Wow, I have to tell my bread story - inspired by landing on this recipe page. I lived in Vermont (East Dover) from '79 to '89. Bought 10 acres, built a house, had 2 kids, baked all our own bread, pizza dough, etc. My motto was, if ya want good bread ya gotta do it yourself. I have to have good bread. Then I discovered Hamelman's bakery in Brattleboro. My epitaph was shot. So was my drive to bake bread while raising two young children. I no longer had to! One day while there, I had a funny feeling I'd seen the gal waiting on me before. It didn't take long to realize we had gone to grade school/high school together in upstate NY! Small world. Fast forward: have been living in Boulder, CO since 1994. As a teacher, I have time in the summer to follow inspirations, and I was hit with the sourdough bread bug. Researching online, I discovered starter from Ischia, Italy. What!!! I lived there as a child on this small island for half a year. I even took my husband there, and we went to my old house. Who'd have known they had their own sourdough starter! Small world. So of course I ordered some. I found a recipe on a good website, and once I gave birth to Luigi, my vigorous sourdough, I launched my first bread in years. But frisky as Luigi is, I wasn't patient enough, and could have donated my first loaf to a discus thrower. I read some more, and landed on this page. My first loaf - about 4 hours from baking, (but we'll see)...looks very promising. As I was reading down the list of authors, I saw - what? Jeffrey Hamelman? Could it be...MUST be. I read his bio on the KA site, and yes, it IS! Small world! And bread karma makes that world go round. My new motto/epitaph: Life is too short to eat bad bread. Cheers to all you bread people, and especially to Jeff Hamelman who has NO idea who I am :-) Regardless of whether or not Jeffrey knows you, this is a fantastic story! In terms of mastering sourdough, it really comes from trial and error/success! If you ever happen to come back to Vermont, you should certainly stop by and see if Jeffrey is in--I'm sure he'd love to hear this right from you. Final note: the more you bake, the more adept you will become at creating wild yeast breads. Practice makes better, not necessarily perfect! Let the wild (yeast) rumpus start!! Happy Baking, Kim@KAF

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