Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Hate to brag – but delicious challah! Only my second time succeeding with Maggie Glezer’s “My Sourdough Challah”… but BOY did it turn out well!  Hate to brag, but this was delicious challah – and beautiful.   I still have no idea why my sourdough challahs were losing their braids last year.  But now, they are totally fine. I even got to pass along some starter to a friend – along with the lower middle challah (a 1-lb’er; I had to keep the two big ones and the “baby” for our own Shabbos)!

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  And by the way – OMG, the real Adar is almost upon us!  If you know or care what that is…     Ending Shabbos… by preparing for Shabbos! (getting next week’s candles ready; I’ve started doing this BEFORE I put the candle holders away for the week and I love it!!!)

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Moment of infamy, shouted at the Shabbos table: “The challah has a bite missing!” Which would be fine or, if not fine, the end of it if said child had not chosen to clarify for the guests:  “ a mouse must have eaten it.” Yup, our rodent guests are still with us, and probably multiplying by the week.  It is no longer safe to leave ANY food out, especially in plastic bags.  And the trap-kill-poison campaign has wound down; the baited traps that worked well at first are no longer effective at all.  It must mean they’re getting too much food elsewhere to care about what’s in the traps… but how??  It’s all locked up now, I’m certain of it. Argh.  So unjust.  So frustrating.  And, in this case, so humiliating.

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Other “weekly challenges” I participate in: Homeschool Diary Menu Plan Monday Kid’s birthday… not baking a cake.  :-( I really must do SOMETHING about this slump.   But in the meantime, we will probably end up with NO bread and a storebought cake. Sigh… I am SO ready for winter to be over.

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Sourdough challah:  the Jewish holy grail? Yes, folks… I did it!  After weeks and weeks of “supplementing” the challah with a teaspoon of yeast, I spent a few days this week buffing up the starter and managed to create three delicious sourdough challahs – fully risen, perfectly cooked and beautifully-textured! The problem is… you knew there was a catch, right?  They’re not very sweet.  And there’s a limit to how sweet they can become without either tasting weird or the sugar inhibiting the action of the yeast. So I think next week, I’ll return to my basic tried-and-true Reliable Challah recipe – and then, perhaps, issue myself a new challenge.  Who knows what it will be?

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Dregs of the homemade pareve eclairs ! I guess these were a hit…

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  My new baking stuff has arrived! Sometimes, it just takes a little thing to re-ignite your interest… so this week, I’m excited about TWO little things, birthday present replacements from Ted,  that arrived on Thursday.  Both from Breadtopia ! Jumbo Flour Sack Towels x 4: Kevlar oven gloves (women’s size) x 2: These are the perfect bread-handling gloves, offering the dexterity and heat resistance to not fear things like 500-degree dutch ovens. So I have to use all this loot – the only problem being my now-fleishik baking stone – so no good for most baking purposes.  :-( I never asked a shailah, but it got meatloaf-juice spattered on it, so I’m assuming it is now MEATY, as the british say… so I have to replace it before I do any serious baking. And then be WAY more careful about removing it from the oven before doing any non-pareve baking.  It’s just a pain because sometimes the oven is alr...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Fresh challah means dishes to wash. How I wish that were not so!

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  A whole week of bread adventures! Not all entirely successful….   Sourdough rye bread that I finally got around to baking in my little dutch oven.  Beautiful loaf!  Just not all that flavourful. The “bread” that isn’t bread :  Seitan for hot & sour soup that turned out so gloriously well last time… but this time globbed into chewy rubberish nightmare.  Flavourful, but the texture was horrid!    Ew! But finally, finally, to cap things off, a sourdough challah that was amazingly buoyant; this rose better, and with less commercial yeast, than any sourdough challah that I have made so far.  I had 324g of starter, more than I’ve used before, and it performed super-well, though I did add 1/2 tsp of yeast.  The rise times were comparable to non-sourdough loaves, despite the wintry-cool house.  On the downside, it tasted like there was no sugar in the loaf, and I’...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Less and less yeast each week… I’ve been making the same challah for a couple of months now because it’s SOooo yummy.  My challenge (to myself) has been incorporating as much sourdough as possible, decreasing the commercial yeast a bit more each week. I haven’t really said much about this challah recipe yet.  It’s based on this one , but I use sugar instead of honey, and I leave out the egg.  I found it when I was searching for a sponge-based challah, and it seems like the ideal way to incorporate a sourdough, because it gives the starter lots of time to get going overnight. This week, I wanted to make exactly THREE challahs, so I multiplied the regular formula by 1.5… I’ve set up a spreadsheet to let me figure out how much of my 60% starter I can substitute in a recipe that either calls for another type of starter – or no starter. In the case of this challah recipe, the original calls for no starter, so ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Birthday’s a’comin’… my wish list here . (yes, fo’sure “a’comin’” is one word!!!)

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  “No knead” bread broke my mixer! Forgot to blog about this one during the week.  I have some wonderful, local Red Fife whole-wheat flour my sister gave me that I wanted to try out, so I decided to do the No-Knead 100% Whole-Wheat Bread from King Arthur Flour again.  I made it once before with spelt and it wasn’t fantastic.  This time around, it made a VERY dense loaf, but one that was eminently sliceable and eatable. This is an unusual no-knead bread because you use a hand mixer (or stand mixer) to mix the ingredients.  The finished “dough” is somewhere between a thick cake batter and a thin bread dough.  Definitely not kneadable.  And as the six words point out, really too heavy for what my cheapo hand mixer could take on, apparently.  (Luckily, I had a spare in the basement, albeit a tippy one I hate.) Once mixed, you let the dough rise in the loaf pan (mine’s a bit big, which the King ...

