What’s the coolest thing about Carol Peterman of TableFare being the winner of the Bread Science book giveaway? I’m hoping that for Carol it will be reading and learning from Emily Buehler’s great book (available here, if you’re not Carol). But for me, it was that I had actually met Carol in person only a few hours before I did the random drawing, at the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle.

It was a weekend filled with speakers, food (bread above by Bakery Nouveau), and wine, all of which was lovely. But the thing that stood out the most for me was meeting some terrific people with terrific blogs. Check these out; I can tell you that they are written by winning people:

1 Family. Friendly. Food • 100 Miles • Adventures of a Hungry Girl

Brownies For Dinner • Cooking With Amy • Eating Out Loud

Fork This • Gardeners Like Us • Hedonia

Little Brown Girl 2.0 • Lovely Olio • Passion 4 Eating • Phoo-D

Pinch My Salt • Plumpest Peach • Simply…Gluten Free

Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy • TableFare • The Daily Spud

The Recipe Girl • The Well-Tempered Chocolatier • Wright Eats

The book gods smiled upon me last week and it turns out I have not one but two copies of Bread Baking: An Artisan’s Perspective to hand off to the lucky ladies upon whom the random number gods have smiled:

Caitlin of Engineer Baker and Rebecca of Richmond Hill, Ontario. Congratulations!

The rest of you can order your book here. Read it and learn! The author Dan DiMuzio has kindly offered to answer any questions you may have on reading it, so feel free to shoot me an email and I will send it on to him.

Unless this is your first visit here, you probably know what a big fan I am of the San Francisco Baking Institute, where pros and bread geeks like me go to become better bakers.

Now you can hear my friend Jeremy Shapiro’s interview with Michel Suas, SFBI’s founder and artisan baking luminary, on Jeremy’s blog, Stir the Pots.

Go listen! (And while you’re there, check out Jeremy’s other interviews with bakers, chefs, and other stars of the food world.)

Have questions about how yeast do their thing? Wonder no more. The Rooster in the kitchen of Oh The Joys utterly nails a succinct explanation of these martyred fungi.

(Thanks to Barbara of Candy Hearts and Paper Flowers for sending this my way.)

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: unless you are WAHiker, aka Michael of Snohomish, Washington, you didn’t win the Super Peel. Congratulations to Michael!

But I have two pieces of good news, so the good news wins.

First, it’s not too late to put that excellent Super Peel on your holiday wish list. Come on, you know you want it.

Second, there is plenty of other free and fantastic stuff being given away all over food blog land, and to make it easy for you to find it, I’ve launched a new blog, Compliments of the Kitchen. It’s a list of food blog giveaways in a straightforward, just-the-facts-ma’am format. Take a look and tell me what you think. And if you know about any current giveaways that I’ve missed, please feel free to let me know!

Is it just me, or does gift-giving season always sneak up on you too? Are you stumped for gift ideas for the bread baker in your life, or are your people hounding you for your own wish list? Here are a few off-the-beaten-path items that bakers might not know about or buy for themselves.

I would love it if you would leave your own unusual, beautiful, or fun gift ideas in the comments.

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