“Beard On Bread” by James Beard While James Beard wasn’t a fan of sourdough, this remains one of the best introductory reference books to bread making around. I highly recommend this book to beginners. The last publication of this I saw was in 1995, but when I researched this page, isbn.nu helped me find a 1979 […]
“The Taste of Bread” By Professor Raymond Calvel Professor Calvel is regarded by many people as the baker who brought about the resurgence of interest in good bread in France. His book is instructional and inspirational. Sadly, the English version is also quite expensive. But it is worth it. Many of the best bakers I
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White Flour Poison Death (and other hysteria) By Mike Avery Around June, 2007 Last weekend, Friday and Saturday June 9th and 10th, I was fortunate enough to be able to teach a class on sourdough baking in Evergreen Colorado for Mountain Tops Milling. Mountain Tops Milling sells a wide range of excellent grain mills, mixers and other
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Americans Should Stop Confusing Food With Entertainment! (Or, should they?) By Mike Avery February 23, 2009 It’s funny how different things come together to inspire one. Mary Fisher, an English friend, wrote in the gone, and lamented, Baking Fun mailing list that, “Breakfast is An Occasion in England. For most people it means a cooked breakfast:
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Potato, Leek, Bread and Rocket Soup I’ve talked about this recipe a few times. As I mentioned in the Breadblog, the lettuce soup at a recent Wine Squared dinner was lovely and inspired me to want to make something similar. I found a recipe that looked promising in a San Francisco area foodie blog. The recipe used stale bread, which was
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Meditations Upon A Soup Or, The Recipe Isn’t Yours Until You Make It Yours Or, The Chef’s Job Is To Unlock The Flavors In The Ingredients Or, It’s OK To Play With Your Food – In Fact, You Should! Some time ago, I read that it is the baker’s job to unlock the flavors in
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What ever happened to bread anyway? My doctor, bless her heart, decided that it was “time to do something” about my weight. And in truth, I have to admit she’s right. I’m not in prime “Biggest Loser” territory, but I do have some health issues that should be a lot better if there was less
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Laurel’s Desem Starter This is part of our “Sourdough Starter Primer” a deep dive into how to create, maintain and use a sourdough starter. Laurel Robertson’s “The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book” is one of my two favorite whole grain bread books. It offers a wealth of information about how to make good breads with whole grain
How Many Starters Do You Need, Anyway? Sometimes in the different web sites and newsgroups you’ll run into someone who talks about having 5, 10, 15, 20 or more starters. And if you look at the Sourdoughs International web site you’ll see that they have a number of different cultures for sale. And of course, Friends of Carl have
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How To Slice Bread A Reassuring Guide For The Compleat Klutz While we were running our big bakery, we had a huge bread slicer that did a fantastic job of quickly slicing bread. And it always amazed me that people wanted artisanal breads, but usually wanted them sliced. When we down sized the bakery, I
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Brød And Taylor Folding Proofer Review The way bakers talk, you’d think think we’re control freaks. And, to some extent, you’d be right. A lot of the development of a bakers skills comes from measuring what they do, correlating the results with what they measured, and bringing their processes under control. One of the things
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Some Very Useful Tools There are some tools that are useful enough that I’d hate to do without them. Some are pretty common. But sometimes, people still ask me what a certain tool looks like. So… here, in no particular order, are some of my favorites. I suspect this page will grow until people tell
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