My grandmother & mother were fantastic cooks and I learned a lot from watching them and reading a lot of cook books and trial and error. I owned a bakery for a while and honed my skills even more then. I find that a lot of the "old fashioned" recipes that I collected from my grandmother are the best ones still. Simple and fresh ingredients are best. I recently "retired" from my job as a trainer in the utility profession and have gone back to my first love of baking and cooking. I love making up new recipes and "tweaking out" recipes I find to fit my tastes. I can honestly say that I rarely make a recipe exactly according to how it is written! I love baking bread... not from a bread machine but the old fashion way!