I've been a member of this list for several months and I dearly love
receiving my weekly digest. Thanks for all the great advice, recipes, etc.
About 10 years ago, I moved too far away from my home town to get the
wonderful homemade bread my mother made, so was forced to discover my own
culinary abilities. I learned to bake bread by making the dough on the
counter top in a bowl made of flour, putting the ingredients into this
"bowl" and incorporating flour until the dough was what I thought it's
consistency should be. Since then, I've moved on to other less tiresome
and messy methods of making dough, but I've never forgotten the lessons I
learned from that method. I almost never measure flour. I measure the
other ingredients and then incorporate enough flour to make the dough what
it should be. This method has never failed me, and it has the extra added
bonus of being easily scaleable and also isn't dependent on what measuring
system, humidity, temperature or flour you use.
Just another way of looking at things.
Dale Baker (with a name like that, it's no wonder I love bread)