When I first began experimenting with sourdough I put my heart and soul into creating perfectly formed loaves of bread.  Nowadays, although the loaves aren’t perfect it is more like a habit and happily, I don’t have to put a lot of thought into it.

All those years ago I would never have imagined how adaptable and flexible sourdough can really be.

 

These sourdough pancakes are a perfect example.  This is probably one of my all-time favourite recipes discovered on a beautiful blog which I really miss.   Crunchy Tiger if you are still out there, I would love to see you in bread blogging land again

 

Sourdough bagels thanks to Celia’s recipe and tutorials.  This batch was my first attempt and I am looking forward to trying these again soon.  These were not difficult but I would recommend a little bit of spare time and bench space to make the process run smoothly.

Twisty, plaited white sourdough loaves, one plain and one topped with Za’atar.  The plaits looked far more impressive prior to cooking but this was just for fun.  The baked loaves turned out to be deliciously soft with a lovely open crumb.

White banneton loaves snuggling up with their plaited friends, straight from the wood oven.

Celia and I recently had a conversation on Twitter regarding bread mixing with machinery, as opposed to mixing by hand.  This prompted me to share a photo of my dough mixing machine.  This beast is a commercial size dough mixer that I purchased online through an auction site several years ago.  The brand is Cater Master which you have probably never heard of, apart from my machine, neither have I.  It has a 5kg flour capacity and stands at almost 900mm tall.  As it is too large for my kitchen it lives in the entry area of our house, a unique decorative piece to greet our guests!

I mix almost all of my bread and pizza bases with this machine and I also use it for extra-large batches of biscuit dough at peak biscuits times, such as Christmas.  It has a balloon whisk and paddle attachment as well as a dough  hook.  The dough hook is by far the most used part.  The Cater Master is nothing fancy but it makes easy work of heavy bread dough and now I cannot imagine life without it.

Life is not all flour and bread.  There is also music in the kitchen, at the moment this song is a catchy favourite.

Are you baking or listening to music or both?

Is there a blog out there that hasn’t been updated in ages that you miss?

Happy Friday friends.

As usual I am linking up with Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial.  Celia and many of her blogging friends are a constant source of bread making inspiration.