Hi! I'm Greg from southern New Jersey. I've been subscribed to Wordloaf since April 2020 and have loved following along with all the recipes, updates, and Friday bread baskets. I've been baking bread for about 5 years, although much more casually until the pandemic started (never made sourdough before the #quarantinystarter). I'd be interested in learning more about baguettes, either through a class or recipe. I am especially interested in a recipe that lends itself well to demi-baguettes that can fit inside a Challenger bread pan. Also, thanks to Andrew for shouting out the Artisan Grains Collaborative survey a few months back—I ended up winning their gift basket and have been enjoying it immensely!
Hi all! My name is Kathryn and I live in southern NH. I've been baking bread for many years starting with the simple loaves and whole wheat "bricks" of the 80s up to mostly sourdough and rye breads today. I had a Alan Scott style wood fired brick oven built and have been playing with baking in that recently. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf since the beginning. I'd definitely like to learn more about shaping. I'm also interested in breads from other countries and cultures.
Hi every body! My name is Richard, I live in Omaha NE. I just subscribed to Wordloaf today, I'm anticipating getting lots of tips and tricks to help me making bread. I got started baking bread by making pizza dough over 30 years ago, and I expanded my repertoire into whole wheat, rye and sourdough. When my arthritis got too bad, my wife bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer to help with kneading the dough (it's Husker red!) I still consider myself a beginner because I always seem to have issues getting the dough to rise properly and the loaves will turn out extremely dense. They taste good, so at least they don't go to waste.
Hi all! I know I'm a little late to join in here. I'm Karen, from Clearwater, Florida. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf from the very start, when the Quarantiny Starter project began. I started baking bread five or six years ago, and it taught me how much I love to make things from scratch. What's kind of fun is that when I started baking, my husband and I were living full time in our vintage bus/RV conversion (dubbed The Creative Cruiser). We spent a whole night researching dutch ovens to find one that would fit in our small kitchen and inside our convection oven. It turns out you can make some really great bread inside a bus! I didn't get into sourdough until the Quarantiny Starter project, but I know there's no going back now! (I hope my starter survives the travel when we head out for a trip in the bus!) One of the main things I would like to learn is how to incorporate more whole grains. And I also second those who would like to learn baguettes. I know Andrew mentioned a potential baguette class, so you can sign me up for that!
Hi there, I'm Rob from Danville, PA. I found your site last spring and subscribed. I've been baking since I was young. My mother made Anadama (a molasses and cornmeal bread from my father's hometown of Rockport, MA) fairly often. I started my first starter in 2009-10 and baked with it for a few yeards before life and 3 young children pulled my attention away. I restarted my starter in 2019 an have been using it since in addition to traditional yeasted recipes. The major thing I want to work on is crumb. My loaves still tend to be tight-crumbed.
I’m Tiffanie, from San Jose, CA. I think I found your newsletter sometime in early 2020? I’ve baked since childhood; my mom is French and very interested in food/crafts/farming, so I learned a wide variety of skills. I haven’t perfected my sourdough, but last winter I did achieve a decent starter and loaf technique. I’ll be working on it again this autumn/winter - I really appreciated your recipe. I have a friend who is skilled with sourdough, but her recipe is from either the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley or Tartine; I found it too involved. I’ve been thinking of getting into grinding my own flour; you did a post a while back and I thought it was fascinating.
I'm Emily from Durham, NC. I've been a subscriber since the beginning and started my starter using the quarantiny starter process in April 2020 and it's still going strong! I've been baking for a long time, but had relatively limited bread experience (and no sourdough experience at all) before last year. I took a break from bread baking this summer but am starting to get into again now that it's getting cooler. Like others, I'm always interested in more discard recipes, sweet sourdough recipes (I really like the pumpkin cinnamon sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf), mix-in ideas, and different flours. I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about kernza flour and I'm interested in experimenting with that a bit.
Hi! I'm Jane. Originally from the Boston area, but currently living in Kyiv, Ukraine. I got into the quarantinystarter when it first came out. I have been baking bread all my life. Not regularly, but enough that I feel pretty confident with it. I had always wanted to try sourdough but was scared of all the instructions and care it seemed to need. Thankfully the quarantinystarter made it all much easier! I did a lot of basic sourdough boules and pizza during the quarantine times - plus all the discard stuff like crackers and waffles and biscuits... Right now my starter is in flake form and in the freezer as too much bread packed on the weight! But I still like to bake it from time to time
I’m Erin from Arlington, MA. I’ve been a subscriber since the newsletter started. I’ve been baking bread weekly for over 10 years but like many here, the quarantiny starter project is what got me into sourdough. I bake with my starter, Babka Yaga, at least once a week, usually basic boules, though I also use the bagel recipe shared in Ithese pages, and some of the porridge breads. I’d like to learn to adapt recipes, and to continue to be better at shaping and scoring.
