Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Last bake sale for this summer.  :-( (tomorrow – if and when I get some sleep!)

Going away for the rest of the week, so I just whipped up some no-knead dough for next Sunday’s final fun fair of the summer.  This is a double batch because the pletzl went so quickly last time. ( Here , once again, is the “Basic Boule” master dough recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.) I also made a batch of my standard challah.  I’m working on converting the recipe to weight measures, but haven’t gotten it quite right.  Will post it here when I do! (I have given the “experiment” challahs to grateful neighbours and haven’t even tasted it myself…!)

Yup, it’s a SCOOP! Source:  Dollarama. Cost:  $1. It is a sturdy plastic scoop that does everything you could ever want a scoop to do. And it feels like the ultimate bread snobbery that I have no clue what its volume is.  None whatsoever. This scoop isn’t for measuring – it’s for SCOOPING!  The scale is for measuring, silly.  Hence – snobbery, since a year ago, I had never done anything but scoop and measure and approximate recipes by volume. I just find recipes work so much better and more reliably by volume…

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Almost perfect Maggie Glezer sourdough challah! Tasted delicious, nice and fresh even the second day.  This is the real reason, I suspect, why I want to do more with sourdough – my distaste for “day-old” (ie made on Friday, eaten on Shabbos day) challah.  They say sourdough breads keep MUCH longer… to me, that means increased second-day (and even third-day with all these yamim tovim coming up) deliciousness!

Preparing the starter, last night: It was supposed to triple in 8-12 hours.  Mine did it in four, so I set in the fridge before I went to bed and took it out again this morning. Waah-la!  Does that mean I’m bragging about my own sourdough’s super-rising power???  Let’s see how this challah comes out first.   The challah dough is in the background; sour starter in the foreground – TRIPLED, as you can see. Merge the two blobs:  dough plus starter.   Begin to knead.  Begin to understand why most recipes ask you to break up the firm starter, not add it all in one blob.  This “marbling” effect takes ten minutes of concerted kneading to distribute more or less evenly throughout the dough.  Ouch.   Partway there – still some marbling.     Finally done – or at least, my arms can knead no longer.   Left it sitting too long – it was only supposed to have two hours, but we went to the playground and by the time I came back, it was closer to four. Formed the challa

Once the Peanut-Butter Blondie is in the oven… …it’s BEATER time!!!     Is there a better childhood baking memory?  I doubt it!

Eek!  I’ve gotten sucked in by a Hebrew-Christian (aka Messianic) website!  I was originally searching for Shabbat Party songs and found online copies of an old magazine (no links, sorry!)… and also this fascinating challah recipe, loosely extracted from a PDF.  Haven’t found anything quite like it online. Quick Knead Challah Sabbath Bread Makes two 2-lb. loaves or four 1-lb. loaves Thursday afternoon or evening: In a mixing bowl, combine: 3 cups warm water 1 cup honey 1 cup olive oil 5 t salt Whisk together and add enough whole wheat flour to form a soft dough, scraping the bowl and folding the dough over with a large spoon to blend in all the flour.  Cover and leave to sit at room temperature overnight. STILL Thursday afternoon or evening: Next, put 5 eggs into a small bowl.  Whisk together with enough whole wheat flour to make a soft dough.  Cover and refrigerate overnight. Late Friday morning:  (frankly, that’s a little control-freakish… I

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Auntie Sally’s Challah and Buns ?  Yummy! The challah itself was very nice, both at supper and the next day.  And despite her admonition NOT to use it for blueberry buns, well, they were yummy, too. I guess I should call to thank her…!

