The Fourth of July

Nala at the River in front of our cottage

My husband and I spent the 4th over on the Pamlico River near Belhaven, NC along with our dog Nala! With the holiday in the middle of the week, many of our neighbors needed to return to work. Those of us left joined forces and took turns cooking dinner at night. I decided to bake rolls for the dinners. At our river cottage, ingredients and culinary tools are scarce. Using one of the two cookbooks in house, I found a recipe for Sweet Potato Rolls. There were few measuring tools and I guesstimated most of the ingredients. The sweet potatoes added a lovely golden color, good nutrition, and a deeper richer flavor to the rolls. With the warm humid air, the rolls didn't take very long to rise!!  

King Arthur Flour Bake Along: Chocolate Babka

6/25/17 Babka is a Eastern Europe sweet yeast bread.  The Eastern Europe Jewish version involves twisted ropes of filled dough. The filling can be cinnamon or chocolate. This bread recipe goes together quickly but extra time is required to prepare filling and topping. Find the recipe on the King Arthur Bake Along site and there is also a great recipe from the NY Times with video.
Here is the Babka panned for rising, risen, baked and packaged. One loaf was for my Prayer Group and aother for my brother and sister-in-law.

Babka Panned

Risen Babka

Final Result

King Arthur Bake Along Baguettes

6/23/17 Baguettes from the King Arthur Bake Along again. This recipe includes a poolish. This is a preferment, a fermented dough added to the recipe to increase flavor and add additional leavening. A poolish is made with equal parts water and flour plus yeast. The poolish for this recipe was made last night and included in my dough this morning. Check out the poolish, it has the same appearance as the pic from the King Arthur site.

Perfect Poolish

Here is the final result packaged in bread gabs I purchased from Amazon. Never seem to have packaging for gifting baked goods and this really fits the bill.