About

Hi. My name is LeAndra, and this is my corner of the Internet you happened to stumbled upon.

The irony in this is I distinctly remember a conversation from 2006 where someone I had just met told me he recently started a blog to document his life. “No one wants to read your diary,” I scoffed.

I still feel that way. I have a hard time believing you have any interest in reading about what I ate for lunch. Unless it’s at a quaint corner café in Paris. Then you might have some interest.

My goal here is to create something that I can be okay with putting my name on and that you can derive value from in one way or another, be it a new recipe, a few words that resonate with you, or some photos you like to look at. Here are a few other things you might like to know:

Why did you start a blog?

I imagine boredom had something to do with it. I also wanted to write more, and I figured a blog was a good way to hold me accountable. I chose to blog about food because I liked to bake cookies on the weekend. So yeah, there was not a lot of thought that went into this space at the outset.

How long have you been blogging?

I started Love & Flour on little more than a whim over Memorial Day weekend in 2011.

What’s behind the name?

Naming your idea is tough. I don’t adore the name Love & Flour, but when the person who helped me set this hobby up rattled through available domain names, my brain lit up green when I heard Love & Flour. That had never happened before and it has not happened since, but when it happened that day I said okay and moved on. I’ve thought about changing the name over the years but could never settle on anything. Plus, I like the challenge the name implies – when it comes to matters of love and matters of flour, both can be damn tricky.

Are you a chef?

Uh, no. Not by a long shot. When I first started blogging, I sort of felt like my hobby would offend a chef. Right or wrong, any time you put something up on the internet, a level of expertise is assumed. What business did I have sharing recipes?

I got over my uncertainty once I realized most of you who read this blog are not chefs either. I think it is okay that we meander through some recipes together.

Where do you get your recipes?

For the most part, I cook from cookbooks. The way I look at it, a lot of time and energy goes into testing those recipes to make them right, so why not use them? When you see a recipe that is original to this blog, it is more often than not a process to follow more so than a hard recipe.

Do you have any favorite recipes?

Yes, actually, I do. I keep a list of the recipes I like the most over on my favorite recipes page.

How should I read your recipes?

The folks at King Arthur Flour once wrote a lovely blog post about how we have forgotten how to cook, and I believe it. My great-grandmother’s recipes are little more than a list of ingredients, and at first, I was lost when I tried to bake from them. After a lot of practice in the kitchen, I figured out how to put them together. Cream the butter and sugar first, add the eggs, follow with the dry ingredients, etc.

That said, I try to write recipes as concisely as possible. Rarely will you find me instructing you to preheat the oven. I give you the temperature at which to bake when the dish is ready to go into the oven and assume you have read through the recipe before you began and know to preheat. When a recipe calls for milk, assume it is whole milk unless instructed otherwise. Same goes for butter. When you see butter listed as an ingredient, assume it is unsalted.

I also believe equipment should not be a barrier to baking. Do I think you need to cream butter and sugar with a paddle attachment? No. It’s not necessary to buy a paddle attachment just to try a cake recipe. If you want to bake every day, then yes, perhaps a stand mixer with fancy attachments is a good investment. If I were you, I would spend my budget on quality ingredients first.

What is your favorite food?

Bread. From a piece of rye toast slathered in butter to a chewy bagel sandwiching cream cheese, bread is my hands down favorite food.

So, is bread your favorite thing to bake?

Nope. Cookies are my favorite thing to bake. People will do pretty much anything for you if you bribe them with cookies.

What do you like most about blogging?

The people I get to meet and the friends I have made along the way. I am most proud of working with a few food blogger friends to reestablish the
Charlotte Food Bloggers. If I ever get serious about monetizing this thing, I might say the income is what I like most about blogging, but regardless of my paycheck, I will always love this community.

Do you ever want to quit?

Practically daily. Blogging, even as a hobby, is a lot of work. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not slaving away at a turkey farm. I work in a climate-controlled environment with plenty to eat and drink . However, it’s time consuming.

My goal in continuing to blog is to provide something of value in each post, be it a recipe, or some pretty pictures or some words that make you think.

Can I use your work?

I create everything you see within these pages. Please do not use any photos or text from Love & Flour without running it by me first and linking back to this site with proper attribution. Feel free to reach out to me via email at leandra ‘at’ loveandflour ‘dot’ com.

Updated June 2016