Apparently, this is a Toronto thing – or at least, an “east-coast” thing (it Toronto on the east coast?).  From searching the Internet and looking at other blogs, it seems this is something special that we do here – nestle blueberries and sugar in a yeast bun – and a delicious thing it is indeed.  If we can’t be famous for our bagels (yuck), at the very least, we have excellent taste in blueberry yeast desserts. I have always wanted to recreate my Bubby’s, but my mother’s are excellent as well… really, any are, as long as the blueberries aren’t grossly undercooked, as a few have been that I bought at Hermes, a local bakery.  Frankly, I use canned pie filling, but if you have a source for nice, fresh local berries, use those instead.  This would probably work with many kinds of berry, but I’m closed-minded and believe blueberry is the best and only kind. I used to think it would work with any challah recipe, but that’s not true.  You need the richest, almost brioche like dough,

Continuing on from last night , when I made the dough, I first watched this challah-making video by Ciril Hitz to study up on the 2-braid challah technique:   Making snakes – and breaking in my new rolling pin.  Sure beats a wine bottle, hands-down!   Quick preliminary roll, then rest.     Whoops, forgot to take pictures.  I rolled the snakes out to their full length and formed two 2-braid challahs.  Unfortunately, the first two snakes were much too long, and made an unattractive, too-long, too-skinny challah.  So I rolled it up into a crown! The second was okay, but I could have closed the bottom end better. Now, spray with oil and cover up with a towel (NOT plastic wrap!) and let them  rise while I bake blueberry buns !   Sprinkle with streusel (=krishkelach!), then bake 1/2 hour. Pull them out and realize that the oven was still at 375° from the blueberry buns.  :-o Guess we’re having super-dark challahs this Shabbos… Despite how they look, the

Here it is… I’m making this old family recipe (or at least, an old family-member’s recipe) as I said I would this Shabbos, and although I have said all along that I don’t like an eggy challah, hers is a delight to knead, as are many rich doughs.  The texture of this dough is quite supple:  smooth, even a bit glossy.  There’s a sheen that doesn’t quite come across in these pictures.  More like Silly Putty than Play-Doh, if that’s helpful.     It’s a very heavy dough:  with four and a half eggs, a cup of oil and a cup of sugar, I mean that quite literally.  I was surprised that it seemed to tire my hands out a bit quicker than other challah doughs. Here, Ted continues to hold the camera (those are his pictures above) and pretend to be impressed while I demonstrate the Gluten Windowpane, stretching out the dough into a rectangle to reveal – gasp! – my hand on the other side!  Besides being a cool trick, this shows us that the dough is ready for its first nap. This recipe cal

The big kids are coming home tomorrow, so I hauled out my trusty soft-pretzel recipe (it’s also a decent “in-a-pinch” bagel recipe!) this afternoon to whip some up for Elisheva, because it’s been impossible to find the frozen kind in the stores lately.  Okay, not just for Elisheva; also for me.  I love these! Here I am, rolling the snake, twisting and flipping it into the classic pretzel shape!  Easy as pretzels!   (if you aren’t seeing this animation, it could be because your browser – or blog-reading software – doesn’t support animaged GIFs… try Firefox or IE for best results) Waiting under the fruit-fly umbrella… sigh.  I hate those things!  The good news is that they’re almost gone !   Dip in the solution.  I don’t measure, just dump baking soda into this pan of warm water.   Then bake – they only need about 7 minutes!  They come out of the oven looking dry, but when they’re cool enough, you dip them in butter and they turn shiny. The recipe yielded ten

There were originally two parts to this post: a rant and a recipe . But I split it because I want to keep this blog more or less on topic – if only to demonstrate that I really CAN stay on-topic. Really, I can! Click here for the story behind the recipe or some of the snarky comments may leave you wondering. Auntie Sally’s Challah Recipe (update: now in metric!) 8 cups of flour = 1120g 1 cup of sugar + 1 tsp for proofing yeast = 200g (+ 1 tsp!) 1 cup of oil = 220g 1 tsp salt = 4.8g 5 eggs, divided: 4 for the challah, 1 white for the challah, 1 yolk reserved for painting the challahs at the end 4 tsp yeast = 24g 2 cup of water, divided: 1 cup (240g) to proof the yeast, 1 more (240g) “if you need it.” Krishkelach = what I generally call streusel; a floury, sugary, oily concoction to sprinkle on top at the end. Or sesame seeds. Sesame seeds are okay. Poppy seeds are WRONG. Bzzzt!

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Not about bread at all:  oops! But I hope you enjoy this delicious photo of homemade ricotta-kale ravioli as much as I enjoyed making it and EATING it last Tuesday.