fidzu : blog

Today officially marks 7 years since my first changeset was committed to the WordPress open source project.

Within WordPress, a committer is a contributor who has the ability to modify the main WordPress source repository. Since 2004, roughly 117 people have been given commit access, and 111 have made at least one commit.

In previous years, I linked to posts from other contributors about what it means to be a great participant in open source. Over the past year, though, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what being a great contributor means to me and how decisions are made at scale in open source projects.

This year, instead of pointing to others, I am proud to share an essay of my own. It is a piece I drafted for the Maintaine.rs book, inspired by my talk at WordCamp Europe, where I explored how Core Committers think and how decisions take shape within the WordPress project.

I also started drafting a few other posts on related topics, so stay tuned for those in the coming weeks. I hope to use the quieter days of December to get those over the finish line.

Lucky Number Seven

Each year I try to give this anniversary post a theme. Since seven is considered a lucky number by many people (especially those on the pass line), this year's theme is luck.

I am writing this while on a plane to San Francisco for the 2025 State of the Word. This year took me to two countries I had never visited before. I spoke at several conferences and events, and I had the chance to mentor many contributors in different ways.

I feel incredibly lucky not only to have a job that allows me to help maintain open source software that powers more than 43% percent of the web, but also to have the trust of the community that maintains it right along side me.

Commits by the numbers (2024-2025)

Here are some commit stats from November 30, 2024 through November 29, 2025:

• 365 total commits (up ~42% from the previous year)
• 123 commits to trunk (down ~5%)
• 21 version bumps (up 320%)
• 5 reverts (down ~44%)
• 4 "unprops" (no change)
• 22 tags created (up 2,100%)
• 162 total props given out in my commits (down 42%)
• 66 unique contributors given props in my commits (down ~59%)
• Of those 66 contributors, 8 were receiving props for the first time (down ~70%)

Roughly grouped, here are my commits organized by component (* designates a component that I help maintain):

• Administration: 1
• Build/Test Tools: 175*
• Bundled Themes: 7*
• Coding Standards: 3 (focus, not a component)
• Date/Time: 1
• Database: 1
• Docs: 1 (focus, not a component)
• Editor: 3
• Emoji: 2
• External Libraries: 4*
• General: 4*
• HTML API: 2
• Import: 1
• Media: 2*
• Press This: 1 (retired component
• Security: 83
• Site Health: 1
• Tests: 5 (focus, not a component)
• Toolbar: 1
• Upgrade/Install: 1*

Add it up: All Seven Years

Here are stats for all seven years of being a WordPress Core Committer (November 30, 2018 through today):

• 2,552 total commits
• 1,201 commits to trunk
• 265 version bumps
• 174 version tags created
• 4 branches created
• 58 reverts
• 24 "unprops"
• 11 commits with hidden song lyrics
• 4,846 total props given out in my commits
• 747 unique contributors given props in my commits

I have also now entered into the top 5 list of contributors with the most commits to the code base across all branches:

1. Ryan Boren (9,081)
2. Sergey Biryukov (8,342)
3. Andrew Nacin (5,418)
4. Andrew Ozz (3,366)
5. Me (2,552)

A Few Other Observations

I realized while writing this year's anniversary post that my first commit falls on Blue Beanie Day. I may have to get a WordPress logo blue beanie for next year.

And hat tip to Simon Willison for pointing out that ChatGPT was launched on November 30th, 2022.

As Always: Thank YOU!

Being a WordPress committer would not be nearly as meaningful without the countless contributions from people across the community who choose to support and maintain this free software in so many different ways. So thank you to every single one of you.

Previous Commit-iversaries

• Two
• Three/Four/Five
• Six

Featured image credit: CC0 licensed photo by CCC from the WordPress Photo Directory.

The post Seven Years a Committer: My WordPress Commit-iversary appeared first on Jonathan Desrosiers.

01 Dec 2025 4:51am GMT

It's an interesting cultural moment right now: I think Bryan tweeted, many people are watching people catching balls, while others are watching Bryan Johnson tripping balls. Bryan Johnson, of Blueprint fame, is livestreaming taking a heroic dose of mushrooms. It's been an interesting journey with the journalist Ashlee Vance, Naval Ravikant, David Friedberg, Marc Benioff, Genevieve Jurvetson, and now a DJ set by Grimes. I was hoping he'd be talking/interacting more with the guests, but it's been more of a live commentary. Glad all the work Bryan is doing, as Genevieve said, to broaden the Overton window on this, really re-opening a lot of research originially started by the government and pharmacutical companies 50-60 years ago.

30 Nov 2025 10:32pm GMT

Besoin de financer un projet personnel ? Vous pouvez emprunter jusqu'à 75 000 € selon votre profil et vos revenus ! Faites le bon choix sans risquer le surendettement !

L'article Crédit conso : jusqu'à quel montant peut-on emprunter ? est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

30 Nov 2025 4:39pm GMT

The newest episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, #125, features hosts Birgit Pauli-Haack and JC Palmes discussing a major trio of releases: WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1, and Gutenberg 22.2.

JC highlights several exciting features in WordPress 6.9, focusing on significant developer and editor experience improvements, including the full iframe editor, routing, DataViews, the Interactivity API, pattern logic and content-only mode, and the Abilities system. A personal favorite is the new Accordion Block.

The discussion then moves to the latest Gutenberg releases.

Gutenberg 22.1 introduces the new core/tabs block and brings enhancements like JS/CSS editing for the HTML Block, updates to the Twitter/X embed icon, and various improvements to DataViews and Breadcrumbs.

Gutenberg 22.2 focuses on performance, block editor polish, accessibility, and developer experience. Key updates include expanded functionality for the Breadcrumbs block, support for background video embeds in the Cover block, and new controls for text justification and width in the Block Editor. It also refines the block-locking functionality with changes to pattern management, such as replacing the 'Ungroup' option with 'Add edit section' for specific blocks.

Tune in to get the full rundown on how these releases will shape the future of site building in WordPress.

Show Notes / Transcript

• Editor: Sandy Reed
• Logo: Mark Uraine
• Production: Birgit Pauli-Haack

Show Notes

JC Palmes, WebDev Studios

• X
• GitHub
• WordPress
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

• Website
• A Developer's Guide: The Future of the WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor
• WDS-BT on GitHub
• Previous Appearances
  • Gutenberg Changelog #108 - Gutenberg 19.3, WordPress 6.7 - Block Themes for Agencies, WordCamp Asia
  • Gutenberg Changelog 116 - WordPress 6.8, Source of Truth, Field Guide, Gutenberg 20.5 and 20.6

Announcements

Gutenberg Changelog podcast now also available on YouTube

WordPress 6.9

State of the Word Dec 2, 2025, at 20:00 UTC

Release Candidate 3

Source of Truth is out.