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!!!)

  Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Breads I forgot to blog about! …Like Wednesday night’s excellent rye-licious loaf!  Exactly the same ryelicious formula as the first time, and it worked out beautifully.  I even used corn starch – properly, this time ! – to create a lovely crusty sheen on top of the loaf.  Yes, it’s peanut-shaped, the result of a mis-handled transfer from peel to stone… but I’m getting the hang of it, really I am.  And yes, there was a bit of a blowout on the side.  I don’t know why my slashing is so unsuccessful lately.  But inside, the bread was perfectly baked and absolutely luscious with Alton Brown’s beef stew.   Mmm… And then there were Thursday’s (vegan night) Scallion Pancakes .  Super, super easy, this is a boiled-water-and-bread-flour dough that mixes up quickly and it’s ready to roll after only about half an hour.  Yes, I truly am obsessed with flatbreads these days – I can’t w...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  Delicious challah… better the next day! Now that is an accomplishment, because I usually don’t like challah very much by Saturday afternoon.  I made last week’s amazing Super Wonder Challah.  I ran out of bread flour, so it was perhaps a little softer than last week.  That made it very hard to braid.  Didn’t help that I doubled the recipe and ended up with enough to make three HUGE loaves (>2lb) that spread like crazy in the pan.  So in the end, it was not as picture-perfect as last week, but absolutely just as yummy – if not more so.  And today, even yummier!  Hooray for pre-fermentation; definitely works for me, though it’s a mystery why prefermenting HALF the flour can make the bread tastier than prefermenting all of it (I usually make the entire batch on Thursday night, let it rise, and fridge it overnight). Elisheva said that this was the closest to storebought challah that I’d ever ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! Unveiling My New Super Wonder Challah! My mother invited us for Shabbos dinner because she was also having my aunt (who just returned from shiva in Vancouver earlier this week) and she asked if I was bringing challah, so I said sure. Having messed up a couple of breads in a row, I promised myself I’d stick to the standard recipe, but couldn’t help myself… I wanted to do a preferment. I found this recipe online, which is very similar to my Reliable Challah except that it preferments  half the flour overnight.  Perfect!  I don’t have cubes of fresh yeast, so I used half of the regular yeast from the Reliable Challah recipe, about 1/2 tbsp, subbed 1/4 cup of sugar instead of honey, and left out the egg entirely.  I used 3 cups of bread flour, measured by volume, because I figured it didn’t have to be exact.  After a short room-temperature rise, I let it sit in the fridge overnight. In the morning, after ...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  This week’s goal:  bake in pot! I posted a really long 6ws on my regular blog, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet.  I have a fairly new small (3 quart?) enameled cast-iron dutch oven and I intend to use it for bread-baking. I tried it out for the first time last week for my second attempt at Sicilian No-Knead Bread .  But then I had to go out while the bread was baking.  I told Ted to remove the cover after 30 minutes and bake it 10-15 minutes longer, which he faithfully did… and in the end, the bread was woefully underdone. But he did say I really must make the bread again.  Indeed, what there was of it that was edible was simply amazing:  gritty and moist and robust and flavourful, with the most crunchy crust. But I may not make this recipe.  I may see what Jim Lahey, the master of no-knead-dutch-oven-baking has to say about semolina.  Or, I took out Bread:  A Baker’s Bo...

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  The classic… my own reliable Challah! Tearing off that first piece last night was like coming home.  I can’t believe what an incredible, happy feeling it was, to dive into the my very own reliable challah. This recipe is fairly fast:  slightly sweet and completely eggless (except for the egg brushed on top).  It doesn’t age that well, but is amazing on Friday night – and doesn’t do too badly, especially with butter, on Shabbos day.  For the first time, this week, I left it to rise at room temperature overnight, and I think that had a good effect on the taste.  Working with no-knead doughs and sourdough has made me more confident that unless it’s full of dairy and eggs, dough really won’t spoil too quickly at room temperature. I have been working on tweaking the recipe to include reliable scaled measurements.  For a printable PDF of the results, which I think are very good indeed, click here .

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out!  My life will be so good! Yup, as mentioned in passing last week, I broke down and bought a Danish Dough Whisk .  When, oh, when will  get here???? I also bought a dough scraper – I couldn’t help myself; I was sucked in by the words “ This is a Really Nice Dough Scraper! ”. So just picture me… whisking and scraping away (maybe with less hairy arms, though):  my life will indeed be wonderful at last!!!  

Why the weird dates? Click here to find out! OMG, fresh naan on Yom Tov! Nothing fancy at all. Basic batch of AB5 no-knead “boule” dough, stirred up on Tuesday. Oh, wait, not so basic… in place of all-purpose flour, I substituted half chapatti / durum atta flour. Anyway, I mixed it up, then stuck it in the downstairs fridge. Hauled it upstairs on Thursday morning, when I had the good sense and timing NOT to make the naan immediately, but instead condition it slightly with a stretch and fold operation, then let it rest another 45 minutes. Finally, rolled out the basic recipe into 20 about-equal circles (yom tov: kneading, yes, weighing, no, even with a non-digital balance). Pan-fried dry on my new teflon pan – they DO work if you fry them on a regular pan, but I got lazy and didn’t want to take the chance of sticking. They almost all puffed up beautifully – the gorgeous “full balloon” look I love so much. Served still-warm, our guests quickly gobbled them up with two ...