I’m Lori from Hilton Head Island, SC. I’ve been with Wordloaf since the very beginning. I’ve been baking bread for 40+ years. Until the quarantiny starter project, I hadn’t tried sourdough, but now just about every loaf of bread, pizza dough, biscuit, or cracker I bake is either sourdough or sourdough discard. My next challenge is croissants. I’m looking forward to taking more online classes with Andrew and would love to go to a bread-baking camp (if one exists!).
Well, how fun is this?? I’m Paula, a native Minnesotan currently living in Asheville, NC. Started with Wordloaf in April, 2020 and my starter just never went anywhere until I got my hands on the dried starter from Andrew, which is now lovingly referred to as ‘the baby’. I was a bakery product developer at General Mills for a number of years and I love experimental design and formula research. Took a bread baking hiatus and then jumped all in during lock down and will never let it go again. My baguette game is weak and I’d love to master bagels. Interested in pushing the envelope with whole and ancient grains. After many years working for Big Flour, I’m keen to use and promote more local and regional sourced flours like Carolina Ground here in Asheville. Working to get a local chapter of Community Loaves off the ground.
Oh yes, bagels! I have been meaning to get cracking on them for some time now and time and cravings always get the better of me.
And as locally milled flour and ancient grains go, I've actually been ordering all non-AP flour from the Old Mill of Guilford in Oak Ridge, NC! They were one of the only places I could get ANY flour at an early point in the pandemic and I've found their rye, kamut, and einkorn to be really reliable. The AP performed too differently from King Arthur for me to get things to come out well, but I hold them dear enough that I made a field trip to visit and tour the mill in person when visiting my grandmother in NC. They're very kind and always include a handwritten personalized note!
Hi! I'm Michael from Montreal, Quebec. I've just subscribed to Wordloaf this week! Looking forward to reading more. I started baking the NYT no knead bread around 8 years ago because there were no good bakeries near me. Since then, I've worked through about half of Ken Forkish's FWSY and recently I switched to 100% sourdough, specifically the overnight white (and occasionally brown) which I've baked pretty regularly over the last year. I also make a traditional russian rye loaf with rye sourdough and molasses. My main goal is to improve the look of my bread (it's "rustic" but not pretty!) and get into whole grain breads past the 25% rule. Ironically, since I've started baking bread, I've moved to Montreal and now live next to many great bakeries. My goal is to one day make a better bread than their star sourdough loaf!
Hi Michael! NYTimes no-knead bread was my "in" to this whole world, too. One of my "I'd like to try" breads is a rye- do you mind sharing what recipe you use?
Sure! This isn't a standard light rye bread but rather a dark Russian rye sandwich loaf. Also the recipe website is in Russian but you can put the link through Google translate https://t-demi.livejournal.com/4887.html
I use recipe #1. It guides you to create your own rye sourdough but I've made the recipe with my regular white/whole wheat sourdough and it's turned out great too. Finding some malt might be tough but maybe others can suggest a good substitution!
Hello! I'm Min from just outside Cambridge, MA and similar to Brenna below, I started subscribing to Wordloaf soon after I stumbled upon the quarantiny starter recipe back in March or April after the state of MA "closed." I never considered myself a baker before - the fact that I couldn't taste test or adjust partway through a recipe made me nervous! THEN came Shmoo the Sourdough Starter (just "Shmoo" for those of us in my household) and EVERYTHING changed. I've baked a number of loaves, sometimes with olives and rosemary, that have only improved over the last year as the starter has become more steady and reliable, tons of focaccia using Andrew's recipe (absolutely obsessed with it - a favorite is blue cheese, fig, and toasted walnut), and also pizza dough, discard crackers, crumpets, and pancakes. I would really like to (1) learn how to schedule/plan baking into my schedule on a regular basis (and in a way that is actually feasible/doable instead of stressful, if possible) and (2) learn how to bake something like those dense fiber-rich, moist brown breads that you can get from Mestemacher (fitness, sunflower breads).