Field Guide

WordPress Importer can now migrate URLs in your content

Gutenberg-Releases

• What's new in Gutenberg 22.1? (18 November, 2025)
• Gutenberg 22.2 RC 1

Stay in Touch

Transcript

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Welcome to our 125th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today's episode we will talk about WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1 and Gutenberg 22.2 releases or versions. I'm your host Birgit Pauli-Haack, Curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. It's a special delight to have JC Palmes with me on the show today. JC is the principal Technical Manager at WebDev Studios. Welcome back to the show, JC. How are you today?

JC Palmes: I'm doing good, Birgit. I am very busy but still alive. So that's a win.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I can imagine.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Happy to be here and talk with President Gutenberg again.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Super. Yeah. Great to see you have your perspective on all the things. I just want to point out that on WebDev Studios they have just posted a developer's guide to the future of WordPress with Gutenberg block editor, and in a in a short summary it's why they switched or why WebDev Studios is so involved in React applications and in block themes and in the block development because it has a lot of advantages, and so there is the code shift to reactive components. I think one of the advantages that I see is that actually WordPress is giving so many components that as a plugin developer or agency developer you don't have to make those decisions on the UI anymore. You can just follow along with the ideas. Is that accurate when I say that?

JC Palmes: Yeah. So that article I really like that a lot. It reflects what we see on most of our enterprise scale projects where blocks function like React components and they function like react components now. And theme JSON is basically the design system contract. So performance improves massively when you just when you move away from the old page builder stack for multisites and you know, big editorial teams, this kind of structure is really the only way things stay sane long term. So yeah, that piece captured that direction really well and it's just the performance alone is just massive.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: Massive performance improvements.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I think we talked about it the last time you were on the show when you already created the starter theme that's based on block theme for the organization. So that's what you start out with. And I will share the link to.

JC Palmes: The GitHub repo wsbt. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yes in the show notes and I think that also encapsulated all the good ideas around it. Have you developed a little bit more on that? What other features kind of went in.

JC Palmes: Not recently but it's in my list of to do's. It's just I've been very busy with projects and stuff, so I will need to. Because there are some fixes that moved into Core but we had to do very custom fixes and some of those are already in Core. So we will have to remove those and make sure that it's aligned with the new version of WordPress and of course fully tested.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, I can see that there are always a few things that are not working in WordPress or you have to build a workaround. You know it's coming but you need something now. You need to build a workaround and then when it comes into Core that they say, oh, okay, that custom code goes away and in comes Core. But it still needs to be backwards compatible also for your clients. So. But I think that's a pretty good trade off to actually then have WordPress keep updating the part of the code. Yeah.

JC Palmes: And the way that WordPress is kind of moving towards a future proof version, it's easier to add in fixes now and take it out when Core takes over. I haven't had any sites break currently. That's using our base theme.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That's awesome.

JC Palmes: Even with the core updates.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. It's all pretty much isolated and you don't have to worry so much about things. Yeah. Awesome. So, yeah, we will share the article about the developer's guide on the future of WordPress and Gutenberg block Editor in the show notes. We will also share the starter theme that WebDev Studios has, and I don't think we talked about it here on the show or maybe with somebody else. That's the theme switcher plugin that came out from WebDev Studio, which is a way to have different themes, multiple themes.

JC Palmes: Yep. In one site. It's a really robust plugin and I think a lot of enterprise level companies are going to like it just because they can test, you know, if they're not ready for Gutenberg blocks and they're still on the old WordPress computing system, if they want to try this out, then they can have a full site theme and together with their old theme and change it out one page at a time.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah, that's what I understood. That you can have a gradual migration over to the new system to a block theme and see how your content performs and how your content creators actually work with it before you make the switch for the whole site. I think that's pretty smart to do, especially when you have thousands and thousands of posts and more than two editors kind of.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It's really helpful to have a gradual shift because we all don't like change, sudden changes. You know, we like to be in the. Okay. I need to get accustomed to things.

JC Palmes: This thing, that theme switcher is kind of, it's allowing these people to test the waters first before diving right in.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And you can make the blue block theme that is kind of added to the. The other theme kind of look almost identical like the other one. So you have the shell and then can see how the. The rest of it works. Yeah, it's pretty nifty. Yeah. So that I will share also with our listeners on the show notes. And I'm glad you're all doing such a great job in advocating for the block editor and share all your wins with the community.

Announcements

All right, so I have a few announcements, dear listeners.

So the Gutenberg Changelog is now also available as a podcast on YouTube. Last week I uploaded all episodes. Well, I didn't upload one at a time. So YouTube has this feature where you can point it to an RSS feed and then it gradually kind of uploads them itself on its own. And because Google abandoned their podcast space maybe two years ago and only now I have migrated it, but it was fairly easy to do and the only change I had to make was to allow the RSS feed to actually have all the episodes in there so YouTube could grab them. But I also needed to do that anyway because I also switched over from the seriously simple podcast player on our episodes to the Pocket Cast player. So Pocket Cast also needs all our episodes so we can have the slug or the short link for the embed code in there so that you will see also on the website.

And I also wanted to say hi and welcome to all the new subscribers. We had a lot more listeners in the last month and I would really. Yeah, it's awesome. I'm so happy that after a period of two years stagnating, kind of always have the same amount of listens and downloads, and now all of a sudden it's really great to connect with you, dear listeners. And if you want, leave a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, we will read it aloud here and I also want to connect with you and learn about your ideas or what topics you would like us to cover more. So you can also send this all to the email address. The official email address for the podcast is changelogatgutenbergtimes.com so now enough about me. Let's talk about my book. No, I don't, I don't do a book.

JC Palmes: I would read your book.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I, I sometimes. Well, I almost did a book. Yeah. For WordPress 6.9. But we will talk about that.

