Notes about Recipes in this book

• Geronimo

  • Astrid5555 on June 08, 2020

    A nice seeded loaf with a light crumb. Did not tell the kids about all the seeds inside (chia, flax, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin), thus no complaints.

• Brioche

  • verorenee on October 16, 2020

    There are temperature errors throughout the book (an issue of converting Celsius to Fahrenheit). This recipe also says to leave your dough out to rise for much too long, which would make your bread overproof.

  • Astrid5555 on February 07, 2021

    Beautiful dough, recipe works like a charm until proofing. Unfortunately had not read verorenee’s note about that issue beforehand, so had to put my dough into the fridge overnight, otherwise would have been overproofed. Does not get stale as quickly as your usual yeasted brioche because of the sourdough. Leftovers are perfect for French toast. Since I have the UK edition no temperature errors here.

• Sourdough challah

  • Astrid5555 on April 26, 2020

    This challah is a real labor of love. All in all it takes 3 days to complete the recipe. It would have been nice to have had some kind of time schedule in the recipe head note. I had not read through all of the 2 page recipe before I started and ended up having to put the dough into the fridge twice overnight to fit it into my schedule (and this while self-quarantaining anyway). The end result has a much denser crumb than my go-to yeast challah bread which takes probably only 2 hours to make. It tastes nice but is not worth the time investment. Ok to try as a covid-19 sourdough project though.

• Sourdough bagels

  • Astrid5555 on April 02, 2021

    For a soudough recipe these are quite uninvolved and the dough is great to work with. They were much denser than my ususal yeasted bagels but the whole family still enjoyed these. Froze half of the baked bagels, curious to see how they hold up.

• Poppy seed babka

  • Astrid5555 on February 07, 2021

    Used half a brioche dough for this recipe. Be careful not to overproof the dough, stated proofing times are too long or you might end up with an overproofed babka. Beautiful to work with and really good.

• Sourdough banana bread

  • Astrid5555 on April 09, 2020

    At the moment it’s either camp Sourdough or camp Banana bread, so this recipe was the big opportunity to be in both with one recipe. I had to give it a try and use some of my sourdough discard. Is the end result worth the wait? The recipe needs to be started 2 days ahead and had me utterly confused. Only after I had added an additional 167g of starter I realized that what the recipe wanted me to add was my step 1 pre-ferment. Well, with lots of the starter in the recipe I decided I could reduce the wait before baking and just put it in the oven straight away, otherwise I would have needed to bake in the middle of the night. Did we like it? This banana bread is much denser than a baking powder raised dough and a small piece goes a long way. I enjoyed the toasted hazelnuts I added (instead of the optional walnuts), but I much prefer other banana breads I made in the past.

• Sourdough rye brownies

  • Astrid5555 on February 07, 2021

    This had me at rye & sourdough, so I made half a recipe for my chocolate loving son. While he happily ate the whole batch over several days, this recipe reminded me that you don’t need to put sourdough into everything, especially sweet bakes. But that’s just my personal preference, I just don’t like that lingering sour aftertaste that sourdough imparts on some sweet treats.

• Fig Khorasan cake

  • Astrid5555 on November 02, 2019

    This was my first time baking with fresh figs and this cake was absolutely delicious. Substituted plain flour for the Khorasan flour, worked well. Maybe this was the reason why the baking time was so off. After the 25 to 30 minutes indicated in the recipe, the cake center was still completely liquid. It took closer to 50 minutes until it was done. Nevertheless will definitely make again!

• Eat Your Books by Jenny Hartin

  ...a treasure trove of recipes from London’s Margot Bakery and a stash of flour that brings me comfort

  Full review