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Dave Miller on Baking with 100% Whole Wheat
My bread baking obsession has fallen into roughly three periods or phases. First came the Nancy Silverton years, when I went through her complex and not always successful recipes. Then came a period...
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Breadbaking (Level 1) Class at the Ecology Center
I’m teaching a basic no-knead bread class down in the OC at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano on Saturday February 8th. To sign up head over to the event page. Here’s the 411: Ditch the...
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Josey Baker Bread: One Bread Book to Rule Them All
I’ve been teaching bread baking for a few years now through both the Institute of Domestic Technology and the Los Angeles Bread Bakers. When students ask what book they should get I have to hold up...
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Gluten Intolerance . . . Is It All In Your Head?
As a co-founder of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers I go to a lot of public events where someone will walk up to me and announce that they are gluten intolerant. Their stories of getting off bread have...
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Josey Baker’s Awesome Adventure Bread (gluten free!)
I figured a gluten free recipe might be a nice balancing gesture after Erik’s gluten post of last Friday. We love our gluten intolerant friends, and want to feed them well. We are also continuing our...
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Worth Doing From Scratch: Corn Tortillas
We do a lot of experimentation here at Root Simple Labs. Some things work out and others fail miserably. I thought I’d periodically look at the projects that have worked in the long term, specifically...
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What Epuipment Do You Need to Bake Bread?
We get a fair amount of spam comments on this blog. Exterminators, search engine optimization purveyors and even, this morning someone promoting gossip news about Beyoncé and Jay-Z (a bit off topic...
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Sourdough Bread Class at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano
Ditch the preservatives and plastic wrap. Join us and learn how to make homemade, all-natural bread from scratch. Learn to bake bread the natural way, with a sourdough starter. Sourdough cultures make...
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Sourdough Rye Bread Class at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano
Ditch the preservatives and plastic wrap. Join us and learn how to make homemade, all-natural bread from scratch. Learn to bake the healthiest bread on the planet: a 100% whole grain sourdough rye. In...
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An Easy and Healthy 100% Whole Rye Bread Recipe
I’m a huge fan of making your own rye bread. Why? The rye bread you get at the market ain’t rye bread. It might have a bit of rye in it but it’s also got a lot of other stuff: often white flour,...
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008 Grind Your Own Flour With Erin Alderson
On the eighth episode of the Root Simple Podcast we speak with Erin Alderson about milling your own flours at home. Erin is the author of The Homemade Flour Cookbook and blogs at naturallyella.com. In...
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Get Baking and Share the Loaves
San Francisco baker Josey Baker, who is the best example of nominative determinism I know of, was in Los Angeles this week to share his enthusiasm for whole grain sourdough bread. Enthusiasm is an...
View ArticleVirtuosic Bread Shaping
This video proves that to learn a skill one must repeat it 10,000 times. That was the advice of a chef friend when I asked her how she learned to shape pizzas. The bread being shaped here is called...
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2,000 Year Old Bread
A Root Simple reader sent me a link to this video from the British Museum showing a chef recreating a 2,000 thousand year old loaf of bread found in one of the ovens of Pompeii. Coincidentally, I’ve...
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015 Worm Composting and Skunks
Our worm bin. On the fifteenth episode of the Root Simple Podcast Kelly and Erik discuss how our cleaning project is going, worm composting, the ongoing skunk menace in our garden and we review two...
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Foodcrafting 101
I’ve been teaching bread classes for years now at the Institute of Domestic Technology. It’s about time I made note of this. The class I teach is part of a full day of classes that, in addition to...
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Who Killed the Non-Electric Toaster?
I don’t regret my unsuccessful attempt this Sunday to fix our broken toaster. It made me remember designer Thomas Thwaites’ attempt to build a toaster from scratch and how well that project showed the...
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032 Grist and Toll, an Urban Flour Mill
In episode 32 of the Root Simple Podcast I talk with Nan Kohler, owner and miller at Grist & Toll, a mill in Pasadena, California–and the first mill to operate in the L.A. area in the last one...
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Poor Man’s Paninni Press
Go ahead, spend your hard earned dollars on an electric paninni press, yet another one of those counter space hogging single-use appliances. But let me tell you what the hip kids do: wrap a brick in...
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Three Things I’ve Learned About Baking Bread With Whole Grain
Sonora wheat loaf on the left, Joachin Oro loaf on the right. I’ve gone through a number of bread baking conversion experiences over the last 20 years. I began with Nancy Silverton cookbook, moved on...
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045 Whole Grain Baking
In episode 45, Kelly and Erik discuss whole grain baking, specifically a workshop the Los Angeles Bread Bakers put on featuring the very talented Dave Miller. The picture is of the bread Dave baked in...
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Baking Bread in a Casserole Oven vs. a Combo Cooker
One of the tricks popularized by Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread recipe is using a Dutch oven to bake the bread. The Dutch oven harnesses the moisture in the dough to create a steamy environment. This...
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Bold Baking
As co-founder of a baking Meetup group, I get to see a lot of what Michael Pollan somewhat crassly calls, “crumb shots.” One consistent error that I see in many of those bread selfies, is that the...
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Josey Baker on Bread: Whole, Wild, Wet, Slow and Bold
You can make bread or babies with Josey Baker’s advice. Earlier this month, the bread cult I co-founded, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, hosted a class by author and enthusiastic bread nerd Josey Baker....
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German Rye Bread Recipe
You know those people who are so excited about something that they immediately post it to the interwebs without even a thought about, say, accuracy. Sometimes those folks are us. When it came time to...
