the file's tag, and then tell your browser you want to download it. Sorry about the difficulty.