WordPress 6.9 Release

So WordPress 6.9 is coming. We are a few days away, like five days or something away from the WordPress 6.9 release. It's out as release candidate three. We are recording this on November 28th and the release is scheduled for December 2nd. So today is Friday. For Tuesday, that's also the date when State of the World will happen out of San Francisco live streamed and probably with a few demos from WordPress 6.9. Also with the Outlook for 2026, but for our listeners, the field guide is out. It came a little later than for other releases, but on the Gutenberg Times I also published the WordPress 6.9 source of truth, which has a whole lot of details about what changed on the block editor for end users and also for theme developers, what they can style and all that. So if you want to read it, it's 22 to 33 minutes to read through it and it has 5,000 words, over 5,000 words. So that's half that. It's not a book, but it's a book. It's almost a book.

JC Palmes: It's a lot of words.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That's a lot of words. But also screenshots and videos so you can really learn a little bit more about what's in the editor. And I also have a ton of links about the developer-related updates. So JC, what are your favorite or exciting updates coming to WordPress 6.9?

JC Palmes: Well, my first, my top one would probably be the terms query improvement. I thought that was still on Gutenberg 22.2. It's now on 6.9. I mean it's a big deal for me because I've built custom versions of this so many times because you know, the current query block, they're not strong enough for what we need. So with that coming into Core, that's kind of big.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: The term query block, it almost works like the query block, but not with posts, but with description tags. Yeah, with the terms and also so you can have the title, you can have the count and you can also. The term description was already available as a block, but now you can also put it in a dynamic page where you can list all the good categories and things that you need. Yeah, and it's good for filtering I would think, for the huge sites and it also sites.

JC Palmes: Yes.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: But else the accordion block. I've built so many versions of the accordion block as well. So having that in core just means lesser custom blocks. And you know, it's. It's going to be consistent markup because it's core and I'm pretty sure better accessibility and styling, so there's no surprises.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I think the accordion block really lives from how you're going to style it. So the style variations are much easier to create than custom blocks. On the developer blog, Justin Tadlock actually did a tutorial on how to style the accordion block, and he also has a snippet on how to add the schema for FAQs to the accordion block. So I will share that in the links in the show notes. He explains how to do the theme JSON styling, also the style sheet, as well as what's still missing, how you do it in CSS and also how you can do it in a plugin or in a pattern rather. And so it's a really good tutorial for someone who kind of starts out and hasn't done so many accordion blocks like you did. Yeah. What else are you going to be?

JC Palmes: So another big one for me is I know it's not yet in core, it's in the plugin still, but the preparation is already in core. It's the full iframe preparation for the integration in the post editor.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Why is that important for you?

JC Palmes: Because it's going to mean cleaner isolation, fewer CSS leaks, less theme and admin bleed. Bleed through with styles. Because we've been battling that. Yeah. So we've had quite a bit of issues with admin CSS sneaking into custom blocks and vice versa. So this direction makes me very happy.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, good, good. I'm glad. The contributors will be happy to hear that, especially Aki and Ria and Ella, who kind of have been working on that for so long. And thank you. I let him know.

JC Palmes: One other thing, I'm not sure. Did the tiny MCE thing make it into core or will make it into Core?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: No, not yet.

JC Palmes: Oh, not yet.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I think that it's not automatically loaded. That part. Yeah, I think that's slated for 7.0.

JC Palmes: Okay, I'll wait for 7.0. I'll be very happy. Well, I'm happy now that there's ongoing work because in one of my projects, again, I've been fighting with a lot. I've been fighting with tiny MC issues for months, especially when you have more than 10 classic blocks and ACF with tiny MC on top. Everything just starts lagging or breaking in very strange ways. So please make it happen.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So what else is there are any APIs that are coming to 6.9 that you are excited about?

JC Palmes: API. Yeah. Abilities API. That one is interesting. Is that in moving Core? Yeah, it's moving core. Yeah. I know. It's still kind of experimental. Oh damn. Yeah, I'm sorry. Really excited.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Good.

JC Palmes: Yeah. So what I like about this because it's now in a kind of unified declarative model with permissions. So plugins are no longer as scatterbrained with capabilities, capability checks everywhere. So this is going to be a cleaner way to define what a user role can do. That's more of what I need it for. It's one feature that I'll probably be playing with a lot more. Data views and routing. Those two.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah. Data views are on NPM. So if you as a plugin developer or agency developer want to use it, they can be included into your REACT apps. And there's not only the data views but also the data forms where you get validation with it and then you can do your modals. For data entry. It is a whole new design system for the admin and for admin pages. It will not be kind of a switch over right away. Yeah. So from. From the site editor to the whole thing like the command palette. It definitely needs a lot of testing and quite a few plugins. For instance, Jetpack uses it. Some screens at WooCommerce use it now and then. I also know that other plugins are actually working with it to use the data view's components and design for their plugins.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Because if this becomes a standard for building admin UIs, we can finally stop reinventing these tables every year and you.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Don't have to maintain the bulk of the code. So it's only the business logic pretty much. And to maintain for you. Anything else that you want to talk about?

JC Palmes: Performance improvements are off the charts. On smarter script and style loading, they're now going to load automatically in the footer. Right?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: And then there's the fetch FOID that I only learned about earlier today. It's kind of interesting. And yeah, the reducement of the layout shift for videos. Oh, caching is now better cache support, especially for multi sites. The multi site cache is going to be. Can be cleared out for the whole site, not just for per site. Right. Yeah, I think that's going to be huge. Yeah. We've Been having quite a bit of multi site projects lately, so that's going to be. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So do you see any applications or adoption of the Notes feature, the content top level commenting?

JC Palmes: Well, for content editors that would be a help, I guess. I haven't really paid a lot of attention to that part. I paid more attention to the developer parts and more of the UI. Yeah, that. I'm not sure if I'll use it, but probably. Well, I don't really take notes, so.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right, good, good. So I think that's all we're going to talk about WordPress 6.9. I talked with Ella about it and I also talked with Sarah about it and with Beth Soderberg. So the last four episodes we have talked about quite a bit about 6.9. So now that it's here, it's really kind of. We're going to be shifting what's coming to 7.0, but not in this episode except for what's in Gutenberg plugins.

