Picture Sundays: Joaquin Oro Wheat Loaf

...This is a 100% whole wheat loaf I baked this week using locally grown Joaquin Oro wheat, a high protein, hard red spring variety. It was fermented with a sourdough starter (100% hydration for the bread geeks out there). And thank you to Michael Pollan for inventing the somewhat crass #crumbshot hashtag. Look for more #crumbshots and a whole wheat bread baking e-book on Root Simple in the coming year....

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047 Done is Better Than Perfect

...Hoop houses Crawl space vents for hoop houses Foraging for garlic mustard Bread Earth and Fire ebook Decluttering Beekeeping Honeybeesuite.com Mite treatment Keeping bees in the winter Mudsongs.org That Flow Hive thingy Bears! Birdhouses No-knead bread in a slow cooker Slow cooking and pressure cooking What to do with pallets If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to rootsimple@gmai...

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Craig Ponsford Bakes Whole Wheat Ciabatta

...ut this and with good reason. As he puts it, when he hears about someone’s bread disaster, 99% of the time it’s because they did not use a scale. Rather than dust flour on work surfaces in order to handle dough you’ll see Ponsford use water instead. He also wets containers that he puts dough into. It’s a lot neater and less flour gets incorporated in the dough. Whole wheat doughs need to be wet. When he does use flour, as in the end of the video h...

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Hidey Holes and Hooch Hounds

A few years ago I had the great privilege of teaching bread classes in the Greystone mansion for the Institute of Domestic Technology. The mansion, located in Beverly Hills, was the most expensive home built in the 1920s. It was a gift from oil bazillionaire Edward Doheny to his son Ned Doheny. To put it mildly, things life did not go well for the family. The Doheny family almost brought down president Harding through their involvement in the Tea...

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That Time I Got Deplatformed

...time, but back in September of 2017 a Meetup group I ran, The Los Angeles Bread Bakers got booted off its payment system, a Paypal competitor called WePay (as of October 2017, owned by JPMorgan Chase). Mike of WePay’s Orwelian “Customer Delight” department sent me this astonishingly rude email: Mike (WePay Support) Sep 1, 2017 1:56 PM PDT Hi there, We apologize for the inconvenience, but WePay is no longer able to process payments for your accoun...

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