It’s only Monday, but there are so many exciting things to talk about!  Where to begin…Well first of all, I was very happy to see that last week’s soy broth and noodles post was featured by TasteSpotting.  In bread related news, the Wednesday dining section of the New York Times was all about bread!  There were many fantastic […]

There was a strange moment Saturday morning when I realized that today’s post would fall on the morning before the first Passover seder.  For those of you who do not know, Passover (or Pesach) is a Jewish holiday which commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in ancient Egypt.  The story goes that when leaving […]

I’m sure I’ll jinx it by saying this, but it seems that spring has finally made its way to Ann Arbor.  Of course for us that means 40 degrees and rainy, but it beats 5 degrees and snowing!  And of course nothing signals spring more than pumpkin beer!  Wait, what?  Perhaps you remember the pumpkin beer […]

The past few weeks, weekends especially, have been quite busy and I haven’t had much chance to try out new recipes.  Lacking any new exiting breads to post about (next week, I promise!), I thought this was a good opportunity to discuss the cost of making your own bread.  Of course there is a price […]

When I started milling my own flour last fall I suddenly had a windfall of wheat bran.  Many of the breads I made would use 100% whole wheat flour, but others might call for 80% or 90% extraction flour.  This means that you turn the total weight of wheat berries into a certain smaller percentage […]

When I started branching out from using regular white and whole wheat flours I felt like everywhere I turned I read something about spelt.  For reasons beyond me everyone seemed to use it in their loaves…I had never even heard of it!  It started to take on this almost mythical quality until I realized that […]

As I approach a blog milestone (100th post to come later this month) I am very happy to report that one was reached last week.  After 11 attempts dating back to October 2012, I finally had pictures (from last week’s salted chocolate rye cookies) accepted by both FoodGawker and TasteSpotting!  Just when I thought I […]

A few weeks ago a friend requested a loaf of bread and when I asked for specifics she answered ‘whatever grainy concoction’ I come up with.  Well, this is the grainy concoction I’ve been making for a while.  After tinkering with a variety of multi-grain loaves (including the very successful struan bread) I’ve settled on a recipe […]

The past few months I’ve been making a lot of Tartine style sourdough. In my mind this isn’t a bad thing, and I think I’ve made a great deal of progress on the technique and adapting it to what I want in a loaf.  But it’s always useful to humble yourself with a new recipe […]

As I get more bread baking experience I constantly find myself wanting to go back and revise recipes I’ve used on the past.  After making two loaves of chocolate cherry sourdough I was left with some extra chocolate chunks and a nagging feeling that I could improve upon the chocolate sourdough I’d previously made. By […]