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Hello, I am new to all of this.  Years ago, I did teach myself how to make basic bread from a recipe.  But since then I have grown in the health world and become a food snob.  I now want to grind grains and make bread this way.  Once I get this down, then I would like to move on to sourdough starters.  But first this.  I have a KA mill grain and have never used it yet.  Still in it's box new.  I went to go buy some wheat, rye, and spelt grains the other day at a coop health store and found that there were several options, that I was unaware of.  The book, for ordering, would say wheat and then the weight and price, and I take it, that it meant kernals, but am not sure.  I could not ask the clerks there because they don't know anything other than stocking and cashiering.  The other option was berries.  I thought the kernals and berries were basically the same thing, but obviously not.  I have been told that I can use both in my mill.   But I do need to understand the difference and how it will affect my end result.  Can anyone help me with this?  I appreciate your imput.

Hello everyone.  I am new here, hope this is ok for a topic.  I have not seen this addressed on the pages I have looked at.

I have been baking bread for a while, but am branching out into sourdough.

I have started my first sourdough starter (not from scratch...tried that before and I think we have too much mold in our house for it).

 Anyway, got the sourdough starter going, made some bread.  Tasted fine, but both the round loaf and the loaf in the loaf pan had one HUGE bubble under the crust the entire length and breadth of each loaf..... I could have hidden a chihuahua in there lol.  The crust was obviously fairly strong, but I was puzzled by the one HUGE bubble.  Any ideas?

If anyone is interested, my sourdough is actually a commercial starter that they sell up here (for tourists lol).  BUT I have been pleased so far.  After the "secret compartment bread", I made another loaf using some of the tips I found here for increasing the sour of the sourdough....the resulting loaf was VERY good, VERY tender, nicely crisp crust.  It almost had a sour taste--you could tell that it wanted to be a "real" sourdough, but just couldn't quite make it.  However, the more it cooled, the more tang it had.

I am eager to do more, now that I can see that the code CAN be cracked :).  Thank you for your time and for this forum--it really helps!

I have been enjoying Dan Lepard's "the art of handmade bread" both for the recipes and because it is a good "read". Have any of you tried his method of using a small amount of oil on the counter, kneading for 10 seconds and leaving it to rest for 10 minutes, and repeating with longer rest intervals? It sounds interesting but I wonder about adding oil. I am trying to get away from using extra flour because my only piece of counter suitable for bread making is over the dishwasher and inevitably I forget to cover the door with a tea towel and get flour in the nooks and crannies. I like the stretch and fold method, also the French fold, but I am tempted to try DL's way. Didn't have time to bake this weekend so I am digging some of my old, not so great loaves out of the freezer - no way will I buy bread! A.

I bought a roll of Wilton parchment paper. The packaging says the temperature limit is 400 degrees.

Some of the recipes I want to use it with call for temps up to 500 degrees. Can the parchment paper still be used? What can the adverse consequences be?

Colin