Storebought challah :  Nothing more to say.  :-(

Eek!  Bread begone!  Pesach is coming!!!

… all things bready had been utterly suspended for Pesach, here come:  BLUEBERRY BUNS!  12 of them, amazing.  They ALL stayed shut!  They are all yummy and delicious!  I know because I have bitten open each and every one and licked the insides out to make sure. Good thing we’re not having guests! Believe it or not, I made these using my own Experimental Do-not-knead Challah Dough recipe.  That’s right.  NOT kneaded, just chucked in a bucket and rolled around the cement mixer way. Oh, and then left overnight and also folded a couple of times.  I never said it was a no WORK recipe, or a no TIME recipe.  Just no kneading. The dough was very wet initially, but with plenty of flour it rolled out amazingly well and held together like nothing I’ve ever worked with before.  Magic dough.  Good Shabbos!

Why are frozen challahs SO unpredictable?!?!???

Look what we made today in our own homeschool matzah factory !  We also watched this cool, puppet- and Torah-filled documentary about how matzah is made.  2000 degrees:  amazing! Then again, just the idea of combining flour and water and getting something absolutely delicious is, as I’ve said before, simply magical .

Planning ahead:  a week in bread!   (left:  my own ryelicious no-knead, right:  basic no-knead master dough) Up close with the rye:  looks dry, dry, dry, but it will mellow and soften as it sits…)

This week I have tried recreating, in EXACT detail, the trial-and-error improved found-on-the-Web recipe I developed two weeks ago (link has recipe). I didn’t take pictures last night, but here are all the steps, starting from Step 4, where the dough has been de-fridged and brought to room temperature (today, for 2-3 hours because we went out). Step 4:  Fold Again Flour the top of the dough and dump it out onto a well-floured tabletop.  Do not punch down! With a bench scraper and floured hands, fold the dough 4-5 times.  Dump it back in the bucket. Let stand in bucket for 2 hours.   Step 5:  Form Challahs The folding steps should have made the dough workable enough that on a well-floured surface with well-floured hands, you can form it into balls, and then whatever nice neat braids you like to make. The 16 balls I made here are approximately 201g each.  Today, I decided to make two of Maggie Glezer’s fancy six-braid challahs (link goes ...