Good morning! Brenna from Austin, TX here. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf since the #quarantinystarter thing got rolling. I made myself a starter, had a good week or two, then killed it. Rinse and repeated several times too. My mother made sourdough bread when I was a child, and walking in the front door and smelling the bread is one of my favorite childhood memories. I'd love to get into baking bread, it's about the only thing I don't bake with regularity!
Hi, I’m Tracy from Chambersburg PA. I’ve been baking almost all of our bread for about 7 years. I started making pizza dough in the late 1980’s and am still going strong with that! I never wanted to get into sourdough baking because it seemed too fussy and used up a lot of flour. I changed my mind after I read about the quarantiny starter in the Washington Post in Sept 2020. I started my own starter in January 2021. (How’s that for a New Year’s resolution?) It’s been a somewhat rocky time getting my bread to rise properly so now I’m making the same recipe from KAB and decreasing the amount of optional yeast added to the dough with the starter. I’m feeling more confident about my starter now and hope to make a 100% sourdough loaf soon. I like to bake with at least 50% whole grain flour so that’s what I’m working toward.
Hello, fellow bakers. My name is Rick, and I live in Washington, DC. I started baking in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID shutdown. I decided that if was going to be home all day, I needed something to get me away from the computer and the constant stream of email I would otherwise feel compelled to answer (I am a DC lawyer). I started with some recipes from my wife's vintage copy of "Beard on Bread" and then moved on to a wide variety of recipes on the KAB website. Sometime in the summer of 2020, I made my first sourdough starter, and we've been going strong ever since. Since then I've worked my way through many of the Ken Forkish recipes in "Flour Water Salt Yeast"; taken Andrew's Sourdough Lifestyle virtual class; watched all of Apollonia Poilane's Master Classes; and tried to learn as much as I can from the "experts."
Currently I am experimenting with Andrew's Sourdough Porridge Sandwich Bread, all three ways. I think I like the oatmeal-maple syrup version the best. One of the things I need help with is my scoring technique, especially for baguettes (mine always see to rip a bit).
My family says I have become a bit obsessed. Have you ever seen the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi"? Sometimes I feel like that.
I look forward to sharing ideas and experiences with all of you.
Hi! I'm Greg from southern New Jersey. I've been subscribed to Wordloaf since April 2020 and have loved following along with all the recipes, updates, and Friday bread baskets. I've been baking bread for about 5 years, although much more casually until the pandemic started (never made sourdough before the #quarantinystarter). I'd be interested in learning more about baguettes, either through a class or recipe. I am especially interested in a recipe that lends itself well to demi-baguettes that can fit inside a Challenger bread pan. Also, thanks to Andrew for shouting out the Artisan Grains Collaborative survey a few months back—I ended up winning their gift basket and have been enjoying it immensely!
Hi all! My name is Kathryn and I live in southern NH. I've been baking bread for many years starting with the simple loaves and whole wheat "bricks" of the 80s up to mostly sourdough and rye breads today. I had a Alan Scott style wood fired brick oven built and have been playing with baking in that recently. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf since the beginning. I'd definitely like to learn more about shaping. I'm also interested in breads from other countries and cultures.
Hi every body! My name is Richard, I live in Omaha NE. I just subscribed to Wordloaf today, I'm anticipating getting lots of tips and tricks to help me making bread. I got started baking bread by making pizza dough over 30 years ago, and I expanded my repertoire into whole wheat, rye and sourdough. When my arthritis got too bad, my wife bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer to help with kneading the dough (it's Husker red!) I still consider myself a beginner because I always seem to have issues getting the dough to rise properly and the loaves will turn out extremely dense. They taste good, so at least they don't go to waste.
Hi all! I know I'm a little late to join in here. I'm Karen, from Clearwater, Florida. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf from the very start, when the Quarantiny Starter project began. I started baking bread five or six years ago, and it taught me how much I love to make things from scratch. What's kind of fun is that when I started baking, my husband and I were living full time in our vintage bus/RV conversion (dubbed The Creative Cruiser). We spent a whole night researching dutch ovens to find one that would fit in our small kitchen and inside our convection oven. It turns out you can make some really great bread inside a bus! I didn't get into sourdough until the Quarantiny Starter project, but I know there's no going back now! (I hope my starter survives the travel when we head out for a trip in the bus!) One of the main things I would like to learn is how to incorporate more whole grains. And I also second those who would like to learn baguettes. I know Andrew mentioned a potential baguette class, so you can sign me up for that!
