Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Bread-making Is probably my most favorite occupation, however, even I don't have the patience to labor over the construction for days.
I think the best-tasting loaves I've ever made were of the CI recipe for No-Knead; I absolutely love that bread. I don't often make it though because it's not a practical style of loaf for my uses.

Was the bread good after all that work? I used to make only the no knead because I worried about getting the rising times right. Since I got the 7 qt. KA, I have been working my way through the breads in the King Arthur website, having fun changing flours and other ingredients. This book might be fun after that, and my library has it.

I don't mind overnight starters, and have stopped obsessing about exact rising times. I was having problems with crumbly tops from over rising, but nailed it on the last one I made: an adapted version of Clay's Sourdough from the KAF site.

Thanks Fuzzy - that sounds like a book to add to my collection! Getting too hot now to bake, however, esp. rising those kinds of breads, so I have a while to get it.

Alina,

I had trouble with the rising; it's been very cold in SF lately and the apartment just wasn't warm. So the bread was ... kind of dense. I talked to one of the Della Fattoria bakers about it later, and she suggested cheating by adding a pinch of commercial yeast.

Alina,
Have you tried KA's 'Potato Wheat Bread' recipe that was added to their website in the last few months?
It's about the best whole wheat bread I've ever had. But be careful, it's a really fast riser with huge oven-spring.
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/potato-wheat-bread-recipe

Slightly off the topic, but still relevant. I recently bought this 8-mini loaf pan from King Arthur's since I love to bake bread but with just the two of us even half a loaf gets stale before we can use it. This really solved the problem since I can freeze as many as I like:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/ite ... i-loaf-pan

Linda, I have it marked. Have not had potatoes on hand when I've needed to make bread. I do use potato flour in most of my breads. Lindsay, we've not had problems with the loaves I've made getting stale. For bigger loaves I add granular lecithin which seems to help. I keep them wrapped in aluminum foil. I always think I'm going to freeze one loaf, but when I've gone to do it, we were half through the first one.

I'm convinced that there's something about salad cookbooks which prevents them from being good.

I wanted to like Salmagundi by Sally Butcher, first because I've been looking for a really good "meal salad" cookbook for a while, and second because I love the idea of a salad book written by someone named "Butcher". Despite the beautiful cover and photography, though, this cookbook was basically a "hack job", and is headed back to the library.

For whatever reason, Interlink didn't see fit to assign an actual cookbook editor to the book. It suffers from all of the standard failures of an unedited cookbook, including:

• Missing cooking times
• Ingredients don't match instructions
• Ingredient amounts don't match instructions
• Incomprehensible or missing instructions

I checked 5 different recipes in the cookbook, prepared one, and gave up on another. Every one of them had problems. So, give this one a pass.

I'm still looking for that ultimate salad book.

I have this one. T is pretty solid. http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Salad-Bar-Greens-Inventive-Chicken/dp/1891105337

Mary

Mary,

You know, I didn't check that link for several days because of the link text! I thought it was an all-chicken-salad book. Thanks!