bread-making recipe(s)

So... I like to eat baked goods a lot. Since I am a cheapskate, and am also steadily more grossed-out by processed foods, my desire to eat tasty treats has necessarily resulted in a dedicated pursuit of various baking projects. For a long time (since summer 2002!), I've been thinking about collecting some of the recipes and techniques I've accumulated, with the intention of publishing and distributing them somehow.

Now, August 2008, I've just finished the rough draft of a little zine containing one recipe for wheat bread — and a lot of basic bread process instructions for novices, as well as variations on that recipe. I made about 40 quick-and-dirty copies, which were distributed at the New Urban Arts zine swap.

I'm planning to expand the zine a little bit — it had 24 small pages, fitting on both sides of two sheets of 8.5x11 paper, but that felt kind of tight and didn't leave me enough room for as many illustrations as I had hoped to do. (I also didn't have time to do a lot of illustrations to get it done in time for the zine swap, so... it worked out fine for the time being!) I'll be adding four pages, giving everything some more space, adding some more pictures, and making the cover partially screen-printed (just to make it look cool). Then the whole book can be copied on two 8.5x11 sheets, plus one other sheet, of heavier stock, that will have three copies of the cover on it, and be screenprinted as well as photocopied. Sweet!

However, the next phase of the project — which will probably happen before the revision of the zine — will be turning the text and drawings into a poster for the Sustainable Print Show that is happening at AS220 in November.

I don't know what a bread-making poster looks like yet (though I am thinking about dishtowels with recipes on them, from my grandma's house, as precedents...) but I will find out sometime between now and November! Here are updates on the zine/poster progress, as it goes along...

At left is the simple version of the recipe which makes up the zine's centerfold. Here's the same thing as a pdf. Below is a peek at the kneading instructions...

I'll put a more complete copy of the zine here as a pdf or something soon... If you'd like to test out the recipe and instructions (and send me your feedback!), especially if you have never baked bread before, I would be happy to send you a copy of the rough draft of the zine: email me!