Sadly, not a rave. I don’t love dried fruit and I guess was hoping this homemade granola and the accompanying granola bread (both from Artisan Bread in Five, which went back to the library yesterday) (an “adapted” version of the recipe is here if you’re interested; it looks the same as the original to me) for which it was made would somehow transcend all of that and make me love it. It didn’t. (if you followed the sentiment despite all the parentheses) (don’t bother). The bread was good. So good I gave half a loaf, hot n’ fresh, to my sister. But Ted talked me into using dried cherries in the granola; they were too big and weird. And I guess I’m just not a “bits and pieces” gal. However, t he granola did get rave reviews. (the online recipe is slightly different; it includes sunflower seeds, which the book’s recipe does not) Naomi couldn’t get over the fact that I actually made cereal! And after years of aspiring to “crunchy-granola” status, I can finally remove the

    Bun-baked Burgers:  look gross, BUT…

  Oops… forgot to blog; AMAZING boule!

…The sizzle of deep-frying donuts / sufganiyot, of course:  one last hurrah! Further to the sort-of unloved no-knead Pain au Chocolat from a few weeks ago , I decided that the dough, being not quite sweet enough for my family, would make an excellent chocolate donut.  Donuts being deliberately NOT sweet but fried, and dusted lightly with sweetness on the outside.  You don’t want a donut to be sweet all the way through. No time for adding comments, but basically I made the chocolate dough as called for here , subbing oil for the butter, which did change the texture of the dough a bit.  Still, I found it very workable and the donuts were yummy!  Will add more comments later if I have a chance!!! Here they are, start to finish, donuts, donut holes (I fried them up separately rather than reroll them), and all:             Mmm, mmm, good…!!!

Starting with one batch of no-knead Artisan Bread in Five Minutes challah dough, here are start-to-finish pictures of yesterday’s amazing Nutella-stuffed sufganiyot (the Hebrew word for the traditional jelly donuts eaten at Chanukah, but I’m not sure if that’s the word for donuts in general, or just these particular ones, or just jelly donuts… so many questions!) The basic recipe is here, but I made it with two variations this time.  First, I omitted one of the four eggs.  I have been doing this every time because I find the dough much easier to handle if it’s on the dry side.  Second, I made it with BUTTER instead of oil as I usually do for Shabbos.  Our Shabbos bread usually has to be pareve (non-meat, non-dairy), but since I was planning to use Nutella in these anyway (Nutella is made with milk), I figured a little extra dairy couldn’t hurt. Here’s the dough after its initial stir.  I didn’t have to take it out of the bowl, but you can see that it’s dry for a no-knead dough

No-Knead Donuts:  you NEED them!

And this time, as they say in the world of sports, she shoots… she scores!  A perfect Artisan Bread in Five potato bread (originally borrowed from this web recipe ) on the, um, eighth try?  Ha ha.  Maybe more like third.  (read about my last disaster with this bread) Still.  This bread has the potential for being an all-time favourite, so I figure it’s worth the effort. So:  no garlic this time; I may throw some in next time.  Not as flavourful without it.  Also not as flavourful because I fridged it for a few hours, then baked it the same day I mixed.  I still have about 2/3 of the mixture in the fridge, which I plan to bake up for tomorrow morning, so I can see if the flavour improves with time. Also… (don’t tell!)  I used instant mashed potato flakes.  Just boiled up water and mixed them in a bowl, let it cool off, and added it to the recipe.  Easy; not as authentic, and also probably way more moist than if I’d baked the potato, which gets a lot of the water out. I used a

Hey, cool! No, I haven’t abandoned this blog, just didn’t bake much this week, and haven’t blogged the bread that I did make:  a perfect (yes, perfect!) no-knead potato bread! But here’s a nifty frugal / emergency baking tip while you’re waiting.  When you’ve run out of honey, and don’t want to run out to the store, here’s how you make a substitutable equivalent: 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar 1/4 cup water That’s it!  It’s easy!  I did this for my challah this week and then (doh!) forgot to buy honey in the meantime, so I had to sub it in again this week. The reason straight sugar won’t work well is because it’s dry and so you need to add in a bit of water.  This ratio (5:1) gives a texture very much like a heavily-crystalled honey that will ensure your recipe gets the moisture that it needs. Caveats: Sugar tastes sweeter than honey, so you may want to cut down a bit for breads or the final product may be noticeably sweeter.  I didn’t mind it in challah last week.

(a little late; so sue me!) Three challah blobs… and Sara’s masterpiece.

New bread book from the library! Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. I have been baking from this book – especially the challah recipe, which I’ve been tweaking for better workability – for months now, so it already feels like an old friend. I came this close to buying it in Chapters a few weeks ago, and decided not to because it doesn’t really include very many recipes. However, sitting down with it, I’m sort of starting to rethink that decision… I think this one may be a keeper. Now that I have it in my hands (not literally; I had to put it down to type) I’m finding I do love the happy, balanced tone of the book itself – above and beyond its core formulae (of which there are more than I’d originally estimated, however). I like the fact that most of the recipes are non-dairy, though some do include milk and butter and whatnot. Anyway, I really want to make as many of the breads as appeal t

Well, I don’t know exactly what I mean by that title, but on Monday, I decided to make the yummy Artisan Bread in Five Minutes pletzl again ( here’s the original recipe). Except… two things went wrong. One, last time I used the book’s basic Boule recipe; this time, I used the challah dough – as suggested in the pletzl recipe! I have no idea why, but there was way more dough, far too much to fit on my little cookie-sheet pan… ugh. (in hindsight, I should have used 3/4 of the dough and saved 1/4 for another time. That thought honestly never occurred to me until just now. But hindsight is 20/20, and at the time…well, I didn’t!) And TWO, for some reason, I totally skimped on the onion! I must have used two last time, because when I dumped them onto the dough, they were only able to spread out in the most skimpy way. Ew… who wants an onion bun with not enough onions? So what I learned is that challah is NOT the right dough for pletzl! The challah recipe is rich and cake