I keep forgetting to write about this and I SHOULDN'T, because this is a very cool product that I’m excited to tell you about. I actually bought this on impulse and didn't expect to like it so much, but I really believe it offers an interesting solution for some people (not everybody). Do you adore getting your hands into a fresh, powdery batch of dough?  If so, maybe this post isn't for you.  This post is for people who LOVE fresh bread, but HATE getting flour on their hands.  You know – like this: (if that picture, with all those floury fingers, makes you uncomfortable, you NEED to read on!) Powdery textures usually make me nuts (sand!!!), although for some reason, I'm okay with flour and bread-making.  But I have known a few people who are totally NOT okay with it, and for them, this product might be ideal. So… what is it? It's a silicone dough bag !  I saw these a while ago, first on Amazon and then on AliExpress, my preferred get-things-ch...

It’s sort of like alchemy, really… you take oats, which is essentially horse food, and you turn it into pure, hearty breakfast yumminess. If you’re thinking of starting to make your own granola, this is one of those “old favourite” recipes you’ll want to keep handy. This picture here of the ingredients highlights the truly “no-frills” alchemy of this recipe:  crafting a premium product out of all these yellow-label groceries.  (the brown sugar and a couple of other things that aren’t packed in yellow were left out of the photo) I’ve made this granola many, many times now.  I’m still searching for a source of milk powder (skim or otherwise) in Israel, because now I miss it… a lot.  Plus, storebought granola is pretty expensive here, while oats are relatively cheap. I was surprised the first few times that I liked it so much; I’m not a huge granola fan.  Before I made this, I tried the Artisan Bread in Five Granola (the granola is meant to be used to...

One of the mamas at our homeschool matzah bake today pointed out how many calories are in matzah compared to bread – I forget, but it’s something like 4 times as many – because matzah doesn’t have all the air and water that bread does so it’s just pure calories. Which got me thinking – it’s  astonishing how much flour today’s baking wasted… or, if you don’t want to think of it as waste, because everybody was learning and having fun, at least how INEFFICIENT matzah baking is. Each kid started with a cup of flour and 1/3 cup of water.  There were six kids, plus I had two cups of flour, which makes 8 cups of flour altogether.  If I’d made BREAD with 8 cups of flour (about 1080g), it would be enough for at least two big loaves.  In fact, I made two 680g loaves yesterday with 877g of flour, and I had dough to spare at the end of the evening.  Just one of those loaves would have fed everybody here for lunch quite handily. As it was, out of those eight cups, ...

This is the Pumpkin-Oatmeal No-Knead Bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (which I still don’t own!). It’s a fun bread because it doesn’t taste like a “healthy” bread (being mostly white flour), but does contain token quantities of rye, whole-wheat and oat. It is a very easy bread to make, despite the sloppiness of the final dough. I baked these seven loaves, along with gingerbread and shortbread cookies, to fill up holiday parcel boxes whicih we mailed to members of our extended families. (actually, the 7th was for our supper: shhh…) I added cranberries and lightly toasted walnuts to make it into more of a “festive” bread. Anyway, ours was delicious with tomato soup this evening; soft and fresh. Almost too soft, I hope, because, this being Thursday, the others won’t arrive at their new homes until perhaps Monday. This particular loaf is one that would be delicious slightly stale and toasted, so I was hoping that even if the loaves aren’t completely fresh when ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Time to dust off the sourdough! No excuses… life is as “back to normal” as it’s gonna get, and there’s no reason I can’t bake good bread this week! (plus, now that I used up the last of the spelt , I have some nice whole wheat flour my sister gave me last week… and some rye to use up and some oat flour and… OMG, Pesach is coming!!!)

This was yesterday’s bread component of a bread-and-soup meal.  In the morning, I mixed up the oatmeal-honey bread from 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads: No-Knead, One Bowl , to bake in the afternoon.  I wanted to do something a little MORE with it than just a straight loaf, so I decided to do a filled, swirled raisin loaf.  Oh – I was proud of myself; I didn’t have brown sugar for the swirl, so I took white sugar and used the mixer to beat in a couple of blobs of molasses… the result was identical.  While I was mixing, I beat in a bit of butter and cinnamon as well.  Spread it on the loaf, sprinkled with raisins, rolled up, allowed it to rise, then baked it.  As you can see, I knew there was a problem as soon as I took the loaf out of the oven.  The seam of the swirl hadn’t been on the bottom, or shifted during rising, and suddenly, I had buttery raisin glop goobering out of the bread and even a bit over the side of the pan.   Definitel...

It’s a fast day today and I decided to make a nice grainy bread like Ted likes for the end of the fast. So how does it happen that when I sit down to Google a nice, fairly quick, easy grainy bread to use up some of the ingredients I have on hand: barley flour, oat flour, bread flour, a bit of Pioneer Village whole wheat… I end up falling DEEPLY in love with a Sicilian No-Knead Bread , totally different from what I set out to bake??? I have been obsessed with Pane Siciliano for a while. For whatever reason, I love pasta and semolina and everything related to it. This bread is actually made with durum flour , which is a finer grind than durum semolina . Semolina is coarser, like corn meal. It works for bread in small quantities, and actually works well for pasta. I also keep it on hand because, like corn meal, it’s useful for sprinkling on a surface so breads don’t stick: the coarse grains act like ball bearings and your bread rolls right off! I haven’t been able to find...

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 ...

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...