Before we head into what's released, I wanted to point out to our listeners that the WordPress importer has received a major upgrade and that came out of the Playground team. The Playground has this blueprint steps called Import WXR, which actually uses the export of a site that is done exporting with the WordPress importer. But the problem was when you import it to Playground, all the links would break and so the team added a URL replacer to the importer plugin and it not only is a very smart replacer, it does not only replace the page links, but also the URLs or the links that are in navigation blocks that are in background image CSS. And so it's, it's actually really helping. You don't need any other plugin to actually import an export from a website. Yeah. So you can put it into Playground and then have a fully functioning site without having trouble. And if the images are still on the original site, it kind of grabs them and puts them in as well like the normal importer does. But it also replaces the URLs to the image. So it's really a major shift on the WordPress importer. I think I abandoned using the importer about four or five years ago for other plugins when I was moving sites. But this seems to be a much smaller way now because it also streams that. So it's really fast on the importing part.

JC Palmes: I'll have to check that and test it out.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, it's released now in 0.9.5, and I'll share the link in the show Notes to the PR that implemented that URL report. There's actually a better way. Adam Chylinski, the brilliant programmer of Playground, has actually a post on the Core blog where he kind of lays out how he did it.

What's Released - Gutenberg 22.1

All right, now we come to the Gutenberg 22.1 release. Do you want to lead us into what's new and what we're going to talk about? We start out with a new block. It's the core tabs.

JC Palmes: Oh, the core tabs. Yep.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Have you been waiting for that too?

JC Palmes: Hey, yeah, yeah. We do have quite a bit of custom blocks as well that are tabs usually for education sites where they have multiple content that they need to add into tabs. We've used the navigation block before to kind of hack it up and use it as a tabs block and sometimes just very custom tabs block. But this is going to be way better because it's now native and core.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right, okay. Yeah, I have seen a lot of tabs on some websites, but I personally. But I also don't build a whole lot of websites with a lot of content. So I was wondering both for the accordion or the tabs block, but I can see that it's actually a good use case for vertical navigation where you can then just have use it on the left hand side and then you click on it and opens content on the right hand side and it makes it so much faster because it doesn't need a reload. It's already on the website.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So yeah, that's pretty cool. So what else?

Enhancements

There are enhancements to the design system for the admin stuff and also the static and lazy routing for the data views. But that's all very, very developer-oriented. Okay. So the block library, with this release there comes image prefetching for clicks to expand the images. So if you. If a user or a visitor actually hovers over your gallery or your images and so there is an indication, oh, maybe they want to click on it and so it kind of prefetches the image. So after the click the loading is almost instantaneous. It's actually somebody called it cheating, but it's not. It's kind of anticipating what a visitor wants to do and be helpful. Yeah. The next one is Breadcrumbs. So Breadcrumbs is still in an experimental new block. The same with the tabs block. You have to enable the experiments in the Gutenberg plugin and it now can handle homepage and show the last item attribute and add 404 search and other archive pages to the breadcrumbs if they are in the context of that particular page where it's loaded.

JC Palmes: Yeah, well, I've built a lot of breadcrumbs as well, so this is going to be great once it's. It lands in Core.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, I know. I have used Justin Tadlock's breadcrumbs block quite a bit and he has also been part of the team who's kind of looking at how that's working and if it's good ready for Core and all that. So yeah, I really like it. Especially if you're large sites like any other, you need breadcrumbs to guide your visitors back to safety, so to speak. If they get too deep into the site they want to. How they get back to it. Yeah, the next block I'm really excited about. Well, the HTML custom block is already in Core, but what they did now was they added JavaScript and CSS editing to the block. So you can actually.

JC Palmes: That is nice. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Build your own little app in one block kind of thing. So, yeah, it's pretty cool.

JC Palmes: That's going to get a lot of use for me just for playing around.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Well, you can do some great prototypes with that and then get the code in the right places. But yeah, it's really cool. For those who are looking for a Twitter embed, it will be replaced by the X embed icon in text. I think after three years it's probably time. Yeah.

JC Palmes: Once this hits Core, I'll have to remove the function that we've added for that particular feature.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Do you want to take the next one?

JC Palmes: It's collaboration of the notes that I don't use, but. Right, right, definitely interesting. And I see it being used for collaboration for those use notes, but not for me.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: With this release that comes. I need to put it this way. So normally you want to disable things also when there are new features, there are always some people who need it also to be disabled, but it's also some. You don't want the notes to show up in distraction free mode or in the code editor. So this release in the Gutenberg 22.1, for those two things, notes are disabled. There's also keyboard shortcuts and support for tree navigation and form submission shortcuts and all that. But those are the two outstanding changes to the notes that won't be in 6.9. Well, let me verify that. No, it was backported both of them were backported to the release candidate. So it's in 6.9.

JC Palmes: Maybe I'll check it out.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, absolutely do. Yeah, you want to know what your customers are doing with it. And there's also a def. Go ahead.

JC Palmes: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I'm just going to say that it's good that they also added in a. An ability to disable it.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And there is a dev note by Adam Silverstein, who was one of the instrumental developers there. There were also contributors from Asia there. And so there was a whole team building on that. The team was from the company Multidots and they have been working on it for probably a year. And the developer note by Adam Silverstein is really very specific on how it was implemented. If there are new filters and hooks to figure out more about the dev notes, if you need additional features and how it all kind of came together, what's the basis of it. And so it's a really interesting note. If you are a developer and working with WordPress. The next thing is the text area control. I like that you now can add to the text area in. But that's for the data forms, I think. Yeah, no, it's in. Yeah, it's in the components actually. So it can be in the editor as well. If you have a text area that you now can add a minimum height to it. So it can also grow from there. Yeah. Do you want to do the next bolded one?

JC Palmes: Yeah. Okay. So the color picker also got a really nice upgrade. You can now paste an entire color value directly into it and it's in any format. Right. So Hex, RGB, HSL. Can it do named colors? It can, right?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: No, I don't think so.

JC Palmes: Oh, that would be awesome.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That would be awesome.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, we need to try it out. Yeah. To do. If you can do lime. Lime yellow.

JC Palmes: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what's great is that, you know, you don't have to click into a specific input, just paste it. Enter inside the picker. Yeah, I had to sometimes because when you do colors, right. For websites and you have not added a specific color to the color picker for the theme, I have this browser extension where I just hover on the color and get the value and then the color picker would not. I do not like the value that I input into it. So having the ability to add the entire color value directly is going to save me a lot of time and doing that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And also it avoids typos. Yeah, but. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll look up colors all the time. Yeah. And then want to just hover the hex value and then post it in. But yeah, you have to. It's good.

