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Has anyone a recipe how to make a rye sourdough starter and recipes for artisnal rye breads? TIA Yoshka

Today, I was chatting with my mom, and she admitted to once having adored chow mein sandwiches. On hamburger buns, apparently. This from a woman who used to be amused by a fellow we knew who ate lasagna sandwiches on rye toast. I once had a boyfriend who liked peanut butter and dill pickles, but I will admit that peanut butter at least is a sandwichy item. So are pickles for that matter. Together? Oy! What's your secret sandwich?

I'm on a hunt for good bread. Especially good German bread. Solid crust on the outside, hearty on the inside. I have family coming in from Germany and really need to find some of this bread somewhere if I plan to survive the holidays Can anyone help? I thank you in advance!

Hopefully this wasn't covered recently. I love to cook, but I can't bake. I love bread, I want to learn how to make it. I don't like what I have tasted out of baking machines and truth be told would like to learn to do it myself. Can I learn this art without enrolling in a cooking school? Any books I should start with when it comes to making bread? Important caveat: I must at the same time try to tame the cook in me from improvising. My struggle with baking has always been complusion to deviate from the recipe written. Its not that I'm a know it all - hardly, its just the cook in me.

My kids are finally old enough to enjoy helping me build and decorate a gingerbread house and I need help with a recepie that will yield the thick,dense "bread" that will stand up. I also need a refresher on royal icing. I was one of those students at the CIA, many moons ago, that did very very well until it cames to the pastry classes. I had determined by then that my affinity was for the hot line and not the deft hand of a pastry chef. It's a beautiful thing that we can all be together in a kitchen, each working our strong point.

I have been on the search for the perfect pumpkin bread. After burning through the recipes I had in my file from friends and the ones found on back of assorted cans of pumpkin, I haven't found a recipe that I wanted to keep. I don't want pumpkin cake either. I just want a nice, dense pumpkin bread that isn't rubbery and has a nice crumb. Perfect for breakfast on the run. Any help in my search would be greatly appreciated! S

I will be holding a dinner in April and am looking to serve some really good, crusty french bread with it. I was wondering where in Boston I could get my hands on some, or if anyone could recommend a good mail order source that would send me some partially baked bread. Oh, and this will be my first eGullet post! Thanks for any ideas!

I thought I'd try some unusual cooking this week. I have some long cut pig's trotters from borough market, some calf sweetbreads, and a big chunk of bone-in gammon knuckle (the pig shank) - and I'm looking for suggestions. Has anyone ever stuffed trotters before? I tried it once, following the FL Keller recipe, but the skin of the trotters fell apart before I could stuff them. Any suggestions? And is it important to blanch sweetbreads before cooking, or is that only for de-skining them? Should I cut them into small pieces before blanching, or leave whole? All suggestions appreciated.

I found only one such recipe on recipe gullet.

Yikes! Feeling nervous and presumptuous to be asking my amateur-home-baker questions of you, Mr. Reinhart. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us! When making a sourdough boule, for example, I've read that you should heat your oven up as high as it will go before sliding in your bread. But I've read elsewhere that if the oven is overly hot, a crust will form too quickly and prevent oven spring. Which is correct? Although I know there are many factors involved, my problem in a nutshell: a flattish bread with a quickly burnt crust and a damp interior--which, to me, sounds like the work of a too-hot oven. However, I don't use quarry tiles or anything of that sort. All I have is a small electric oven turned to 240 degrees celcius. Could it really be producing *that* much heat? Or is my problem something else entirely?

Thank you, indeed, for this Q&A - if it weren't for American Pie, I wouldn't have convinced my Illinois-native sweetheart that there is life after Deep Dish, although I nearly caught a plane back to CT for New Haven pizza.... but here's my question. We, as a species, have gone from unleavened, to leavened, to sliced, with a recent dip into low-carb, yet it is all still variations on flour, salt and water. If you had to imagine what will happen to bread in the next hundred years, where do you think our bread is headed next? And, as an offshoot of that, where is your bread headed next? Now that you've explored crust, crumb and toppings, are you ready for something different or is the mystique still alive?

I am in the process of developing a low carb bread/pizza crust. I have two versions at the moment. One is a combo of soy flour, almond flour and wheat protein isolate and the other version subs vital wheat gluten for the isolate. So, from a perspective of sustaining the yeast, the WPI version will rely entirely on added sugar, whereas the VWG version will work with both added sugar as well as the trace amount of starch in the gluten flour. My goal is to add just enough sugar to sustain the yeast for the duration of it's lifecycle, and no more, keeping residual sugar content to the barest minimum. My first plan of attack will be to utilize a wet sponge method with frequent whisking to encourage an aerobic environment for the yeast. The second part of my plan will be to mix 8 small batches of dough, each with slightly more table sugar than the last, and then observing the rise I get from each. Would you have any other ideas that might help me in my quest?

