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Hello everyone, this is my first contribution. I've been lurking on this site for a while and have spent many hours reading and digesting the wealth of information here.  Now that I'm on holiday and have some spare time I can finally seriously get stuck into improving my breadmaking techniques and contributing my own experiences to this amazing site.

It is Christmas time and it seems lots of people are making Stollen so here is my addition to the mix. 

I heard about Stollen recently and how good it is so I decided that I wanted to make some.  The only problem is I have never eaten or seen Stollen.  I looked in my books and on the internet for recipes for sourdough Stollen and decided to improvise and make my own.  The paragraph from Peter Reinharts's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" is very nice and I think worthy of quoting here.

I wasn't going to bake this weekend because I made some 'San Jooaquin Sourdough' with flax and sunflower seeds during the week. Last night my wife mentioned seeing a recipe for Stollen in the latest Martha Stewart magazine and I have noticed a number of TFL posts on Stollen lately . I recalled seeing  recipes in BBA and also Crust so I drug them out and compared ingredients and decided to go with Reinhart. I have made his cinammon raisin bread twice before, it was a big hit, so I decided as long as I'm going to spend the day I might as well do it in a big way.

I have a problem. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

So here I am, 7 weeks after giving birth to a wonderful baby boy...and I have 12 loaves of bread in various stages of becoming tasty, crusty goodness.

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I'm really excited about this crusty loaf that I had formed into a ring. The bread turned out fabulously. I used a relatively new way of shaping that I learned from watching this YouTube video and then left the shaped bread in the fridge overnight and baked it the next morning. The crust is even more caramelized and crispy and the crumb has a wonderful nutty flavour.

KAF printed this recipe in a recent catalog (click on "recipe" to get there).  I totally love them!  I bake them a couple times a week.  They are very very crunchy...sort of like thin biscotti.  They are SO easy, and healthy too.  I make them for my chip-loving husband as a much better choice for him.  So I've found that slicing them into long strips (with a pizza cutter after the dough is rolled) makes them easier to eat (roll out the dough on your counter (thin!), it's not stick

Can anyone suggest any websites that are offering free shipping this time of year?  I am looking to purchase sourdough starter, bannetons, etc. and would prefer to purchase them without the additional shipping costs.

While I am at it, Merry Christmas and Happy Healthy New Year to all..thanks for your generosity in sharing and exchanging with me.

Belle

I have been getting my stiff starter ready to make Pandoro and Panettone....and decided to not throw out the extra starter and make  Pain au Levain. I started in the morning with coffee and  got every thing together and realized that I didn't have any heat in the house....burrrr.....threw my coat on...mixed and shaped the dough in record time and put the breads to proof in the warmest place in the house...my oven.

You know, the old "ice-cubes-in-a-hot-skillet" routine is soooo...like...last summer, isn't it? ;)