So the term name, the extensibility on the term name, I'm not sure it's really extensibility, but it adds the level options for the heading levels and I think that was in 6.6 where that actually made around because the extensibility is that you can control the levels that a heading can have. So normally when you use a heading heading block it starts with H2 and you always need to use the drop down to change it to H3. Yeah. And with the level options you can actually control that through theme JSON. Or to only do term level being H3 all the time. Yes. Without having to change it every time you use the heading level.

JC Palmes: A very nice improvement for content only patterns is normally when you're editing a content only pattern, a lot of the design controls are hidden because you know, the structure is locked. So. And that's the whole point. One of the annoying parts of it is trying to tweak colors.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So you can do it now.

JC Palmes: So. Yep, you can do it now. That's going to be a huge experience for. Well, for content writers.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: Really.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And you don't have to enable it. Yeah. With custom code either.

JC Palmes: Anyone is able. Yeah, exactly.

Bug Fixes

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So we come now to the bug fixes and there are a ton of bug fixes. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, there are also a ton of them that were backported to WordPress 6.9. And for the accordion block, it adds CSS for the default styles. It also has some font style inheritance for button and inner text blocks. I think that that's a little bit of a red flag. No, not red flag, but it was a little bit. The benefit from the accordion block in core was that it didn't have any opinion on style. But the problem was that if you use the accordion block in a classic theme, then it wouldn't have any styling unless you put it in a classic theme. So there was one idea was to just put some default styling in, but they were so restrictive that they can't be overwritten by theme JSON values for another theme. So that kind of was a little bit of a problem. I'm not quite sure how they solved it or if they've solved it before the next version comes out, before the 6.9 comes out, but that's kind of part of it. And the inner blocks of buttons or text blocks, they inherit the style of the above accordion block. So it's kind of that.

JC Palmes: Okay, so right now. Well, prior to this fix, it's not inheriting the font style from the heading or the other way around.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, it was the font styles for the. The font style from button, accordion header, toggle. That's the whole heading. It didn't go to the next header, I think. Yeah. And it's a typography appearance. Yeah, it's fixed. Yeah. Okay.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Embeds, there's beds to go and shrink. That's going to be helpful.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So the embed blocks, they were pretty restrictive in their styling. And now when they're inside a flex group block, they can grow and shrink with the size of the group block.

JC Palmes: Together with the group block.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. That is really cool.

JC Palmes: Because less CSS.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, less CSS and also increased responsiveness. Right. If the group graph gets smaller, then also the embed gets smaller and it doesn't bleed into the template.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Does it keep the aspect ratio? I hope it does.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, I think that's something to be tested and kind of figured out. Yeah, I haven't tried it yet.

JC Palmes: Yeah, me too.

With one of the things that I kind of really hate about. Not hate. Hate is such a strong word. I don't like about the embed block is you know when you have a video and then you shrink it and it's not shrinking and it. If it does shrink, it loses the aspect ratio.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So the next thing is more like CSS specificity for the text alignment classes. And also I think that corrects something that was done before that the text alignment and paragraph would go away. And now it kind of. Now it comes back and with a better robust CSS styling. And then for the heading block, the background padding was pretty strong out of the box. Yeah. And now they kind of are more specific to the block. So also more styling freedom for the theme developers. Right.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Those quality of life improvements.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think there was a question from Twenty Twenty-Two.1. Yeah. The routing part is still all for the data use is still all in experiments. So you need to enable those. If you want to play around with that, if you want to test it, it's playing around seems so unserious. Yeah. But if you really want to test it, if you can use it already. So, yeah, that was it.

Gutenberg 22.2

And we come to Gutenberg 22.2. We are talking through the changelog of the release candidate 22.2 will come out on December 3rd, so one day after 6.9, but it's normally that the release candidate is pretty solid in what's coming in into the final release, just for testing purposes that they actually do a release candidate one. So this one is big. It has 161 pull requests from 49 contributors, 4 of which are first timers. Congratulations to your first contribution. And the release focuses more on performance and block editor polish and has a series of accessibility developer experience improvements. But it's intended to test ahead with that.

Enhancements

There were some enhancements again through the breadcrumbs block. It's kind of really fantastic how that is going to grow and be feature rich when it will come to WordPress 7.0, but you definitely try it out. It now has an archive link if there's enabled in post and can do attachment handling and post type archive links and support a pagination as well. So it's kind of really cool. What else is in there?

JC Palmes: The cover now supports background videos from embeds and yeah, that's a major upgrade for the cover block because until now background videos only work if you uploaded a file directly to the media library. And now with this new update you can use embedded videos like YouTube, Vimeo and other or supported embed sources.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yes. That's huge. Pretty much, yeah.

JC Palmes: Yeah, that's huge. It used to be a custom block for us and having the ability to do this when it lands on core is going to be really huge.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Here goes the custom block again out.

JC Palmes: Exactly.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: And I'm absolutely happy to remove custom blocks and move into native core blocks when it's there because it just did the improvement and the quality and the markup just consistent and it's really nice when you know, things work together.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And especially the custom block you don't want to have. Not every shared hosting has. You can upload videos well or if they're uploaded, they're rather pedestrian I would say, because they need to be downloaded and so if you use an embedded one. So the YouTube or the Vimeos of the space are actually hosting your video and it. It doesn't take all the bandwidth and all that. So it's a really cool quality of life enhancement as well. For those who don't have so much oomph on the hosting. Yeah, yeah.

JC Palmes: I mean this should have existed years ago. Then again.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, there are a lot of things that should have been fixed a year or two ago. Yeah. There's also a new enhancement for the math block so you could style of course the text of it, but not the full block around it. And that has now style options as well. So you can change the background and the dimension and the border and the red border radius. It's all available now for the math outside the math block. It's not coming to 6.9. That's for the future release, but it's test it out and see how it comes to pass. And the next one you would like, you'd like that.

JC Palmes: Yeah, I like this. A lot less CSS and markup for me. So that button block got a big improvement. And theme builders, you know, theme builders like me, every one of us have been asking for forever because we can now style pseudo states like hover focus active focus invisible directly in theme JSON for the button block and its variations. Because before this, the only reliable way to style hover or focus styles states, I mean, was to either drop in custom CSS into theme JSON or in a custom CSS file. Yeah, style sheet. That kind of great idea of keeping design controls inside theme JSON as much as possible. I would want to keep design controls inside theme JSON. But with this improvement, we can now design these states that the same way that redefine normal button styles and variations. The outline button can now have hover states too.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next two items are about the data views. There are a lot more in the data views section of the changelog, but there are two things. One is because it points out that you now can insert certain information into the table. So the table column header allows you now to add columns left or right of your location that goes into that. The data view screens are much more customizable out of the box than any admin page in the current WordPress admin would do. But I really like that part where you can say where the columns go and all that. So you have a real more control over it as a user or as a site owner.

