Baking Adventures

I spent my Sunday puttering about in the kitchen. It made a bit of a mess. First, I pulled my jar of sourdough starter out of the refrigerator, emptied it into a bowl, and then re-filled the jar with flour, water, and some of the starter again to get another cycle going.

I am still trying to master sourdough bread. I am not there yet. It takes forever to raise on the counter, but pop it in the oven and it expands faster than the M1 money supply during COVID. This loaf was a bit moist in the middle, and I forgot to brush olive oil on the top, but it's still not bad. I need to bake it in smaller lumps and I'll have perfect bread bowls for soup, I think. Next week, maybe it'll be time to try chili as well.

Pineapple does go on pizza, and goes especially well with shredded black forest deli ham instead of the usual Canadian bacon "Hawaiian" style. There was a sale on lunch meat and Daiya shreds at the grocery store, so I stocked up. There's another of these delicious abominations in the freezer for baking at a later date.

@meesterboom's post about bagels reminded me I was long overdue for another pretzel-making festival due to the similar boiling process pictured above. Here's a link to the recipe I followed.

I think I finally figured out a decent system for the whole process, too. I put a cooling rack into the kitchen sink near the range. As the water and baking soda came to a boil in a large skillet, I divided my dough into a dozen blobs of approximately equal size. Then, I rolled out the first blob and tied it into its classic knot. It went straight into the boiling water knot-side down. Then, I quickly rolled out and tied another pretzel. It also went in knot-side down, and I turned the previous pretzel knot-side up. The third pretzel followed shortly, the second pretzel got flipped, and I pulled the first pretzel from the water and placed it on the rack in the sink. Minimal mess! I repeated this cycle until all the pretzels were boiled.

I just used coarse salt as a topping. Any over-sprinkling went into the sink, again minimizing mess. I baked six, and froze the other six for later. The result with the baked pretzels was crispy dark crusts and soft chewy interiors. Perfect! I took no pictures, alas. Too busy eating and sharing.