Thank you Renée...yes I'll miss my friend Anne and the shopping and lunches out we had, but maybe it's also a good idea to have a few months off from those rich dinners and take exercise classes instead to get rid of the tummy that develops every winter LOL. Marigene, yes the drago trees here are "Dracaena Draco" and there are many here on the island. This little one is up at The Monastery Restaurant, not far from our home. As a matter of fact, we planted a double seed drago in our front garden some years ago and now it towers over our heads. Here it is a couple of summers ago: Here is our front garden when all roses are in bloom. In the background you see the bright red-orange flowers of the umbrella-shaped flamboyant tree in the little plaza in front of our house. That blooms usually in June. Our dragos are now just starting to form branches and will end up looking like the one in the first photo. There's one very old drago tree which is said to be around 1000 years old here on Tenerife at a town called Icod de Los Vinos. Here's a link to info from Wikipedia about the Canary Island Drago trees. SharonCb Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia - about Canary Island Drago Trees

Good article, Writersblock! Thank-you for posting it! There wasn't anything in it that I hadn't already been informed of by other articles posted in this forum, but it's very well written and a great overview. One caveat: I've found that vital wheat gluten improves my home milled, whole grain sourdough because there's a delicate interplay between the protein content, starches, and yeasts, that can exhaust the dough before it's fully baked. Either VWG or commercial yeast will continue to be a crutch in my baking, and I'm okay with that. I'm not put off by what pure protein looks like raw, which is made much of in the article. I'm cool with saitan, too (no, I'm not making my own, but it's great grilled in a sandwich with lots of veggies). Of course you can make weird crap out of pure protein. That doesn't prove anything! Like in middle school when the kids all whisper that the hot sauce at Taco Bell is so vicious you can shine pennies with it. It's not. It's just inefficient. There's a lot of vinegar in the hot sauce. Pure vinegar shines pennies even better! Since most of the article is about poking holes in myths, I find this particularly ludicrous. I kept waiting to be told why VWG is bad, other than silly games, and it never came out. What they proved is that you need digestive enzymes to transform protein. Duh.

I don't have a recipe for you, but the key to getting lots of holes in your bread, like a ciabatta, is to keep the dough VERY wet and sticky... Not quite like a batter, but also not something you could easily "knead" (if you were doing it by hand, which I know you're not) because it would be so sticky... Emily

You are lucky to have gotten a good one! I was too cheap and got an Oster which is cruddy...HAHA! I have tried to bake in it so many times and each time, the bread is under cooked. Apparently, it just doesn't bake long enough. So now, I use it to mix and rise it but bake in the oven, I then get a great loaf.