How do I get started baking bread?

...overly lengthy and, often, confusing. Best of all, Baker emphasizes whole grain, sourdough fermented breads. Baker has summarized all the popular methods out there right now in one place. Want to make a New York Times no-knead/Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day type loaf? No problem, that’s the first loaf in Baker’s book. Want to make a Tartine style loaf without reading a hundred pages of directions? No problem, that’s also in the book. Wan’t t...

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Everything Must Go: Tidying Up at the Root Simple Compound

...have a way of piling up over the years, especially when you’re a maker/DIY/homesteady sort of household. As a result, our house was bursting at the seams. Trying to find a place for everything was becoming a Sisyphean task, reminding of nothing so much as playing with those seriously un-fun tile games which children used to get in goodie bags–I dearly hope they’ve become obsolete by now–those little plastic grids of moveable tiles with only one op...

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The Jerusalem Cookbook

...eat and fish recipes, but it also has plenty of salad, vegetable, bean and grain recipes, so it’s friendly to both vegetarians and meat eaters. We’re mostly vegetarian, and we feel like we’ve only scratched the surface of the meatless offerings so far. Though there are a lot of veg recipes which use eggs, yogurt and cheese, there are also good vegan-friendly offerings. To give you a feel for the book, these are the recipes we’ve enjoyed so far. Al...

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Saturday Tweets: From Archery to Jaywalking

...8sM2RcL6lk — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 22, 2015 Process (Five Year Grain Program) http://t.co/aD8DC5d8ur via @BellegardeNola — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 5 reasons that Fake grass is so Dead http://t.co/koX2q1nb5h — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 True impact of settlers on erosion rates in North America revealed http://t.co/wlsoY65EUU — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 21, 2015 Methinks we’re in a bubble: Cryst...

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I’ve Been Working on This Chair When I Should Be Doing Other Things

...le aesthetically pleasing the design is a woodworking no-no as it involves grain tied together in two different directions with no allowance for wood movement. On most of the originals, unsurprisingly, the back has split. I omitted the dovetails in my Voysey chair remix opting for an unglued mortise instead. This small detail illustrates why designers and craftspeople need to be in dialog with each other. Voysey said, “To produce healthy art one m...

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