My mother was brilliant at baking all sorts of bread and did so with deceptive ease. A few years ago I decided to follow in her footsteps (r.i.p. mom!) and have struggled to produce consistently edible bread. I live in a very high humidity climate (70-80% year round) and I know that has an effect. Which of your books would you recommend? I still consider myself a novice in spite of weekly efforts. I have been most successful with the milk bread and white sandwich bread recipes in the 97 edition of Joy of Cooking.

Thank you for joining us. I was first introduced to your work by having a copy of "Sacramental Magic" included free in a book mail order. After I read it I thought, "These people are nuts for giving this book away! I'd pay for it any day." There are two matters which have been puzzling me. First, sometimes I see a recipe for a bread I'd like to try, but it calls for Rapid Rise Yeast. I just can't bring myself to buy that, knowing as I do that long rising improves/develops flavors, it just seems like a bad idea. When and why would this yeast be necessary? And, if it's not necessary, how do I go about substituting regular dry yeast granules? Are there any breads which absolutely call for a different kind of yeast such as cake yeast or can I always use dry yeast granules? Second, being a diabetic I have to watch my carbs. The low carb breads using soy flour and other flours simply don't taste good to me. I'm wondering if there is a way to add enough seeds, nuts, bran, etc. to a white/whole wheat loaf to make the fiber count lower the effective carbs.

I'm a huge fan of Harold McGee, Shirley Corriher, Robert L. Wolke and Alton Brown. I've read everything they've written, and most more than once. I'd like to delve further into bread, specifically dough rheology as well as enzymes. I've been able to amass a decent amount of knowledge on yeast from books on brewing, but a good book on that would be great too. Are there any books you'd recommend?

It is quiet fortunate that you are with us this week since we recently started discussing Lebanese Mountain or Saj bread, Click Here for the thread. Have you ever tried this bread cooked in this manner? Do you have a formula we can use to produce thin soft Saj bread? Thanks, Elie

Pardon me in advance if I get a little bit abstract or theoretical ... seemingly too far from the real subject of bread. The more I've moved and travelled the more I've attempted to understand the character of people through their foods, their markets, their rituals of preparing, of eating. Some cultures, often densely urban and relatively poor, offer a mosaic of streetfoods; others neglect breakfast in favor of extravagant mid-day meals and late dinners eaten late, comprised of an assortment of small bites; and so on. Every culture, perhaps with the exception of those that have an abundant supply of cheap meat, rely on a grain as their staple. What this grain is impacts culture significantly ... I think it was in The Revolution of Everyday Life that the French historian Fernand Braudel connected the staple grain to systems of governance and cultural production. Simply put, it's much easier to build monumental architecture when you have corn because you can get a lot of calories without a lot of energy input. Rice, on the other hand, takes more labor input. China, of course, got around this with raw numbers, but I digress. The root of "companion" in "pan" has always resonated with me. But, what I was getting at in the previour ramble, is that some cultures, though they have a staple grain, don't always have bread. Their staple, however, brings them great comfort. A bowl of rice for many Japanese people has the same connotations as a loaf of bread. Your statement that "there's something so intrinsically satisfying about dough with something on it" got me thinking in this vein. What is that intrinsic satisfaction? How does the satisfaction of bread as a staple compare to others? With your research, have you looked into this? What component if physiological, what is mental, what is cultural? The physiological and mental components make me think of research into what "umami" is and how it "works." Bread is obviously working on a very different principle - often as the backdrop for umami. There is something "ambient" about its pleasures. The last component of this overstuffed message: why do some places within the bread eating world seem to care so much more about bread than others? For example, I currently live in Chicago and it seems not to be a great town for bread. There is good bread here, but it is not abundant. On the other hand, I've had friends from Montreal tell me that great bread is readily available there in many varieties (for the sake of my point, let's assume this is true). Is this just about supply - there are no good bakers making bread there and making great bread isn't easy - or is it about demand - people are happy with what they've got and their not willing to pay $4 + for a loaf? If it's the latter, is consumer malaise underminind our "intrinsic" love of great bread? Whoo. Thanks for participating. As a lover of great bread that's ventured very little into baking, your generous responses and the passion exhibited thus far have inspired me to take up flour and yeast in the near future. Ciao, rien

In "Apprentice" you describe the modified Gosselin method for making baguettes. In "Crust and Crumb" you describe a more conventional method. Which do you prefer now? I'd like to make a baguette with all sourdough. Is this possible, and which method shoud I follow? I've tried both, but despite high hydration, the crumb is still quite tight, rather than the large open structure I'm looking for. I use a silpat baguette form, and I wonder if this is the problem, as I've heard that one of the key elelemnts in crumb texture is high bottom heat form contact with a hot stone. I've no problem with achieving good texture in conventional sourdough boules, baked on the oven floor.

