re: Bread Cookbooks

Hi Meg and welcome! I'm pretty new here too. I enjoy reading the posts a lot. You mentioned Bread Cookbooks, for years I used James Beard's book Beard On Bread. Now my two favorites are Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread by Crescent Dragonwagon. She runs or ran a B&B. That book makes my mouth water reading it. I've made lots of the recipes and they have all been wonderful. For one of my annual Christmas Cookie Exchanges I served a variety of soups along with the appetizer selection I always offer after the exchange. The Gumbo Zeb from that cookbook was the hit of the party. Do you use a bread machine? The book I am mostly baking from right now is Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine by Linda West Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts (really). They are authors of Bread in Half the Time which I haven't read yet. When I can't bake and but can get to town, (we live 90 miles from a major metropolitan area) I buy bread at the Wildflower Bread Co. or Madelaines (a French restaurant bakery). There is a Safeway nearer to us (40 miles) and their Artisian breads are good too. They have a Kalmatta Olive and also a Parmesan we like. I would like to hear about other cookbooks you enjoy. My husband and I just added on a Cook's Library to our home just to have a place for all my cookbooks! It's wonderful, with terra cotta tiles, lots of windows, plants and a "chair and a half" to share with my Corgi while I read. My friend and I painted the walls Martha Stewart Fiddlehead and then sponged metalic copper paint over to create a copper pantina effect. The ceiling and connected bathroom are painted Martha Stewart Scone. We are very happy with the results.Hope to see you post again soon.