Tomorrow we bake. Here's everything you need to know before bed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1️⃣ Recipe Links (Final Versions) 🥖 Sourdough:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-sourdough-loaf 🥖 Yeasted:https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/poppy-seed-yeasted-loaf 📌 If you saw an earlier version with T55 as the default, the updated recipes now call for bread flour as the standard. If you only have all-purpose flour, drop the water by 5 to 10g and you'll be fine. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2️⃣ Tonight, Do This 🥣 Sourdough Track Build your levain at your usual ratio. If you mix later tonight, around 8 to 9 PM, it should peak around 5 to 7 AM tomorrow. Set it on the counter where you can see it in the morning. 🥖 Yeasted Track Mix your poolish tonight at 8 PM. ✔️ 90g flour✔️ 90g cold water✔️ A pinch (0.5g) instant yeast Cover loosely. By morning it'll be bubbly, slightly domed, and sweet-smelling. That's your engine for tomorrow's dough. 🌻 Both Tracks Toast your seeds tonight if you can. 🔥 Dry skillet🔥 Low heat ⏱️ Poppy or sesame: 2 to 3 minutes⏱️ Sunflower: 4 to 6 minutes Cool completely on a plate, then cover. Tomorrow they'll be ready when you need them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3️⃣ About 80% Hydration 😅 If 80% scares you, drop to 75%. Use 30g less water in the final dough. Same recipe. Slightly tighter crumb. Much easier to handle. Nobody's going to know but you. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4️⃣ The Salt Moment 🧂 When you add the salt after fermentolyse, the dough is going to look like it's falling apart. Tearing. Lumpy. Separating in your hands. This is normal. Salt tightens gluten unevenly at first, then the dough comes back together stronger than before. Keep working it for 2 to 3 minutes. 📺 If you watched the video on this, you already know. If you didn't... go watch it now. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 5️⃣ Cold Kitchen? ❄️ If your kitchen is below 68°F, use the oven light trick:

I want to give you a real update on something I’ve been building, and then I want to tell you about something that happened to me today. The update first. I’ve been heads-down on a new course called From Oven to Market based on my book of the same name. It’s the course I’ve wanted to build for years: how to actually sell the bread you bake. Pricing. Packaging. Booth design. Customer connection. Scaling without burning out. Nine modules, a full recipe library built for selling, an AI tool that turns your story into a real website. The whole thing. It should have been finished last week. It is not finished. Life got in the way the way life does, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But it is close. Very close. I am in the last stretch and I want you to hear it from me before I start announcing dates. Here is the part I really wanted to share with you today. A box arrived on my doorstep this morning from a member of our community. Carolyn Bajoie runs a cottage bakery in Baton Rouge called NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes. She sent me a sample of her work. I want to tell you what that unboxing was like, because it is exactly what I am teaching in the course. White shipping box. Weight in your hands. Open the flap and there is pink crinkle paper folded over the contents, not stuffed, folded. Pull it back and there is the first teacake in a clear sleeve with a white label, a little teapot logo, “NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes, Baton Rouge, LA,” phone number right on the label. Lift it out and there are three more stacks underneath, sleeved, tied, labeled. Stacked the way you stack things you are proud of. I had not eaten a single bite when I started writing this. I needed you to understand the experience of the box first, because that is the lesson. Customers eat with their eyes. The first impression is the package. The anticipation is part of the product. Carolyn understands this in her bones. I am going to feature her ( @Carolyn Bajoie ) in the course as a real example of what presentation looks like when somebody takes it seriously. I will also tell you the teacakes themselves are excellent. Soft, lightly sweet, the kind of recipe somebody has been making for years and refuses to change.

Ran out of bread last week for brekkie. I was craving for English muffins. I used the high gluten flour and added some wholewheat. I was being creative again in my safe and happy place, my kitchen. I made the muffins too large and still getting use to my high gluten flour. The first tray was too dark. The second, experimenting and baked it lighter. I only had 12 rings and ended up with 14. I pan fried the front 2 in the first dark baking pan as I ran out of rings. I made these before I got sick. I tried being creative as usual as did not want to slave over the stove frying them. Tropical weather here and so hot and extremely humid. It was 90 F. I decided to bake instead of frying them. I covered them with another baking pan on top. Trying to be innovative and thinking out of the box. Here is the recipe I used and halved the recipe for 12 English muffins. Please do try as they were such great tasting English muffins I have ever tasted. I used active starter as I had extra that I had made. Bim’s Sourdough English Muffins Recipe 1,200 g. Bread flour 760 g. Milk 300 g. Discard one week old 80 g. Honey or sugar 22 g. Salt 3 eggs Mixed everything I large bowl followed with 4 sets of stretch and fold in every 30 minutes (2 hours) Proof another 2 hours or until it rises 70% at 25-27 degrees Celsius Option one same days baked cut the dough into 110 g. Or your preference size and bake Option two retard over night, cold retard give the bread nice flavor and also give you a good benefits for your health 🥰 In the morning cut the dough in to size of your preference and mine are 110 g. (24 English muffins) making ball I use a lot of flour to handle them, rest dough on the counter top to proofing another 2 hours or until double in size. Heat up the pan on medium low, put muffins in and covered the lid for 4-6 minutes each side or cook until golden brown, then transfer the English muffins in to the baking tray and bake in the oven or air flyer another 4 minutes at 190’c This way is to avoid uncooked inside English muffins.

I had a starter (no exxageration) in the back of my fridge. 6 months. My starter as I've said before is from Russia. 15 years old. I resurrected her, her name is Natasha and she gave me the most beautiful loaf. ????? So what's the longest your starter sat and to an inexperienced baker looked gross but you know from past fails and/or successes that you simply had to remove the hooch and expose that wonderful creamy goodness underneath. By the way, the jar was okay (no mold) but oh she gave me a beautiful loaf. Look at that crumb. I love my Natasha. Do you name your starters. They are alive after all. LOL. My husband laughs when I talk to her. :-)

What an inspiration you are. Blessings from NY. Angela E