smasty's blog

KAF printed this recipe in a recent catalog (click on "recipe" to get there).  I totally love them!  I bake them a couple times a week.  They are very very crunchy...sort of like thin biscotti.  They are SO easy, and healthy too.  I make them for my chip-loving husband as a much better choice for him.  So I've found that slicing them into long strips (with a pizza cutter after the dough is rolled) makes them easier to eat (roll out the dough on your counter (thin!), it's not stick

Ever since MerryBaker posted this recipe (from Baking with Julia) in Helend's blog, I've been waiting to try it.  Here it is!  It is really lovely.  I added 1 packet of stevia to up the sweetness w/o additional sugar (I did use the 1/3 c specified).  I made 3 loaves, as directed.  The recipe called for "1 can" of raisins, I used about 3/4 cup.  The loaves are really small.  Next time I'll only make 2 loaves from the batch so each is a little bigger.  It's an incredible holiday bread...love it!!

Before I say anything, let me say thanks for the generous advice I've received!

My first attempt at SD was a disaster.  Thanks to the great input I received, I embarked on a 2nd attempt yesterday/today.  This is Hamelman's Vermont SD recipe.  My liquid levain culture (Norman) was 11 days old yesterday.  I created the levain build early yesterday morning, too early, and it overripened.  Since I knew it had fermented for about 22 hours, instead of the 16 max recommended, I decided to only do a 1/2 recipe (until I get it right).  I mixed everything early this morning.  The bulk ferment took about 6.5 hours to result in just less than a d

I'm in the middle of my very first SD bake.  I'm using Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough recipe, which uses a levain.  I grew my levain for 7 days (he says in the book that it should be ready to use on day 6).  The thing is, I didn't really see much rise in the bulk ferment stage.  There was a change in the dough structure, but very little growth (2.5 hours with 1 fold).  My shaped loaves have been sitting for 2.5 hours and though smooth and elastic looking...still not much growth.  The oven is heating right now...if I don't see miraculous oven spring, these are goi