The question mark is because we haven’t tasted it yet!  We’re saving these for Shabbos. I’ve made the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day no-knead challah dough before, but that was during the holidays , so I just rolled them out quickly into spirals.  This was my first attempt using the dough for something as formal as braids. My only concern is that I thought I felt a few lumps (hard spots) in the dough as I was rolling and forming the braids.  Hopefully, they will not be noticeable in the finished product.  They sure do look promising, in any event! Because the dough was so soft, the braids expanded quite a bit and even “ripped” a bit during baking.  Frankly, I don’t mind. The loaves, though fully baked (I hope!) were still fairly soft when I took them off the pan – I had to use two hands to make sure they didn’t bend & fall apart in the middle. Hopefully all that softness will translate into excellent, sweet, yummy challah.  If so, ...

Read all about today’s misadventures in creating the World’s Ugliest Chocolate-Chip Cookie, as well as a preliminary review of this not-quite-revolutionary new margarine substitute, on my real blog, here .

Mmm, mmm, mmm… tonight we had the John Barrymore Onion Pletzel   from page 185 of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day .  No, I didn’t lie, and didn’t end up buying the book, but many of the recipes are available online. I actually had a hankering for focaccia today, and was thinking about a tomato-onion motif, but started thinking more and more about just the onions.  Eventually, a bout of Googling brought me full circle to this recipe.  I do love pletzl, when it’s made right, and this recipe is definitely the way to make it right. For this one, I mixed up the master no-knead dough (I found it here , but there are numerous sources) last night and let it sit for a few hours before fridging it. Here it is, first mixed:   I was surprised it was so dry, but it sure got moist and blobby-looking in the fridge overnight.  But despite its moist appearance, when I took it out and floured it up lightly this afternoon, it actually behaved really well and r...

Stopped at Chapters/Indigo on the way home from my ASL class tonight (which is why taking the bus never saves us any money!) and spent some time dithering over these two bread books:   Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking   and   Baking Artisan Bread: 10 Expert Formulas for Baking Better Bread at Home     In the end, I decided to buy neither book.    They were $30 each and might make a nice gift item, but I decided they weren't essential at the present time.   There are a lot of similarities:  both present a formula-based approach that uses a few basic dough recipes to create a huge range of breads.    I loved the illustrations in Artisan Bread, which show some important details like the consistency of the dough, though I wished they could have been higher-quality (they're basic black and white).  I also like its approach, which is reassuring and not too s...

As a special treat to go with the sliced meats we were planning for Shabbos lunch, I decided to use the all-rye sourdough I’ve been building all week.  I mean, it was so happy and bubbly and READY, and I couldn’t just stick it in the fridge without baking it up.  How heartless would that have been??? (I started this sourdough from scratch last Saturday night.  Here’s an earlier picture .  And another .) I used the 40% Caraway Rye on Page 194 of  Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes (B:ABB) , which I’ve been testing out all week .  I did, however, omit the caraway because I am probably the only Jewish person who doesn’t enjoy “kimmel” in her rye. As when I made the book’s Vermont Sourdough earlier this week, I was astonished that the recipe only calls for 2 Tbsp of the original, mature starter.  However, the Caraway Rye does offer a bit of a cheat in the form of a teaspoon of commercial yeast added to the final mix.  Not sure w...

To celebrate the conclusion of our Week in Bread and also to get myself thoroughly back on the challah wagon after using storebought (gasp!) last Shabbos, I made the Challah straight off of Page 240 Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes (B:ABB) , which I’ve been using as inspiration and technical guide all week . The recipe actually appears twice, with the exact same formula and instructions - once in the chapter on straight doughs and once in the chapter on braiding.  Is that considerate, not making the reader flip back to find the recipe, or is it inconsiderate, making the reader pay more for extra pages that duplicate a recipe found elsewhere in the book?  Just weird, I think. Anyway, the recipe uses way more eggs than I usually use, and a lot less sugar, but I followed it more or less literally (discovered I was out of canola oil, didn’t want to sub olive oil, so I used margarine instead – there isn’t much in the recipe, so I figured the taste wouldn’t come...

I know a couple of people who seem to adore margarine.  Maybe not as much as butter, but they are happy as clams to shmeer their bread with it at fleishik meals and eat desserts made primarily with margarine.   All I can say is ugh.   I cannot force myself to think of margarine, particularly the pareve kind (which is all we buy), as anything less than an abomination.  Perhaps the dairy margarines have some redeeming whey flavour, but the pareve ones are just cloying, cloying, like in the Ugly Blueberry Cake I baked before Sukkos.  It was otherwise delicious, an absolutely out-of-this-world cake (if a little on the potchkedik side), but almost inedible - to me - due to its predominantly margarine aftertaste.  I certainly plan to revisit the recipe at some point when I'm looking for a special dairy dessert... but in the meantime, well, feh.   I used to use Butter-flavoured Crisco, and found it not as terrible as margarine.  B...