[Mike Nolan]

I'm making cinnamon rolls to go with chili today. I'm going to try making 9 smaller ones from the recipe that usually makes 4 larger rolls.
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[Mike Nolan]

I can think of a few things I might want to order, but not $59 worth.

[Mike Nolan]

I had a turkey sandwich on challah.

[Mike Nolan]

The two types of hard rolls I baked last week went into the freezer. We got them out yesterday morning and they went in the oven for about 5 minutes just before dinner.

The breadsticks are supposed to be dry and crunchy, so I just left them out. The ones with cheese in them softened a bit, probably due to the moisture in the cheese.

The challah were made on Wednesday, I think it is best left to sit for a day before it is eaten anyway.

The cranberry nut muffins stay soft for several days, but I froze most of what was left after we got back yesterday.

The Brazilian cheese rolls were made Thursday morning and we packed them in an insulated bag with a heat pack underneath to keep them warm. Most of what was left of those went into the freezer last night, too.

I knew it would be way too much bread, but it gave me an excuse to try several new recipes and try a new variant on braiding challah, which I'm likely to use again, because a batch of dough (around 36 ounces) made 6 loaves, a nice size for the two of us.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife thinks of croquettes and hush puppies as similar dishes, and she's not fond of either. (Of course, Long John Silver's hush puppies have garlic in them.)

[Mike Nolan]

Chicken and turkey meat (especially white meat) tends to be too dry for pizza, unless you do something like buffalo chicken, which is heavily marinated in a spicy sauce.

I've made turkey pot pies a few times, but we don't have any leftover turkey this year. I did buy some turkey at the deli counter the other day so I can have a turkey sandwich tomorrow.

There were two big pans of DGBC today, and I had multiple helpings of it, so I may pass on making it tomorrow.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, trying to tie oiled strings around a ball of dough is messy work. I may try this again some day, but with a different dough recipe.

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving day. We had a great time, and I'm still stuffed 5 hours later. Even the weather more or less cooperated, considering the forecast 24 hours ago was for 1-3 inches of snow and/or freezing rain.

We had lots of leftover breads even after 25 or so people chewed their way through the 7 types of bread I made the last few days. There were at least 3 pumpkin pies and 3 types of brownies on the dessert bar, and a couple things I wasn't sure what they were, but no fruit pies. If we're invited next next year, I may bring an apple pie.

We gave the hostess two of the challah loaves that hadn't gotten broken into, with instructions to cut them into thick slices and make French toast with them. I'm going to slice up and freeze most of the partial loaves we brought back for the same purpose. Having frozen sliced challah makes it easy to do a little French toast on short notice. I also put most of the cranberry nut rolls in the freezer along with the hard rolls and the cheese rolls. I won't freeze the breadsticks quite yet, I plan to make cheese dip for tomorrow's football watching and I think they'd go very well with it.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm making a batch of pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread), as an appetizer treat. I made a batch and a half, which with a #60 scoop makes about 48 golf-ball sized rolls.

We had a house guest staying with us for a few months from Brazil, he made a batch of them using a mix. I looked up recipes and made a batch from scratch, he said they were as good as the ones his mother made. Then we went to the Brazilian-American Friendship picnic a few times, and I brought these along both times, they always disappeared quickly and we got very favorable comments on them. I leave out the garlic, but I've had them in restaurants and it is considered optional.

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[Mike Nolan]

More than once I've been tempted to make a batch of stuffing and some gravy using turkey stock, and maybe even mashed potatoes, and pig out!

I also love DGBC (dreaded green bean casserole), in fact I might make some for Black Friday.

[Mike Nolan]

The concern in the UK is more over mass-produced loaves that use additives to create a sour taste and baker's yeast as the primary leavening. Some of the food chains sell them as 'artisan' loaves. There was a movement in the UK earlier to try to define what 'artisan bread' meant, they couldn't agree on it.

This is more than just a big vs little battle, the reason sourdough has a lower glycemic index is that the long time it takes for the wild yeast to produce sufficient leavening allows time for enzymes to convert much of the starch into forms that aren't absorbed as quickly. People who buy the sourfaux loaves expecting the lower glycemic index are being ripped off.

[Mike Nolan]

The challah loaves aren't quite as dark as that photo suggests. I took it using my iPhone, and I don't know how to color correct it.

[Mike Nolan]

I made six 6-inch loaves from a batch of Challah dough (Reinhart's recipe in BBA):

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[Mike Nolan]

I made two batches of grissini breadsticks from Carol Field's book yesterday, the second batch had parmesan cheese in them.

These are fast to make and kind of fun, you cut them then stretch them to the width of your baking pan. I did a better job keeping the thickness more uniform with the second batch than with the first one.

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[Mike Nolan]

This morning I'm making challah, still trying to decide what braid to use, I may try the single strand braid in Clayton's Breads of France book, it is one I've not done before. There will be about 20 of us at at least 4 different tables, it'd be nice to do 4 or 5 smaller loaves.

[Mike Nolan]

I wound up subbing hickory nuts for walnuts in the cranberry nut recipe, because I couldn't find any walnuts in the freezer and I had a bag of hickory nuts I got from the Nebraska Nut Growers Association a while back.

The two go together well, and hickory nuts would have been readily available 100 years ago, before the hickory nut canker wiped out much of eastern America's hickory forests, so this is a classic throwback pairing.

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