Many families have unique holiday traditions, and mine is no exception. I can summon vivid childhood memories of family outings to choose and fell a tree at the farm, then decorating it with "my" ornaments while listening to Manheim Steamroller's version of Deck the Halls (what a classic!).
It has taken me a while to make real progress with sourdough, but after a few weeks of nurturing my starter and training myself to be more patient during the bulk ferment and proofing, I'm finally getting somewhere. Really pleased with how the crust and crumb turned out on this one. Getting a decent score is my last real hurdle; I can get an ear to open up quite nicely, but my diamond and box cuts often seal up as the loaf bakes. Still playing with some parameters there. Getting sort of back to work has cut down on time available for baking, alas.
Today I made my second attempt at baking the birote salado from Guadalajara, Mexico. It doesn't seem to be particularly well known outside of its home country: there is no English Wikipedia entry about it, for example, nor (to my great surprise) has it been mentioned on this site outside of a recent thread.
A fun experiment that satisfied my yearning for a bagel or two. I riffed on a stiff dough recipe, introducing plenty of whole-wheat and rye flour for dark malt and honey flavors. These turned out with a slightly bready crumb, but I think they are a good starting point for future bakes. Delicious with fresh chive and onion schmear!
Not a bread, but something to do with it when you've baked too much! I stumbled on a nice recipe for panade from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at The Guardian. This bread-based stew is a vegetarian favorite that I'd somehow never heard of. With extra sourdough baguettes lying around, no ideas for dinner, and a fortuitously-purchased head of cabbage in the fridge, panade seemed like the right thing to do.
Lately I've been enjoying the freedom to bake on a more... open... schedule, and I've been trying some combinations of techniques I've learned from a book or two and the supremely knowledgeable members of this forum. For sandwiches I love nothing more than piling tasty fillings atop a tasty baguette, so I thought I'd try using my levain to bake baguettes for the first time. Unfortunately I don't have a stone big enough for two-footers so I had to truncate these down to "baton" length.
Hello from a first-time poster! I'm still working on getting truly photogenic loaves, but I am exploring other uses for my levain too. My partner and I were craving English muffins, which I thought would be a perfect way to use up some extra starter. Going off the very easy KAF recipe for sourdough English muffins shared by kjnits, I got some satisfactory results. The texture and flavor of these just crushes anything from the grocery store.
