Bread donut

Instead of the usual free-form or loaf breads, Italian Bread is shaped into a ring! It takes so little to excite me these days. Ingredients include: flour, water, malt, salt, water & hard flour. After scaling the dough into pieces and rounding it up, you press your fist into the center of each piece and move it around until a hole is formed, creating a ring. The rings are dusted with cornmeal to make the crust tougher. Baking time is 40 minutes at 400 degrees, with the first five minutes baked with steam to make a crispy crust. I found the crust a bit tough for my liking, but the inside was nice and chewy.

Sourdough for breakfast

We used a commercial-made starter for this Sourdough Bread as the real thing takes about three days to make. That, in addition to water, strong baker's flour and yeast is proofed and baked for 30 minutes. I won't lie - it tastes good, but I don't get why you'd spend three days making this. I think the 'Art of Bread' is lost on me sometimes!

Braided & baked

I had always thought Challah Bread would be a lot harder to make than it actually is. Heavy in eggs and a very sticky dough, we used the 4-strand technique to braid this {4 over 2, 1 over 3, 2 over 3...I will be chanting this in my sleep}. I think these loaves were supposed to end up a lot wider but oh well, not a bad first attempt.

It's not what you think

Chop Suey {or "leftover" bread} is actually an American recipe that uses all of those extra ingredients left over at the end of a day in the kitchen - in this case, candied peel, walnuts and raisins. Once the dough has been mixed, rounded up and rested, it's chopped into small pieces and placed on a baking tray. Then the fruit & nut mixture - along with some eggs - is poured over top and mixed in {huge mess}. The pieces are dropped into loaf pans and baked, which is why the bread ends up looking so textured.

This bread is heavy in eggs, unlike the other breads I've made so far. It's also a much sweeter bread than the others, which means it's my current favourite. A mini version of these will be perfect for the holidays.

Chocolate & cherries

Loving this combo this fall. I made Oatmeal Chocolate Cherry cookies with this recipe this week and then came across these Chocolate & Cherry Granola Bars in Inspired magazine. The sweetness of the chocolate + the bitterness of the cherries = so good.

The perfect fall meal

Fresh-baked whole wheat bread and Three Onion Soup from Food & Drink magazine for dinner tonight - and tomorrow night. And the night after that...it's a big pot. There's Vital Wheat Gluten in this bread, which I'd never heard of. It's a gluten booster, which whole wheat bread needs as it's heavier than regular bread. Other than that and whole wheat flour, the recipe is basically the same as the other types of bread I've made so far: water, milk, bread flour, sugar, salt, molasses and a bit of shortening.