Today, October 24, inside Crust & Crumb Academy! We're baking something special this Saturday. Pan de Muerto, the traditional Mexican bread made for Día de los Muertos, a celebration of remembrance, family, and the people we love. And we're making it TWO ways! 🍞 Traditional Yeasted Pan de Muerto Soft, buttery, lightly sweet, with that beautiful orange aroma. A great choice if you want to mix your dough and bake today. 🥖 Sourdough Pan de Muerto We're using a stiff levain for this version. It takes a little more patience, but that's part of the journey. If you've already prepared your levain, you're ready to join us. We'll talk about the history behind this beautiful bread, shape the traditional bones that decorate the top, and bake it together. 📖 GET YOUR RECIPES: 🍞 Yeasted Version: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/pan-de-muerto 🥖 Sourdough Version: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/sourdough-pan-de-muerto Perfection isn't required. Progress is. Who's baking with me today, yeasted or sourdough? Henry⭐🔥

I got a new USA Pan popover pan as a gift this week, and I couldn't wait to break it in. If you've never had one, a popover is a light, hollow bread that rises from nothing but eggs, milk, and flour. No yeast, no starter. Steam does all the lifting. If that sounds like Yorkshire pudding, you're right, they're cousins. Yorkshire pudding is the British original, baked in hot beef drippings and served alongside the Sunday roast with gravy. The popover is the American take, baked with butter in deep, steep-sided cups like these, so it climbs tall and comes out hollow in the middle. Same batter, different fat, different pan, different table. I made mine a little differently, with a touch of vanilla and a little sugar, and these were so good. Crisp and deep brown on the outside, soft and custardy inside. I ate four of them in one sitting and stuffed two with ham. That sweet and salty bite is hard to beat. Recipe's below, so grab a pan and give them a shot this weekend. (You can also do these in a muffin tin.) Yield: 6 popovers in a popover pan, or 10 to 12 in a muffin tin Ingredients - 3 large eggs, room temperature: 150 g (about ¾ cup beaten) - Whole milk, warm to the touch: 240 g (1 cup) - All-purpose flour: 125 g (1 cup, spooned and leveled) - Granulated sugar: 12 g (1 tbsp) - Pure vanilla extract: 5 ml (1 tsp) - Fine salt: 3 g (½ tsp) - Melted butter: 14 g (1 tbsp), plus about 15 g (1 tbsp) for the pan Method 1. Blend or whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, salt, and 1 tbsp melted butter until smooth. Add the flour and mix just until there are no lumps. A few small bubbles are fine. 2. Rest the batter at least 30 minutes at room temperature. You can also refrigerate it overnight, then let it warm up before baking. 3. Put the empty pan on a middle rack and heat the oven to 450°F (230°C). Give it a full 15 minutes so the pan gets hot. 4. Pull the pan, add about ½ tsp butter to each cup, and fill each one half to two-thirds full. Work fast. 5. Bake 20 minutes at 450°F (230°C), then drop to 350°F (175°C) and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until they're deep brown and firm. Don't open the door during the first 30 minutes. 6. Turn them out and poke each one with a paring knife to let the steam out. That keeps them from collapsing. Serve hot.

Good morning, bakers! The doors are open. Today's bake: Cranberry Walnut Loaf, and you get to choose your lane. 🥖 Yeasted version: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/cranberry-walnut-sourdough?variant=yeasted 🍞 Sourdough version: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/cranberry-walnut-sourdough New around here? Here's how the bake-along works. Bake at your own pace, all day long. Post pictures of your bread and your baking process right here in this thread. Questions, concerns, substitution issues, bring them all. I do my best to get back to every one of you, and when I can't, the knowledgeable folks in this community always jump in and help out. That's what makes this place what it is. We've spent the week talking substitutions, so here's the short version. Make this recipe yours. Add your inclusions after the first fold, once you've built some gluten. Some of you like to wait and do it during a lamination at the end, right before shaping. Both work. If the dough tears when you add them, it just needs more folds first. The recipe exists to make you successful, not to box you in. My bake: I swapped the Cranberries for Craisins (soaked 30 minutes before they went in) and added some baker's chocolate, because why not. Drop your first photo when your dough is mixed. Let's see that bread. 👇 Henry⭐🔥

You've asked me this for years. "Henry, I love this recipe but it calls for yeast. Can I use my starter?" Or the other way: "No starter going. Can I still bake it?" Yes. And now the tool does the math for you. 🧮 I rebuilt it from scratch. New engine, tested against real recipes, over 130 checks before anything reaches you. How to use it 👇 📋 Paste a recipe, snap a photo of the page, or upload a PDF. 🔀 Pick To Sourdough or To Yeast, or leave it on Auto. 👀 Every ingredient shows the new amount and what it was before. 🖨️ Print it, save it as a PDF, or share it. English and Spanish. 🇺🇸🇲🇽 What it gets right ✅ Going to sourdough, it builds your levain the night before and pulls that flour and water back out of the dough, so hydration stays where the author put it. Going to yeast, it drops the levain build, adds the yeast after the autolyse (not before), and resets the fermentation clock so you're not overproofing. Cup bakers, you're covered. 🥄 A changed line reads "about 3¼ cups, was 4 cups." No guessing. One honest note 🍞 The amounts are math. The times are a starting point. Your kitchen, your flour, and your starter get a vote. Go by the dough: puffy, about 50% bigger, slow spring-back when you poke it. And if a recipe has something odd in it, the tool stops you before you print. I'd rather it hold you up than send you to the oven with bad numbers. Try it on a recipe you've been curious about and tell me what happened. 👇 If something looks off, I want to hear it. Your recipes make this better, not mine. https://sourdough-yeast-converter-v2.vercel.app/ Henry ⭐🔥

When I posted the video of me making this loaf, hardly anyone asked about the bread. They asked about the bowl. Where did I get it, what is it made of, how do I take care of it. So I went to Holland Bowl Mill and asked if they'd do something for us. They said yes. You get 15% off your order. Here's how to use it: 1. Go to https://skoo.ly/s/aff-holland-bowl 2. Use the code heirloom at checkout 3. Put Henry Hunter in the Customer Notes so they credit it to me They've been making wooden bowls for 120 years, and this is the one on my bench. A 17 inch handcrafted, heirloom quality Beachwood bowl. I may earn a commission when you order through me and that goes right back into building our community. Henry ⭐🔥