Super Easy Bakery Style Sourdough Bread

This is probably the easiest way to get an amazing loaf of sourdough bread. It also can get you an amazing ear. I had never gotten an ear before and on my first time there it was. Make sure to make a deep enough slice for that ear to pop up.

Easy Sourdough Bread

Serving Size:
Makes 1 ~755g loaf
Time:
24hrs
Difficulty:
Medium

Adapted from: Culinary Exploration

Ingredients

  • 257g Water
  • 100g Active Starter
  • 13g Sea Salt
  • 388g bread flour (Can sub 50g for Whole Wheat) (add vital wheat gluten to AP flour to get it up to higher protein, read instructions on the VWG container on how much to add)

Directions

  1. 7-8pm night before baking, feed starter and leave at room temp. The idea here is to only leave a little bit of starter after its used in the bread. Then the next day you can feed it again and make bread and so on. It’s a repeatable process. You would start off with something like 15-20g of starter and add 100g of flour and 100g of water. Then only use 200g when making the dough.
  2. Next Morning – combine starter, water, and salt and mix it until the starter is mixed in a bit. Add the flour and mix all ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or something similar. Use your wet hands to get it to come together a bit more just to get rid of any pockets of flour. Don’t try to overmix it. It will look ugly at this point so there is no use. Put it back in the bowl covered to let it rest.
  3. 10-15 mins later – Spending less that a minute, knead it into a more smooth dough ball. Pop in back into the bowl and let rest covered.
  4. 30 mins later – Super easy stretch and fold. Only way to understand this is to watch it. Make it back into a ball afterwards and let rest for 6 hours.
  5. 6 hrs later – Pre-shape and into the shape of the banneton and let rest for 10 mins.
  6. 10-15 mins later – Flour banneton, flour dough and flip over. Shape the dough into a simple oval and put it into the banneton seam side up.
  7. 1.5-2 hrs later – Put in fridge and let rest until you want to bake it.
  8. At time of your choice – Preheat oven 425F with the baking stone or steel on the middle rack for about an hour before you want to bake.
  9. 1 hr later – Take the dough out of fridge and turn it out onto a peel. Using a sharp knife, a ,or a razor score the dough. Place the dough onto the stone or steel and cover with a large pot. One big enough to cover the loaf.
  10. Bake for 20mins with the pot on then remove the pot and bake for another 20-30 mins depending on how dark you want the crust.

Mexico Style Flour Tortillas

Mexico Style Flour Tortillas

This is going to be a long one so hang in there or just get the recipe, you choose.

Having grown up in the house I did, by default you had to eat Mexican food. It was a staple of my childhood. We loved it so much that we would go to a place close to where my Dad used to work called Las Cazuelas. From where we lived in Denver the restaurant was a long ways away, but the drive was well worth it. I’ve been told that I would eat it at 3 years old with a cup nestled in the crook of my arm because I would drink the water whenever it got too spicy. Needless to say Mexican food is my favorite food hands down. We would get quarts of their refried beans and quarts of chile verde, bring them home and have Mexican food as our dinner for Christmas Eve. We/I absolutely love Mexican food.

Now having said that my Dad would make tortillas whenever we had Mexican food at home. His tortillas were great. There is a story behind the recipe. I think in their first house they had a separate apartment downstairs and a hispanic lady lived there and she taught him how to make them. Now those tortillas have some baking powder in them so they were a little more puffy, like the ones you would buy at the store but obviously better. We even had a dedicated cast iron tortilla griddle.

They were a little tough to make though, so I haven’t really made them in a long time. Over the course of a few years, I have been looking for an easier recipe. I also wanted them be to more like the tortillas you would get if you traveled to Mexico. Kind of thin, that have that hint of lard when heated up.

Since we live in Arizona, we are by default really close to Mexico. We are only about 4 hours from a place us gringos call Rocky Point. It’s really called Puerto Peñasco. Its a great little place on the west coast of the Mexico right along the Gulf of California. When you drive through the border and get to the Mexico side, depending on the time of day, there will be vendors on the sides of the street selling all sorts of stuff. But the one you are looking for is the lady with a plethora of bags full of tortillas. You will want to stop and buy some, at least 3 bags, I promise it will be worth it. 

