We Gather Together

It's time for family and feasting...possibly my favorite holiday of the year. Except for a crunchy topping for the sweet potatoes, my contribution to the feast is ready to go. I'm looking forward to joining the kids this afternoon. There will be a lot of laughter, as there always is.

As for yesterday, it was a busy day from start to finish. I don't know what was on my mind in the morning, but I was moving kind of slow, putzing around doing this and that thing, when it occurred to me that I had a lot to finish by day's end and I needed to get my rear end moving.

Baking bread was the first task. This is the same Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough I made last month, but I'm experimenting with the dough. It's so wet, that it's impossible to work with. The best one can hope for is to gather it up with both hands and plop it into the banneton. There's no beautiful shaping or scoring because the dough is the consistency of pudding. Still, it baked up into a pretty loaf.

When I say I'm "experimenting with the dough," I mean I'm experimenting with less hydration. The original recipe calls for 400g of water to be added. For this loaf and the next one, I added just 350g. And although I attempted to score it, you can see that the surface of the bread just cracked at random. There is no evidence of any of the scoring.

The second loaf baked up much the same way. The loaves are more squat than I would like them, but they'll still taste good. I'm very curious to see what they look like on the inside.

As for my experiment, I didn't notice much difference in the "wetness" of the dough. I still had enough starter to bake another loaf. For the third try, I've added just 300g of water. So I'm thinking maybe the third time's a charm? Either that or it's three strikes and you're out. The dough is currently rising downstairs. I've moved it to the banneton. It was a little less precarious getting it from bread board to banneton, but still quite wet. I'll be curious to see how it bakes up. If the crust cracks worse than before, I'll know it's caused by the lack of hydration.

After that, I finished off the Heart & Home quilt. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out.

I'd been in search of fabrics on a previous trip to the quilt shop, but didn't find anything I liked. Then, it occurred to me to shop my stash...duh...and I found all the fabrics I needed right there. Today I'll probably have time to cut and sew the backing. Aside from that, I'm just baking bread and eating turkey.

For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, this post comes with my best wishes for a wonderful holiday meal. To those of you in the deep freeze back east, stay warm and dry. To my other friends...just enjoy your families and your food coma. If you're traveling, please be careful out there.