Quarantine baking

I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but not baking. My style of not following directions and measurements and generally being in a hurry was not conducive for a task that depended upon preciseness and accuracy. But with time on my hands, a gifted sourdough starter, and the hassle of long lines and masked potentially contagious people in this pandemic keeping me from the grocery store, I quickly became addicted to making sourdough, no-knead, sourdough crackers, pizza dough, and soft pretzels.

Baking has had a rise (no pun intended) and fall during this quarantine. It became a hipster thing to do, and so, easy to poke fun at. I’ve seen a backlash against those of us who are “being over-productive”, (as if I should feel guilty for making people feel bad that they don’t enjoy the same hobbies I do!) Since that social media baking fatigue, I’m posting here for those 5 few of you may want to see. 😊

I couldn’t stand throwing away the sourdough starter discard with every feed so I found a great recipe to make crackers. Talk about turning trash into treasure! I typically consume pounds of crackers (to go with the pounds of cheese!) But these were so good they made the cheese stand alone 😆

For the second batch, I tried TJs Everything but the Bagel seasoning but made the mistake of adding to the dough before rolling out (as I did with the Herbs de Provence) and it just got lost. Next time I’ll try adding on top after rolling and cutting.