Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, my son, Ryan Hunter.

A local TV station is doing a special on sourdough and the craze it's creating!! https://www.wmur.com/article/chronicle-sourdough-bread-new-hampshire/71030617?fbclid=IwdGRjcAROJLdjbGNrBE4kqGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHpxTjvqZ2qJ91jUVmNO9tuL40Wc1LLt87wbeNRs3aya9iIap5EI-hZ7kjIGX_aem_Sw9jZqwP3I7rCQ_aU6kmSw

Quick reminder about a tool some of you might have missed, and an update for those who've been using it. The Sourdough & Yeast Recipe Converter lives in the Classroom under the Toolbox. It does one thing really well: takes any bread recipe and converts it in either direction. Sourdough to yeast, yeast to sourdough. Accurate baker's math, hydration preserved, levain build calculated for you. Here's why this matters. You find a recipe you love, but it's a yeasted version and you want to bake it with your starter. Or your neighbor asks for your sourdough recipe but they don't keep a starter. Instead of guessing at ratios or Googling conversion charts, you paste the recipe in and get a clean, accurate conversion with method instructions included. What it handles: - Lean doughs, enriched doughs, even high-sugar sweet doughs - Multi-flour recipes (your blend ratios stay intact) - Levain build with proper inoculation rates - Troubleshooting tips specific to your dough type - Works in English and Spanish Give it a try: https://skoo.ly/sourdough-converter If you convert something this week, drop it in the comments. I want to see what you're baking with it.

Enriched dough is something different. When you add fat, eggs, sugar, or dairy to a dough, you've crossed into enriched territory. And everything changes when you do that. The fat coats the gluten strands and slows their development, which is why enriched doughs need more mixing time and often more patience. The eggs add structure and richness and give you that golden crumb you see in brioche and babka. The sugar feeds the yeast but also competes with it, which is why enriched doughs ferment slower than lean ones. The milk adds flavor and tenderness that water simply can't. Here's why this matters for you this week: we're baking babka this Saturday. Babka is an enriched dough. Understanding what's happening inside that dough is what separates a baker who follows a recipe from a baker who understands what they're doing. This week we're going to learn the whole picture. The windowpane test. The cold retard. The filling. The shaping. The bake. By Sunday you'll have a loaf worth sharing and a set of skills you can use on brioche, cinnamon rolls, challah, and milk bread for the rest of your life. Pick your path now so you're ready by Friday. Path A: Sourdough Chocolate Babka Path B: Holiday Chocolate Babka (yeasted) Path C: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/roasted-garlic-gruyere-babka All are in the Recipe Pantry. But don't rely solely on me. Do your homework. See what's out there that might interest you beyond what I'm supplying. Let's have a conversation Bring what you find interesting and we'll talk about it. See you Saturday. Henry ⭐🔥

Easter and Passover Weekend -- Week 4 Sandy Chong posted a crumb shot this week. Open, airy, gorgeous. And then she cried. After a very rough few months, after nearly quitting baking, that loaf told her everything she needed to hear. That's what the Road to Sourdough has been building toward. The Week This wasn't a one-day bake. Easter and Passover don't fit neatly into a Saturday, so I opened the week up and gave everyone a choice: sculpt an Easter bunny, bake an enriched Easter loaf, make hot cross buns, try a babka or tsoureki, bring something to a Passover table, or bake whatever bread your family expects this time of year. The community took that wide-open invitation and ran with it. And I need to be honest about something. I wasn't in the kitchen for most of Saturday. I was in the bleachers at my son Ryan's track meet, watching him win his 3rd tournament championship Of the season and set school records in the 100m, 200m, 4x100 relay, and javelin. Cell service was spotty, it was cold, and you all held the kitchen down without me. That's what a real community does. @Colleen Vergara committed to baking both options, called it "weekend torture," and the community loved it. She shaped her bunny, prayed for oven spring ("she's not that large"), and came back with four photos of a rabbit loaf she admitted might be dense and underproofed, but it was a rabbit and it was hers. She was still shaping mini bunnies from enriched dough when the thread wound down. @Susie Kendall's bunny adventure started the night before when she dozed off during bulk fermentation and her husband had to remind her the dough was still going. She shaped it in the morning, cut the hind legs from the wrong direction, and ended up with what she called a "badonk-a-donk tail." Her daughter-in-law sent back a crumb shot: fluffy, soft, really good. @Leigh Skowronski posted a five-photo progression of a sculpted Easter bunny sourdough made with 50% freshly milled flour. Twelve likes. That's the most-liked comment I've seen in the thread in weeks. @Donna Angelo baked hot cross buns a day early and they were beautiful. @Tracy Havlik baked sourdough bunny loaves and espresso hot cross buns ahead of Saturday because she had a two-day vendor event, then showed up to the thread at 4 AM anyway. @Judy Lyle's hot cross buns had vanilla, cinnamon oil, and an apricot-orange marmalade glaze that sounded like something you'd pay good money for. @Sandra Jager changed her mind about skipping hot cross buns and baked them anyway. @Tammi Thurston's hot cross buns were so good I told her there was no way it was her first time. She said it wasn't, but it was the best she'd ever made.