I made bagels this morning.

I made a pound cake from a Betty Crocker mix. I subbed walnut oil for the butter. It baked up real nice but it really doesn't remind me too much of pound cake. It tastes good, just not too much like pound cake. Maybe it's because I didn't use butter or maybe it's just the nature of that mix.

For dinner I made pizza with ground chicken and red bell pepper.

That looks real good, CWC.

I made a pepperoni pizza tonight.

Compliments to Will on a lovely loaf. Oh, to have a taste!

With Len, now three of us have made pizza in less than a week. That reminds me of the time when we were all baking cinnamon rolls.

On Monday, I made dough for another batch of my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. Although I only baked the last batch a week ago, it is diminishing rapidly.

I also mixed the levain for Honey Spelt Sourdough Bread (King Arthur recipe) that I will bake tomorrow.

I'd enjoy Will's bread if you'd send it to me.

I saw the tail end of a commercial that made me laugh out loud. For M & M's. I mute commercials, so I don't know the words, but the final frame had a caption.

It showed a bag of M & M's inside an empty square baking dish. Caption read, "No baking required."

It must be targeted to the new pandemic bakers who're now tired of baking.

On Tuesday, I baked the Honey Spelt Sourdough Bread. The levain took a long time to develop; at twelve hours, it did not have that many bubbles, but four hours later, it was ready to use. The first rise took 90 minutes, and after 90 minutes, I thought that I was not going to get much more rise, so I slashed and baked. However, the top really burst open (slashing job could have been better), so it probably needed to be left to rise for another 30 minutes. I like this bread a lot, but I struggle to get it to turn out consistently. I bake it in the Emile Henry long baker, and I like how well it bakes. My issue seems to be with judging the rising times, which are much longer than the recipe states, but that may be the cold house. I made two changes to the recipe in that I used Bob’s Red Mill artisan bread flour for the cup of King Arthur AP, cut the salt from 1 1/4 to 1 tsp., and added 3 Tbs. special dry milk. I’m sure it will taste good when I cut into it for lunches tomorrow, but I would like to get a prettier loaf.

In addition, I baked cornbread to go with some of the leftover soup. I used my regular recipe, but I used half medium and half fine ground cornmeal, as I want to stretch out what I have left of the fine grind, as Bob’s Red Mill is not selling it anymore.