Books and Breads Blog

October 14, 2015

10th Annual World Bread Day!

To celebrate the 10th Annual World Bread Day I baked a sourdough buckwheat boule. Buckwheat is hard to work with because it has no gluten, is...

Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

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September 7, 2015

Wheat to Bread

This summer we grew wheat in the Allegheny College garden, then harvested, threshed, winnowed, milled, and baked. To see what happened, click HERE.

Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

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September 7, 2015

Sandwich bread

I forgot that for many years I only made bread in loaf pans, but now that Northwest Pennsylvania is enjoying its best tomato harvest in...

Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

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August 27, 2015

Age of Ambition by Edward Osnos *** (of 4)

Pieced together from Osnos’s eight years of reports on China filed with the New Yorker, Age of Ambition comes together as a complete painting of modern...

Book Reviews

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August 27, 2015

The Son by Philipp Meyer **** (of 4)

This history of Texas is told through the lives of four generations of the McCullough family. Eli, the patriarch, is captured by Comanches as an...

Book Reviews

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August 2, 2015

Some fermentation and some not

From left to right are an empty pot of rooibos tea, a Japanese green-tea fermenting into kombucha, and an exceptionally delicious experiment...

Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

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August 2, 2015

Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews *** (of 4)

An American CIA agent, Nathaniel Nash, is sent to Russia to manage a key asset at the same time a Russian intelligence agent, Dominika Egerova,...

Book Reviews

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July 9, 2015

Summer breads

I haven’t finished a lot of books lately. Started a few, but instead of reading to the end, I have been baking. Somehow, summertime is great...

Sourdoughs and SCOBYs

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June 18, 2015

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry *** (of 5)

A fluffy little book with likeable enough characters, a soap-opera plot, and enough references to classic book titles that prove the author not only paid attention...

Book Reviews

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June 14, 2015