If you don’t want to go that far for great Mexico style flour tortillas, you don’t have to. You can make them at home and they are SUPER EASY especially if you have a kitchen scale, similar to this one. I don’t know if I could do without it now since I weigh out a ton of ingredients in the kitchen now. So much more accurate and recipes come out perfect every time. I make mine in my Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle attachment, no need for the dough hook here. It makes the process so much faster, seriously, maybe 5 minutes if that. I can’t stress this enough, it makes it so easy.

Mexico Style Tortillas

Serving Size:
Time:
Difficulty:

Adapted from Cook’s Country

Measuring by weight makes things easier and quicker.

Ingredients

  • 2 3/4 C. (400g) all purpose flour
  • 2 t. (16g) regular table salt
  • 6 T. (100g) lard or vegetable shortening – Lard has way better flavor 😉
  • 3/4 C. (200g) water at 110 degrees, must be warm, not a typo

Directions

  1. MAKE DOUGH If you are weighing your ingredients you can do this in the same bowl no need to use separate bowls. Combine flour and salt in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment and mix to combine. Add in the lard or shortening (weigh it after you mix the flour and salt in the same bowl) into flour mixture and mix until mixture resembles coarse meal. About 1-2 minutes. Add in water and mix until combined.
  2. FORM BALLS Turn dough out onto clean surface and knead briefly to form smooth, cohesive ball. Roll 2½ tablespoons or 59grams of dough into balls. Transfer balls to plate or container, and cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm, at least 30 minutes or up to 3 days. Refrigerating them is very necessary. I make a lot and put the ones I don’t make into the fridge until I want to make more a few days later.
  3. COOK TORTILLAS Working on lightly floured surface, roll balls to 8-inch rounds. Heat oil in large -nonstick -skillet or cast iron skillet over medium-low heat until just smoking. Wipe out skillet with paper towels. Lay 1 round in skillet and cook until -surface begins to bubble, about 1 minute. Flip and cook until browned and puffed, about 1 minute. Transfer to plate and cover with kitchen towel. Repeat with remaining rounds. Serve.

Giant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (Chewy Too)

Giant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Do you remember in high school (now I am dating myself here so forgive me) when you could get a Grandma’s cookie that was actually a large cookie? Not one of these itty bitty cookies they sell today, but a large cookie bigger than your palm? Well I miss those days. My favorite of all the Grandma’s cookies was the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. Yeah the others were good but to me you couldn’t beat the Oatmeal Raisin ones. Yeah the other Grandma’s cookies were good but to me you couldn’t beat the Oatmeal Raisin cookies. This recipe for Giant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies captures the flavor, chewiness, and the size of those old school Grandma’s cookies and you can make them at home.

My family is divided on Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. My wife, and Kailey on one side that don’t like them (pick out the raisins they say) Kennedy is in the middle and the rest of us on the other. I would say that it might be my favorite cookie of all time. You can argue that an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie is better but I think the chocolate takes away from the flavor of the actual dough of the cookie whereas the raisin adds to the flavor and does not detract from it. 

I really hope you take the time to make these and tell me in the comments where your family lies on the Oatmeal Raisin spectrum, I would love to know.

Giant Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Adapted and tweaked from Cooks Illustrated

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 C. All-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 C. Raisins
  • 1/2 t. Table salt
  • 1/2 t. Baking powder
  • 1/4 t. Fresh ground nutmeg (fresh really makes a difference)
  • 1/2 t. Cinnamon
  • 2 sticks butter (1/2 pound), softened but still firm
  • 1 C. Brown sugar
  • 1 C. White sugar
  • 2 Eggs
  • 3 C. Old fashioned rolled oats
  • Sea Salt for 

Directions

  1. Adjust oven racks to middle position; heat oven to 350 degrees. In bowl of electric mixer or by hand, beat butter until creamy. Add sugars; beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time.
  2. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and nutmeg together, then mix them into butter-sugar mixture with. Mix in oats and optional raisins.
  3. Form dough into sixteen to twenty 2-inch balls or I used 2 scoops of a #40 schoop, placing each dough round onto one of two parchment paper–covered, large cookie sheets. Bake until cookie edges turn golden brown, 22 to 25 minutes. (Halfway during baking, turn cookie sheet from front to back) Slide cookies on parchment onto cooling rack. Let cool at least 30 minutes before serving.