Hi there, I'm Rob from Danville, PA. I found your site last spring and subscribed. I've been baking since I was young. My mother made Anadama (a molasses and cornmeal bread from my father's hometown of Rockport, MA) fairly often. I started my first starter in 2009-10 and baked with it for a few yeards before life and 3 young children pulled my attention away. I restarted my starter in 2019 an have been using it since in addition to traditional yeasted recipes. The major thing I want to work on is crumb. My loaves still tend to be tight-crumbed.
I’m Tiffanie, from San Jose, CA. I think I found your newsletter sometime in early 2020? I’ve baked since childhood; my mom is French and very interested in food/crafts/farming, so I learned a wide variety of skills. I haven’t perfected my sourdough, but last winter I did achieve a decent starter and loaf technique. I’ll be working on it again this autumn/winter - I really appreciated your recipe. I have a friend who is skilled with sourdough, but her recipe is from either the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley or Tartine; I found it too involved. I’ve been thinking of getting into grinding my own flour; you did a post a while back and I thought it was fascinating.
I'm Emily from Durham, NC. I've been a subscriber since the beginning and started my starter using the quarantiny starter process in April 2020 and it's still going strong! I've been baking for a long time, but had relatively limited bread experience (and no sourdough experience at all) before last year. I took a break from bread baking this summer but am starting to get into again now that it's getting cooler. Like others, I'm always interested in more discard recipes, sweet sourdough recipes (I really like the pumpkin cinnamon sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf), mix-in ideas, and different flours. I was listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about kernza flour and I'm interested in experimenting with that a bit.
Hi! I'm Jane. Originally from the Boston area, but currently living in Kyiv, Ukraine. I got into the quarantinystarter when it first came out. I have been baking bread all my life. Not regularly, but enough that I feel pretty confident with it. I had always wanted to try sourdough but was scared of all the instructions and care it seemed to need. Thankfully the quarantinystarter made it all much easier! I did a lot of basic sourdough boules and pizza during the quarantine times - plus all the discard stuff like crackers and waffles and biscuits... Right now my starter is in flake form and in the freezer as too much bread packed on the weight! But I still like to bake it from time to time
I’m Erin from Arlington, MA. I’ve been a subscriber since the newsletter started. I’ve been baking bread weekly for over 10 years but like many here, the quarantiny starter project is what got me into sourdough. I bake with my starter, Babka Yaga, at least once a week, usually basic boules, though I also use the bagel recipe shared in Ithese pages, and some of the porridge breads. I’d like to learn to adapt recipes, and to continue to be better at shaping and scoring.
I’m Lori from Hilton Head Island, SC. I’ve been with Wordloaf since the very beginning. I’ve been baking bread for 40+ years. Until the quarantiny starter project, I hadn’t tried sourdough, but now just about every loaf of bread, pizza dough, biscuit, or cracker I bake is either sourdough or sourdough discard. My next challenge is croissants. I’m looking forward to taking more online classes with Andrew and would love to go to a bread-baking camp (if one exists!).
Well, how fun is this?? I’m Paula, a native Minnesotan currently living in Asheville, NC. Started with Wordloaf in April, 2020 and my starter just never went anywhere until I got my hands on the dried starter from Andrew, which is now lovingly referred to as ‘the baby’. I was a bakery product developer at General Mills for a number of years and I love experimental design and formula research. Took a bread baking hiatus and then jumped all in during lock down and will never let it go again. My baguette game is weak and I’d love to master bagels. Interested in pushing the envelope with whole and ancient grains. After many years working for Big Flour, I’m keen to use and promote more local and regional sourced flours like Carolina Ground here in Asheville. Working to get a local chapter of Community Loaves off the ground.
Oh yes, bagels! I have been meaning to get cracking on them for some time now and time and cravings always get the better of me.
And as locally milled flour and ancient grains go, I've actually been ordering all non-AP flour from the Old Mill of Guilford in Oak Ridge, NC! They were one of the only places I could get ANY flour at an early point in the pandemic and I've found their rye, kamut, and einkorn to be really reliable. The AP performed too differently from King Arthur for me to get things to come out well, but I hold them dear enough that I made a field trip to visit and tour the mill in person when visiting my grandmother in NC. They're very kind and always include a handwritten personalized note!