JC Palmes: Yeah. I also like the new layout option, the activity layout, because that's basically a timeline view. Right. It's similar to the list layout but with styling and behavior tuned for things like say revisions logs, events, audits, anything chronological. Exactly. You get a vertical timeline track on the left, almost smaller media inline primary actions, and really a clearer focus on the event field that anchors each entry is disabled though. But I guess it's kind of like a timeline view, so it really shouldn't jump around. And that. That makes sense that the cool part, I think it's that it's not just visual. The layout has its own interaction rules. Only the title is clickable. The whole row ssn't. And the keyboard navigation is handled differently because the UI behaves differently than a list or a table. It's a timeline. Yeah, it's, it's. I think it's one of those layouts where once you see it, you realize that WordPress has needed it for years, a long time.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's definitely for historical data that you would want to have in some kind of a layout. Yeah. So cool. Thank you for pointing that out. We're coming now to the pattern section and the PR says add edit section to the list view instead of ungroup. So there is. I think it's still an experiment, I'm not quite sure. But the pattern padding management kind of changes a little bit. If you have a section that is. And we come to add what is a section block in the list view, those section blocks are now available to be edited and not that you have to unravel the pattern if you want to edit it. So that's pretty cool. So what are section blocks? And I asked some developers who had been working on it about it and I asked and looked at the documentation and then the section is determined by the section block selector. Well, that is kind of if the. What is the is section block selector. Yeah. So it's a pattern, a template part or a block that has a template lock on it that says content only. And so it moves around and can be edited, not edited, but styled in its whole. The content creator doesn't have a whole lot of controls about it. It's a special block that acts actually as a container with specific editing restrictions, primarily used in template and site editing context. So. So that was a new terminology for me to think about.

JC Palmes: It's new to me too, but with the way that you've explained sections, I've only really called it lock patterns.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, okay. Yeah. Locked from. You can edit.

JC Palmes: Yeah, you can edit the content, but not the. The way it looks. Yeah, the design. Yeah. The structure.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And there's a whole lot of effort around that content only lock to kind of bleed into other places, be it in pattern, be it in the editor. How can you switch from one to the next? You need to point out that those are actually content only locked ones. So we will see a lot more about that in the coming months for this particular content only modals. You know, so I'm kind of. This is pretty much a preparation for that in terms of what particular PRs will come about that?

JC Palmes: Yeah. I mean it's, it's more of a guardrail when you don't want styled structured patterns to just explode because it gives the option to ungroup it and then clients come back and say that it's not working. So this is good. It's more predictable behavior for a section.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Client section now cloning a section now that's one thing. It also has a, certain pattern endpoint so you could do pattern wide changes to things. We saw it with 6.7 in the zoom view. When you were going through the Twenty Twenty-Five theme and go into Zoom view, you were able to add a pattern but then change the color of it because it would loop through the various color variations of your style variation. That totally. Yeah. I was totally amazed by that. To get new colors in there and you don't have to worry about things. But that's kind of the idea about it.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So. And then there were really, really small changes to the block editor. It now has a card icon.

JC Palmes: Thank you.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It also supports the width and the dimensions. So you can control that for padding. Yeah. And also the text also has a justify attribute now or control. So those are really quality of life things. And they were. Yes, until you use them you don't know you. You miss those things. But. Yeah, but that is how you use them.

JC Palmes: By editing a few thousand pages.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Yeah.

JC Palmes: Thank you.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And I think that was everything that came. Well, we want to talk about Twenty Twenty-Two.2. Is there anything else that you found?

JC Palmes: I think we've talked about the ones that I really find interesting for the other functions, new stuff. They can read the build guide. But those that we've talked about are really the ones that jump out to me and I find really interesting or very helpful for my workflow.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, wonderful. Excellent. I'm glad that we got that.

So before we end the show, I want to point out that there's a state of the world coming next week with the keynote. That's the annual keynote of Matt Mullenweg and it coincides for the first time with a major release of WordPress, the 6.9 release. And it will be live-streamed from San Francisco. I think the tickets for the in-person meeting have already been sold out for a while. But you can follow along on the live stream on YouTube. It starts at 20 or 8pm UTC. So it might be for our AAPAC contributors and WordPress users, it's a little late in the day. It's also almost past my bedtime in Europe because San Francisco is nine hours away from me. Yeah. So there's this time zones quagmire that we always have to deal with. But if you see it on Tuesday or on Wednesday, I don't think it changes in between. And there's nothing really urgent in there. So take the time and call it on the rerun.

JC Palmes: Yeah, I'll probably watch it live because I'm in that time zone.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, you're in that time zone. Yeah. Yeah.

As always, our show notes will be published on GutenbergTimes.com podcast this is episode 125 - 125, and if you have questions, suggestions or news or comments. Yeah. If you want us to include them, send them to changelogatgutenburgtimes.com that's changelogatgutenburgtimes.com, and I say huge thank you to JC Palmes to come on the show and talk through those two releases with me and share what you are looking forward to for 6.9 and also share all the good work that is from WebDev studios that can help other agencies to also streamline their processes.

Thank you so much, JC, I hope you have a wonderful day or night and all the listeners. Thank you for listening.

Bye bye.

30 Nov 2025 9:19am GMT

See the next edition of Crafted in Mexico, Google Arts & Culture's showcase of Mexico's creative landscape.

28 Nov 2025 4:00pm GMT

Avoir une bonne image d'entreprise en ligne, c'est extrêmement important et, pour ça, il faut avoir de bons avis clients. On vous explique.

L'article Réputation en ligne : comment les avis clients façonnent l'image des entreprises est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

27 Nov 2025 11:08am GMT

Three new AI-powered experiments from Google give you new and creative ways to learn about topics across art, science and travel

27 Nov 2025 10:00am GMT

Google and Tel Aviv University (TAU) have a history of substantial partnership. Formalized in 2020, the Google-TAU partnership has since led to successful collaborations…

27 Nov 2025 8:00am GMT

Découvrez notre top 33 des jeux de société famille pour Noël 2025 : rires, stratégie et fun pour petits et grands autour de la table !