Looking for a nice whole wheat or multigrain bread for sandwiches, not the artisanal stuff. What I like is something that's not too sweet and fluffy, but not cardboard-y, either. Any suggestions?

I bought some almost-made papadam bread at a grocery today and want some input on how to make it. In college, I would throw them into a microwave for 10 seconds and voila, but we don't want to use our microwave. Any tips????

I have a very good kitchen aid which came with a dough blade. It looks like the regular blade except its plastic, dull, and has no points. Has anyone ever used one of these before? From what I've read in my book, instead of using room temperature water, you should use cold water since the dough will heat up in the processor. Also, the book recomends to finish off the kneading by hand. She says that although it's possible to make all breads with only your hands, some of the wetter doughs are so sticky that it takes a seasoned professional - which I'm not! And from what I understand, these wetter recipes are some of the best breads. Does anyone have any tales, tips, advice or warnings about making bread dough in a food processor? Thanks! ~WBC

My second italian loaf, full size image here.(http://www.canamcaravan.com/breadfullsize.gif) The first one was a bit undercooked. The third loaf is in the oven now. My house smells AMAZING right now. Joe

For about a week now (ever since I managed to smash the glass door on our gas Kitchenaid range) I've been using the Weber grill to bake bread. And much to my surprise, the Weber produces a much better (crisper) crust than the Kitchenaid, although it is, you'll understand, far more basic. The Kitchenaid is convection. The Weber is covered, and fueled with natural gas. I use a baking stone, just as I did with the range. I try to keep the heat around 400 degrees, but it's cold outside, so I don't worry if it creeps up a bit. Anyone care to speculate as to why the results are better on an outdoor grill?

This has been bothering me for a long time. I dwell in the Piemonte, the land of grissini (breadsticks), so I have always assumed that bread was just not that important in my neck of the woods. While there is occasionally good bread to be had, most local bakeries serve up 18 different shapes of the same, sorry 60% crust, 40% air bread that stales up within 5 minutes of exiting the oven. I have had Italian friends serve me that wretched bread TWO DAYS OLD, presumably solely for the purpose of sopping. And as I travel around Italy, I have come to realize that lame bread is not unique to my area. By the same token, I have traveled to the French border in Savoie with Piemontese friends, and watched them rave about (and eat prodigious quantities of) what seemed to me to be mediocre baguettes, so it clearly is not the case that they do not appreciate better bread than they generally eat at home. Now, none of this is to say that there is not unbelievably fine bread to be had in Italy. I can still recall the wonderful focaccia with a sprinkling of sea salt fresh out of the oven from the Giusti bakery in Lucca, not to mention that found many places in Liguria. And there are all of those wonderful crusty, dark peasant loaves in the south. And pizza in Napoli. And a large quantity of excellent quality bread for panini comes from somewhere. It is just that there is so seldom found great EVERYDAY breads, the Italian equivalent of the baguette (although there have been quality problems in France, too). I recently bought The Italian Baker by Carol Field, which contains, among other great stuff, a brief history lesson. For one thing, I never realized that bread more or less as we know it today is only a couple of centuries old in the western world. She claims that, in Italy, the bread-producing technology spawned in the 1950s caused much of the artisanal bread to be replaced with a product not unlike Wonder Bread in much of Italy. She also makes the case that artisanal breadmaking is on its way back in Italy, and the pendulum is about to swing the other way with vigor. It cannot happen soon enough for me! Anyone else have any theories, or better yet, facts, on this national crisis?

Anyone else here use one of these? It's a typical style, with a rolltop lid. Doesn't seal tightly at all, but that has never been an issue, until now. Our last bread (we make our own, in our machine) got moldy within just a day or two. Does anyone have any ideas on how to avoid this? I would really like to avoid storing it in our tiny European fridge. I guess I would just like to know if there is something we should be wrapping the bread in? Sitting it on? Thanks!