Summer Lovin'

Thanks to Alicia Kennedy, who included Wordloaf on her recent list of 18 newsletters she always opens, writing:

Andrew Janjigian writes and teaches you about bread, and even though I haven’t successfully maintained a sourdough starter yet (blame the humidity and my already overflowing fridge), I love his measured and well-honed approach to tackling an intimidating topic.

…we have a flurry of new subscribers here, and just as I left for vacation for the entire month of August. Wordloaf remains on hiatus, but I did want to send out a quick note welcoming all of you new recruits—thank you!!—and just mention that we’ll be returning to our regularly-scheduled programming in early September, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, let me point you all to a handful of posts that might give some background information Wordloaf, the Newsletter, and how it came to be. For starters, I just updated the biographical post that I originally published about a month after it first launched, since much has changed around these parts since then:

The man behind the mask

I’m not really fond of talking about myself, but I thought it might be helpful to give you all a rundown of the parts of my biography that relate to what we are up to here. This is a slightly longer version of the story I tell when I teach classes and ask everyone to introduce themselves and say a little about their background in baking.

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And then there is this post, which describes the birth of the Quarantinystarter, the little sourdough starter that could (and without which we would likely not be here):

St. Quarantiny Day

Though for many today is St. Patrick’s Day, here at Wordloaf we are marking a different holiday: St. Quarantiny Day. That’s because the Quarantinystarter, the tiny sourdough starter with big ambitions, was born exactly 1 year ago today. In the early days of this newsletter, it was safe to assume that all of my readers knew all about the Quarantinystarte…

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And of course there is this pinned post, which is an index to everything published thus far:

Wordloaf Index

Important Posts Need a Sourdough Starter? (Start here!) Handy-Dandy Weight-to-Volume Conversion Chart Recipe: Care and Maintenance of a Sourdough Starter Recipe Template: The Loaf, 2.0 (No-knead pain au levain, 5% rye)🍞 Recipe: Loaf Classic™ (aka the four-fold pain au levain) 🍞

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I hope that gives everyone something to chew on while we are away, and a better sense of what to expect once this thing boots up again.

See you all in September, and have a peaceful August.

—Andrew