Today I came across this site while I was searching for info on sourdough starters and recipes, and loved it! Baking is one of my favorite things to do, although I'm not very good at it yet.

 I have a sourdough starter that I made from a recipe on allrecipes.com two or three weeks ago. After four days of fermentation, I made sourdough bread, but it didn't taste very good. Today, I made more, and it tasted a lot more like sourdough bread. It was crumbly, though; doesn't that mean too much flour or something? I only let it rise for about two hours. Once in the bread machine, then I put it in two bread pans, then I let it rise again. It wasn't doubled, but I was impatient. It still tasted really good, it was just a bit heavy.

 I don't know if this site is just about baking bread or if you guys do cookies and stuff, too, but I'm going to write about them. I decided to make cookies sans recipe(I was bored), and I think I did pretty good for a first try. I creamed together about 3 T margerine (it's all that was left) and 1/4 cup each packed brown sugar and white sugar, and nuked it in the microwave for about 30 sec. Then I added 1/2 cup oats, and about 1/4 cup mini-marshmallows, although I don't think they really did anything. I microwaved that for maybe 2 min, and then added 3/4 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda. I added another 1/2 cup oats, and maybe 1 cup flour, and lots of heath toffee chips. I baked three teaspoonfuls of this in the oven for 8-10 min, and the result was a flat, thick, chewy, candylike cookie. So I added more flour, and made one more. This one was a bit flat, but still okay, so I made a whole batch of these, but while they were baking, I added another 1/2 tsp of baking soda to the remaining dough, hoping that'd help with the flatness. When batch #2 came out, my dad suggested adding more flour. I wasn't sure, because the dough was already really hard to stir, but I did. Those ones came out nice and happy and more cookieish. I think they still could have used more flour, but I liked how they turned out.

That's all!

Adele

I think these cookies are really wonderful

Ingredients

3 oz. (3 squares, 85 g) unsweetened chocolate

1 lb. (454 g) sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract

Hello everyone,

I have never made the French bread in the BBA, so I thought I'd try it. After trying so many unusual or specialty breads, I wanted to go back to a classic. This version uses pate fermentee (sorry, I'm not conversant enough in HTML or whatever it'd take to include the correct French accent marks), risen a bit at room temperature, then put into the fridge overnight. The dough is made the next day. I did three stretch and fold cycles at 30 minute intervals during a 2-hour fermentation. The proof after shaping was about 50 minutes.

Chinese Almond Cookies are one of my favorite afternoon snacks. I often pick them up at the local Chinese bakery or keep a box of Amay cookies in the cupboard.

I tried making them at home for the first time today. Not perfect, but they are pretty darned good.

Almond Cookies
Makes around 18 mid-sized cookies

1 c slivered almonds
3/4 c sugar
1/2 c (1 stick) salted butter, softened
1 egg
1 T almond extract
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda

Glaze
1 egg yolk
1 T sugar

Hey,

 I'm looking for a good chocolate biscotti recipe. I'm asking here instead of google'ing since I'd like to make sure it's something someone with skill has cooked and liked :)

 - Ojuice