There are several ways for you to join in the fun! First of all, you need a copy of Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. Then just start baking! You may start baking whenever you would like, the only rule is that you begin with the first recipe and start working your way through them in order. There are several ways to communicate with the group as you begin your journey:
Flickr: We have set up a BBA Challenge Flickr Group where you can upload photos, see photos from other members, and even post questions and comments in the group forum. It’s a private group, so you will need to click on the link that says ‘join this group’ if you want to be able to post photos. As long as you are willing to bake bread all of the bread from the book, you are welcome to join the Flickr group!
Twitter: If you use twitter, you can follow what the group is doing by searching for #BBA or #bba using Twitter’s search box. You can join in on the conversation by adding the #bba or #BBA tag to the end of your tweets when you are talking about anything related to the BBA Challenge. For me, following what people are doing on twitter has been the most fun!
Facebook: If you’re on Facebook, you can join the BBA Challenge Group there and share photos, ask questions, and talk about your bread baking experiences with other BBA members on Facebook.
Share on Pinch My Salt: I will be writing about a new bread each week, and I encourage you to leave comments and share your own experiences if you have baked the bread for that week (and you’re always welcome to come back at a later time and share your thoughts if you haven’t baked the bread yet). I also encourage you to leave links to your own blog posts if you have already written about the bread I am discussing. For those of you who aren’t already subscribed to Pinch My Salt updates, you now have the option to subscribe only to BBA Challenge updates. You can subscribe via Email or via RSS.
You can also see a list of my blog posts about the individual BBA Breads. The links to each bread will become live as I complete them.
Although I had to close the original group and I won’t be adding any more names to our BBA blogroll, we hope that you find our group isn’t really closed at all! With all these ways to communicate and share, there’s always room for more bakers in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge!