I love this one. This is another appropriate six strand round challah for Rosh Hashanah for this Saturday’s bake along. This one is a little different than the one described in my recipe, but when have you guys ever followed what’s in my recipe. 😅 The two-tone strands? That's the wash, not the dough. Brush every strand with whole egg like normal except the strands you want to pop. Brush those with egg yolk only. The extra fat and color in the yolk browns deeper in the same bake. Seeds go on the whole-egg strands. Leave the yolk strands bare so the contrast shows. Do you think you might make this one? Henry⭐️🔥

Some of you are gonna get halfway through this video and think, nope, never. That's an honest reaction and I respect it. Others of you are gonna watch her and feel your pulse pick up. You'll see the dough coming out of the refrigerator, the bins stacked, the labels already printed, the car packed in the same order every single week, and you'll think, I want that. I can do that. Here's what I want both of you to notice. She isn't scrambling. She's running a system. The life of a market baker is hard. I did it for years, 80 to 90 loaves a week at my peak, and I won't pretend otherwise. But hard and chaotic are two different things. Most of the mistakes that wreck a market morning, the underbaked loaves, the forgotten change box, the 3 AM panic because you didn't work backward from open, those come from not having a system. Not from bad bread. That's what we teach in From Oven to Market. Not just how to bake. How to build the routine that gets your bread to the table on time, priced right, every Saturday, without burning yourself out by October. Because it doesn't matter how good your bread is if you can't get it to market. So which one are you? Tell me in the comments. No wrong answer. If you watched that and thought "I want that," the course is here: https://fromoventomarket.com Not sure yet? Take the free 2-minute quiz first: https://fromoventomarket.com/quiz Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry⭐️🔥

I’d been strengthening my starter for three days to get ready for the first sourdough bake in my new oven. Fed her, discarded, and what was left in the jar were the dregs. Then the lady who sometimes cleans my house came in. I pushed the jar to the back of the counter, gave her the kitchen, and walked away. Came back to feed my starter and found the jar empty and spotless. Not a smear left in it. Thirteen years, gone in about four seconds, by somebody who thought she was doing me a kindness. I didn’t panic, because I keep a dehydrated backup in the freezer. Same starter, just dried. That backup is the only reason I’m posting a loaf today instead of a sad update. The revival, exactly as I did it: 40g dehydrated starter into 80g water. Stir until it’s fully dissolved, no flakes floating. Give it time. Then 45g bread flour, mix, and let it sit somewhere warm. Day one she barely moved. Day two she was rising and falling on schedule and smelling right. I baked on day two. Now, the honest note. She should’ve had a third day. This loaf is good but she wasn’t at full strength, and if you look close you can read it in the crumb near the top and in how that ear blew out on one side rather than opening clean along the score. Not a failure. Just a starter that was 80 percent of the way back doing 100 percent of the job. Two things I want you to take from this. One, dehydrate your starter. Thin layer on parchment, dry until it snaps, break it up, bag it, freeze it. Do it this week. It costs you fifteen minutes and it’s the difference between a two-day recovery and a two-week rebuild. Two, when you revive from dried, dissolve it completely before the flour goes in. People rush this part and end up with hard flecks that never wake up, then they think the backup failed. It didn’t. It just never got hydrated. This is my foolproof sourdough loaf. Thousands of bakers have run it. Recipe’s free in the Pantry: pantry.bakinggreatbread.com If you dry some starter this week, post a photo of the flakes. I want to see it.

Here’s another way I found to shape the bread we’re making tomorrow. You’re going to take detours anyway I thought I’d give you a few.

@Janice Cockfield named her starter Patience. It spent its first week playing dead. 20 grams of flour and water in a jar on top of the fridge. No rise, no bubbles, nothing but a layer of hooch on top. That's the exact moment most new sourdough bakers pour the whole thing down the sink and decide bread isn't for them. Janice asked questions instead. Stirred the hooch back in, discarded half, fed it, kept the schedule. Saturday morning I got the message: "She woke up from her coma!!!!" Then she made pancakes with the discard, because Janice doesn't waste anything. Today she pulled her first sourdough loaf out of the oven. Look at that ear. Look at that crumb. Bakers with years on her would be proud to pull that loaf. And here's the part I love. Janice is semi-retired. She's baked cakes and cookies for years, but sourdough was new ground. Her taste testers keep telling her she should be selling at the farmers market. One week with a 20 gram starter, and now she's holding proof they might be right. Congratulate Janice in the comments. And if your own jar looks lifeless right now, post a photo in the group. A quiet jar isn't a dead jar. Henry⭐🔥