Hi! I'm Michael from Montreal, Quebec. I've just subscribed to Wordloaf this week! Looking forward to reading more. I started baking the NYT no knead bread around 8 years ago because there were no good bakeries near me. Since then, I've worked through about half of Ken Forkish's FWSY and recently I switched to 100% sourdough, specifically the overnight white (and occasionally brown) which I've baked pretty regularly over the last year. I also make a traditional russian rye loaf with rye sourdough and molasses. My main goal is to improve the look of my bread (it's "rustic" but not pretty!) and get into whole grain breads past the 25% rule. Ironically, since I've started baking bread, I've moved to Montreal and now live next to many great bakeries. My goal is to one day make a better bread than their star sourdough loaf!
Hi Michael! NYTimes no-knead bread was my "in" to this whole world, too. One of my "I'd like to try" breads is a rye- do you mind sharing what recipe you use?
Sure! This isn't a standard light rye bread but rather a dark Russian rye sandwich loaf. Also the recipe website is in Russian but you can put the link through Google translate https://t-demi.livejournal.com/4887.html
I use recipe #1. It guides you to create your own rye sourdough but I've made the recipe with my regular white/whole wheat sourdough and it's turned out great too. Finding some malt might be tough but maybe others can suggest a good substitution!
Oh wow, cool! I love the "You need to bake bread only in a good mood and with good thoughts!" Do you speak Russian?
Hello! I'm Min from just outside Cambridge, MA and similar to Brenna below, I started subscribing to Wordloaf soon after I stumbled upon the quarantiny starter recipe back in March or April after the state of MA "closed." I never considered myself a baker before - the fact that I couldn't taste test or adjust partway through a recipe made me nervous! THEN came Shmoo the Sourdough Starter (just "Shmoo" for those of us in my household) and EVERYTHING changed. I've baked a number of loaves, sometimes with olives and rosemary, that have only improved over the last year as the starter has become more steady and reliable, tons of focaccia using Andrew's recipe (absolutely obsessed with it - a favorite is blue cheese, fig, and toasted walnut), and also pizza dough, discard crackers, crumpets, and pancakes. I would really like to (1) learn how to schedule/plan baking into my schedule on a regular basis (and in a way that is actually feasible/doable instead of stressful, if possible) and (2) learn how to bake something like those dense fiber-rich, moist brown breads that you can get from Mestemacher (fitness, sunflower breads).
Good morning! Brenna from Austin, TX here. I've been subscribing to Wordloaf since the #quarantinystarter thing got rolling. I made myself a starter, had a good week or two, then killed it. Rinse and repeated several times too. My mother made sourdough bread when I was a child, and walking in the front door and smelling the bread is one of my favorite childhood memories. I'd love to get into baking bread, it's about the only thing I don't bake with regularity!
Hi, I’m Tracy from Chambersburg PA. I’ve been baking almost all of our bread for about 7 years. I started making pizza dough in the late 1980’s and am still going strong with that! I never wanted to get into sourdough baking because it seemed too fussy and used up a lot of flour. I changed my mind after I read about the quarantiny starter in the Washington Post in Sept 2020. I started my own starter in January 2021. (How’s that for a New Year’s resolution?) It’s been a somewhat rocky time getting my bread to rise properly so now I’m making the same recipe from KAB and decreasing the amount of optional yeast added to the dough with the starter. I’m feeling more confident about my starter now and hope to make a 100% sourdough loaf soon. I like to bake with at least 50% whole grain flour so that’s what I’m working toward.
Hello, fellow bakers. My name is Rick, and I live in Washington, DC. I started baking in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID shutdown. I decided that if was going to be home all day, I needed something to get me away from the computer and the constant stream of email I would otherwise feel compelled to answer (I am a DC lawyer). I started with some recipes from my wife's vintage copy of "Beard on Bread" and then moved on to a wide variety of recipes on the KAB website. Sometime in the summer of 2020, I made my first sourdough starter, and we've been going strong ever since. Since then I've worked my way through many of the Ken Forkish recipes in "Flour Water Salt Yeast"; taken Andrew's Sourdough Lifestyle virtual class; watched all of Apollonia Poilane's Master Classes; and tried to learn as much as I can from the "experts."
Currently I am experimenting with Andrew's Sourdough Porridge Sandwich Bread, all three ways. I think I like the oatmeal-maple syrup version the best. One of the things I need help with is my scoring technique, especially for baguettes (mine always see to rip a bit).
My family says I have become a bit obsessed. Have you ever seen the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi"? Sometimes I feel like that.
I look forward to sharing ideas and experiences with all of you.