L'article Notre sélection des 33 meilleurs jeux de société pour toute la famille est apparu en premier sur 20SIX.fr.

26 Nov 2025 12:27pm GMT

Acheter des originaux sur le site LesDessinateurs.com Vous pouvez me suivre sur Instagram, Bluesky ou Facebook.

02 Jan 2024 10:41am GMT

Dans le journal L'Equipe du dimanche et du lundi, vous pouviez trouver un de mes dessins en dernière page. Voici un petit échantillon des dessins réalisés en 2023 pour le quotidien sportif. Acheter des originaux sur le site LesDessinateurs.com Vous pouvez me suivre sur Instagram, Bluesky ou Facebook. Acheter des originaux sur le site LesDessinateurs.com Vous …

Continuer la lecture de « Une année de sport »

01 Jan 2024 9:11am GMT

Acheter des originaux sur le site LesDessinateurs.com Vous pouvez me suivre sur Instagram, Bluesky ou Facebook.

30 Dec 2023 1:06pm GMT

Much as I love pasta, I'm not sure it loves me. Last year my carb-heavy comfort food diet led to some weight gain so I looked into low carb pasta as an alternative. There's a lot out there and I'm still trying different brands and styles, but I thought now would be a good time to share what I've learned so far.

Pasta with Butternut Squash and Brussels Sprouts

My introduction to legume and bean-based pasta was thanks to Barilla. I was lucky because I got to attend a webinar with Barilla's incredible chef, Lorenzo Boni. I tried his recipe for pasta with butternut squash and Brussels sprouts which I definitely recommend and have now made several times. If you've seen his wildly popular (150k+ followers!) Instagram feed you know he's a master at making all kinds of pasta dishes and that he often eats plant-based meals. I followed up with him to get some tips on cooking with pasta made from beans and legumes.

Pasta made with beans and legumes is higher in protein and so the recommended 2-ounce portion is surprisingly filling. But the texture isn't always the same as traditional semolina or durum wheat pasta. Chef Boni told me, "The nature of legume pasta makes it soak up more moisture than traditional semolina pasta, so you always want to reserve a bit of cooking water to adjust if needed." But when it comes to cooking, he says that with Barilla legume pasta you cook it the same way as semolina pasta. "Boil in salted water for the duration noted on the box and you'll have perfectly al dente pasta." They are all gluten-free.

Chickpea pasta

When I asked Chef Boni about pairing chickpea pastas with sauce he said, "Generally speaking, I prefer olive oil based sauces rich with vegetables, aromatic herbs and spices. Seafood also pairs well with chickpea options. If used with creamy or tomato-based sauces, keep in mind to always have some pasta water handy to adjust the dish in case it gets too dry." He added, "One of my favorite ways to prepare a legume pasta dish would be a simple chickpea rotini with shrimp, diced zucchini and fresh basil. The sauce is light enough to highlight the flavor of the pasta itself, while the natural sweetness helps keep the overall flavor profile more appealing to everyone." I like the Barilla brand because the only ingredient is chickpeas. Banza makes a popular line of chickpea pasta as well although they include pea starch, tapioca and xanthan gum.

Edamame pasta

I tried two different brands of edamame pasta, Seapoint Farms and Explore Cuisine. The Seapoint pasta has a rougher texture than the Explore. With the Seapoint I found the best pairings were earthy chunky toppings like toasted walnuts and sautéed mushrooms. The Explore Cuisine edamame & spirulina pasta is smoother and more delicate, and worked well with an Asian style peanut sauce. I was happy with the Seapoint brand, but would definitely choose the Explore brand instead if it's available.

Red lentil pasta

Red lentil pasta is most similar to semolina pasta. Barilla makes red lentil pasta in a variety of shapes. But for spaghetti, Chef Boni says, "Barilla red lentil spaghetti is pretty flexible and works well with pretty much everything. I love red lentil spaghetti with light olive oil based sauces with aromatic herbs and some small diced vegetables. It also works well with a lean meat protein." I have to admit, I have yet to try red lentil pasta, but I'm excited to try it after hearing how similar it is to semolina pasta. It is made only with red lentil flour, that's it. It's available in spaghetti, penne and rotini.

Penne for Your Thoughts

Do you remember seeing photos from Italian supermarkets where the shelves with pasta were barren except for penne? I too seem to end up with boxes of penne or rotini and not a clue what to do with them so I asked Chef Boni his thoughts on the subject. He told me, "Shortcuts such as rotini and penne pair very well with all kind of ragouts as well as tomato based and chunky vegetarian sauces. One of my favorite ways to prepare a legume pasta dish would be a simple chickpea rotini with shrimp, diced zucchini and fresh basil. The sauce is light enough to highlight the flavor of the pasta itself, while the natural sweetness helps keep the overall flavor profile more appealing to everyone." Thanks chef! When zucchini is in season I know what I will try!

15 Feb 2022 6:46pm GMT

Julia is a new film based on Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz and inspired by My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme and The French Chef in America: Julia Child's Second Act by Alex Prud'homme. Julia Child died in 2004, and yet our appetite for all things Julia hasn't waned.

I grew up watching Julia Child on TV and learning to cook the French classics from her books, And while I never trained to be a chef, like Child I also transitioned into a career focused on food, a subject I have always found endlessly fascinating. I enjoyed the new film very much and while it didn't break much new ground, it did add a layer of perspective that can only come with time. In particular, how Julia Child became a ubiquitous pop culture figure is addressed in a fresh way.

I reached out to the filmmakers,Julie Cohen and Betsy West to find out more about what inspired them and why Julia Child still holds our attention.

Julia Child died over 15 years ago and has been off TV for decades. Why do you believe we continue to be so fascinated by her?

In some ways Julia is the Godmother of modern American cooking - and eating. Her spirit looms over cooking segments on the morning shows, The Food Network, and all those overhead Instagram shots the current generation loves to take of restaurant meals. Beyond that, though, Julia's bigger than life personality and unstoppable joie de vivre are infectious. People couldn't get enough of her while she was living, and they still can't now.

There have been so many Julia Child films and documentaries, what inspired this one?

Well there'd been some great programs about Julia but this is the first feature length theatrical doc. Like everyone else, we adored Julie & Julia, but a documentary gives you a special opportunity to tell a person's story in their own words and with the authentic images. This is particularly true of Julia, who was truly one of a kind.