View ArticleHow to Mix and Shape Dough Explained Without Words in Two Minutes
Some things to note about this video: Bakers use scales and so should you. Mixing dough entails making an incredible mess. Learning to shape dough requires practice. As regards point #3, my plan is to...
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How do I get started baking bread?
The short answer to the question of how to get started baking bread is Josey Baker. His name is Baker, after all. While I’ve reviewed his book before, it’s worth repeating since I get asked for good...
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Sprouted Rye Class This Saturday!
I’m teaching a rye bread class this Saturday May 14th at 10:45 AM at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church in Westchester. I’m going to walk you through how to start a rye sourdough starter, how to sprout...
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086 The Connection Between Cats and Grain
Why is it that cats come from the same part of the world where people first figured out how to grow and store grain? Would we have bread if we didn’t have cats? In this podcast Kelly and Erik explore...
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Los Angeles Bread Festival This Weekend!
This Saturday at Grand Central Market, I’ll be doing a free demo on how to starter a sourdough starter as well as a lecture on cats and grain! I’ll also be at the Los Angeles Bread Baker’s booth all...
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Baking Bread with Specialty Malts
I used to make my own beer. But after three ruined batches and not wanting to add to a growing middle-aged paunch, I decided to give away the equipment. One thing I miss is not being able to make...
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Sourdough Baking Class July 9th
Just dig that beautiful loaf. Want to learn how to bake it yourself? The very talented Dana Morgan is teaching a basic Tartine style baking class on July 9th in Westchester. There’s also a pizza bake...
View ArticleJosey Baker whole / wild / wet / slow / bold
The bread nerd club I co-founded, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, brought Josey Baker down to LA to teach a class. Now you can watch a version that very same class via Youtube for freeeeeee. I’m a huge...
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Learn to Bake Your Own Bread! Fall Classes With Dana Morgan and Linda Preuss
Tired of crappy supermarket bread? Don’t like paying $10 for a loaf of decent bread? How about learning to bake your own bread? I can’t think of any better teachers than my friends Dana Morgan and...
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Discover the Magic of Home Milling this Saturday
In my opinion, way, way too many home bakers don’t know about the benefits of milling your own flour. If you’re in LA this weekend and are interested in getting more intimate with your flour, there’s...
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097 Mill Your Own Flour with a Mock Mill
First off, I want to thank Eric Rochow of Garden Fork for subbing for Kelly and I on the previous podcast (episode 96). Thank you Eric! And I hope everyone listening to our podcast will also subscribe...
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Learn How To Bake Sourdough Bread with Dana Morgan February 18th
Want to learn how to bake your own tasty sourdough loaves? Take a class with the Los Angeles Bread Baker’s amazing instructor Dana Morgan on February 18th at the community oven in Westchester. Not to...
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099 The Amazing Sourdough Breads of Guy Frenkel
Guy Frenkel is one of the most talented bakers I’ve met. If you’ve seen his whole grain, sourdough breads in Instagram (@Ceorbread) and Facebook you’ll know why I had to interview him. During the...
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A Celebration of Craft
Dave Miller at work. Photo by Josey Baker. The highlight of the National Heirloom Expo, for me, was running into three people who epitomize the value of dedication to a craft. I’ve found that such...
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The Rye Revolution
At last the rye revolution has arrived! We have nothing to lose but our fake supermarket rye loaves. I’m happy to say that the Los Angeles Bread Bakers is hosting a class with the rye expert, Stanley...
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Recipes From the Rye Baker
Berlin Rye. Photo: Stanley Ginsberg/The Rye Baker. A number of you, our dear readers, said you’d have liked to have attended the rye class this past weekend taught by Stanley Ginsberg if only you...
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What You Need to Bake Bread
As the co-founder of a club for bread nerds, I field a fair number of urgent, sometimes panicked baking queries. While in the past I’ve posted basic bread recipes and lists of equipment, I’ve since...
View ArticleMake Pizza in Your Oven
In addition to sharing a name, Eric of Garden Fork and I seem to exist in some sort of synchronicity vortex. This past Saturday, after I finished teaching a bread class in which I used the same dough...
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Timing Sourdough Feeding
A recent “quarantine” loaf. There are many paths up the holy mountain of sourdough bread baking. Wildly different methods will yield acceptable and edible results. But, no matter the method, I think...
View ArticleParticipate in the Science of Sourdough Project
If you missed the short sourdough lecture I linked to last week, you can watch it above. To summarize, researchers at North Carolina State’s Department of Applied Ecology are attempting to figure out...
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Don’t Worry About the Boule: Bake Bread in a Loaf Pan
In the frivolous, pre-pandemic before-times I slacked off on my bread baking. At the beginning of quar, I prepper-panicked, hastily re-started my starter and fired up the Mockmill 100 grain mill....
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Keep a Rye Starter!
I took a pizza class at Josey Baker Bread in San Francisco this month and picked up a great tip from the instructor, JB pizza baker Caitlin (sorry did not get a last name!). She told us the bakery...
View ArticleUse Your Microwave as Dough Proofing Box
I don’t now why it took me so many years to realize that our kitchen temperature is too low for proofing bread. Most of the year here, except for the hotter months, our interior temps are in the 70sF...
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Our Daily Bread: Sonora Sesame Za’atar Bread
In an effort to take off some pandemic pudge and eat more healthy we’ve been baking our own 100% whole wheat breads. The King’s Roost and a Mock Mill make this easy and convenient but you can also get...
View ArticlePizza Dough Sandwiches
This brand new video from YouTuber Internet Shaquille will resonate with anyone who owns a pizza oven and has tried to use it at a party. In short, it’s hard to operate the oven and pay attention to...
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