The impact of Julia Child how she was a groundbreaker really comes across in the film, are we understanding her in a different light as time passes?

People understand that Julia was a talented television entertainer, but outside the professional food world, there's been an under-recognition of just how much she changed the 20th century food landscape. As Jose Andres points out in the film, almost every serious food professional has a sauce-splashed copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" on their shelves. We also felt Julia's role in opening up new possibilities for women on television deserved more exploration. In the early 1960's the idea of a woman on TV who was neither a housewife nor a sex bomb but a mature, tall, confident expert was downright radical. She paved the way for many women who followed.

The food shots add an extra element to the film and entice viewers in a very visceral way, how did those interstitials come to be part of the film?

We knew from the start that we wanted to make food a major part of this story, not an afterthought. We worked with cook and food stylist Susan Spungen to determine which authentic Julia recipes could be integrated with which story beats to become part of the film's aesthetic and its plot. For instance the sole meunière is a key part of the story because it sparked her obsession with French food, and the pear and almond tart provides an enticing metaphor for the sensual side of Julia and Paul's early married years.

Note: Susan Spungen was also the food stylist for Julie & Julia

Julia is in theaters now.

23 Nov 2021 11:30pm GMT

I met Rick Rodgers early in my career as a recipe developer and food writer when we were both contributors to the Epicurious blog. Not only is he a lot of fun to hang out with, but he has also been incredibly helpful to me and is usually the first person I call when I'm floundering with a project, client, or cooking quandary. His interpersonal skills, business experience, and cooking acumen explain why he's been recognized as one of the top cooking instructors in America. Literally.

You built a career as a cooking instructor and cookbook author. How many cookbooks have you written?

I was asked recently to make an official count, and It looks like an even hundred. Many of those were collaborations with chefs, restaurants, celebrities, bakeries, and business entities, such as Tommy Bahama, Williams-Sonoma, and Nordstrom. I made it known that I was available for collaboration work, and my phone literally rang off the hook for quite a few years with editors and agents looking for help with novice writers or those that wanted a branded book.

Which cookbook(s) are you most proud of?

There are three books that I get fan mail for almost every day: Kaffeehaus (where I explore the desserts of my Austrian heritage), Thanksgiving 101 (a deep dive into America's most food-centric holiday and how to pull it off), and Ready and Waiting (which was one of the first books to take a "gourmet" approach to the slow cooker). These books have been in print for 20 years or more, which is a beautiful testament to their usefulness to home cooks.

How did you get started as a cooking instructor and what are some highlights of your teaching career?

I was a theater major at San Francisco State College (now University), so getting in front of a crowd held no terrors for me. When more brick-and-mortar cooking schools opened in the eighties, I was ready for prime time. During that period, there were at least twelve cooking schools in the Bay Area, so I made quarterly trips here a year from the east coast, where I had moved. My Thanksgiving classes were so popular that I taught every day from November 1 to Thanksgiving, with a couple of days off for laundry and travel. The absolute pinnacle of my teaching career was being named Outstanding Culinary Instructor of The Year by Bon Appétit Magazine's Food and Entertaining Awards, an honor that I share with only a handful of other recipients, including Rick Bayless and Bobby Flay.

Flódni

How have cooking classes changed since you started?

Because there are so many classes available, I can teach at any level of experience. At the cooking schools, we tended to walk a fine line between too difficult and too easy. The exposure to different cuisines and skill levels on TV also has seriously raised the bar. Unfortunately, students want to walk before they can run. They want to learn how to make croissants when I doubt that they can bake a pound cake correctly. It is best to build on your skills instead of going right to the top. That being said, in my online classes, I am concentrating on the more challenging recipes because that is what the market demands of me.

Tell me about your baking school, coffeeandcake.org

As much as I loved my cookbooks and in-person classes, I knew there was a more modern way to reach people who wanted to cook with me, especially since so many cooking schools had closed. I retired the day I got my first Social Security check. But…as I was warned by my friends who knew me better than I did…I was bored, and wanted a new project. I heard about online classes through other teachers who were having success. I found an online course specifically for cooking classes (Cooking Class Business School at HiddenRhythm.com), got the nuts and bolts down, and I finally entered the 21st century!

How do you decide which recipes to teach?

I felt there were plenty of other places to learn how to make chocolate chip cookies and banana bread-just take a look on YouTube alone. I had a specialty of Austro-Hungarian baking thanks to my Kaffeehaus book, so I decided to niche into that category. I have branched out to a few other locations, but my goal is to expose students to something new and out of the ordinary. I also survey my students on what they would like me to teach, and those answers are amazing. People are truly interested in the more difficult desserts. Perhaps it is because so many people discovered baking as a hobby during the pandemic?

For students who have your cookbooks, what are the advantages of taking an online class?

There is no substitute for seeing a cook in action. Plus you get to answer questions during class. In a recent class, I made six-layer Dobos Torte in two hours' real-time to prove that you can do it without giving up a week of your life. And we don't have to travel to each other to be "together." My classes are videotaped so you can watch them at your convenience.

What are some highlights of your upcoming schedule of classes?

Honey cake

In October, I am teaching virtually all Hungarian desserts, things that will be new to most people. I am making one of my absolute favorites, Flódni, which is a Jewish bar cookie (almost a cake) with layers of apple, poppy seeds, and walnuts between thin sheets of wine-flavored cookie dough. San Franciscans in particular will be happy to see a master class that I am teaching with the delightful Michelle Polzine, owner of the late and lamented 20th Century Cafe and author of Baking at the 20th Century Cafe. We will be making her (in)famous 12-layer honey cake on two coasts, with me doing the heavy lifting in New Jersey and Michelle guiding me from the west coast. That is going to be fun! In November and December, I am switching over to holiday baking and a few savory recipes for Thanksgiving, including my fail-proof turkey and gravy, which I have made over 300 times in classes over 30 years' worth of teaching. It ought to be perfect by now

Head to Coffee and Cake to sign up for classes or learn more.

05 Oct 2021 3:56pm GMT

03 Dec 2014 8:12pm GMT

16 Jul 2014 6:08pm GMT

Après presque un mois et demi d'absence, deux bouclages d'albums et plein de projets, je trouve enfin le
temps de poster quelque chose sur ce blog ! Ces jours-ci, je vais avoir pas mal de choses à vous montrer !
On commence tranquille avec un petit dessin aux couleurs estivales.

14 Jul 2014 4:25pm GMT