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Easy Sour Dough Sandwich Bread

Here’s my easy sour dough sandwich bread recipe. You won’t even be forced to read a dissertation to get it. You’re welcome.

Easy Sour Dough Sandwich Bread

Tools needed:

Ingredients:

  • 100-110 grams of starter
  • 11 grams of salt
  • 425 grams of water
  • 512 grams of flour

Steps:

  • Combine starter, salt, and water using the spatula
  • Add flour to the mixture, and stir with a spatula or your hands.
  • Once the dough is mixed, cover it and let it rest for 30 minutes.
  • Pull and fold the dough by pulling the dough from one corner and folding it over the center, turn and repeat until you are back at your starting point. Repeat this process 2-3x more times. Then cover and let rest 30 minutes. Repeat this cycle 3 more times. This helps build gluten and improve the bread’s elasticity
The dough before the folds
After the 1st fold
After the 3rd fold
After the 4th fold
The folding process
  • After the last set of stretches and folds, place the dough in the clear cylinder. Measure on the side where the dough comes up. Depending on the time of day, you can place the dough in the refrigerator to rest overnight or leave on the counter until it doubles. If you’re resting the dough in the fridge, take it out the next morning and let the dough prove until it’s doubled. I use measuring tape to confirm when my dough doubles. This can take anywhere from 4-18 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
  • As soon as the dough has doubled empty onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two even pieces. I use the kitchen scale here.
  • On the lightly floured surface, shape each piece into a rectangle by folding the top corners like a business envelope and using the pastry scraper to pull the bottom up into the middle. Transfer to prepared loaf pan and shape into a loaf. Rub or drizzle the top of each loaf with olive oil.
  • Set the loaf pans on a baking sheet and slip the baking sheet into a baking bag to keep the loaves from drying out. At this point, you can put it in the refrigerator overnight or you can let the loaves prove on the counter until they hit the top of the pan. (I only use the baking sheet to help easily transport the loaves between the garage fridge and the kitchen. You won’t bake on the sheet.). The second proof can take anywhere from 4-6 hours depending on where you live.
  • Preheat the oven to 425 F. Place the loaves pans on the top rack and back for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, turn down the oven to 375 and back for another 20-25 minutes. You want to bake until the bread is golden brown and has an internal temperature of 206-210

  • Let cool on a wire rack for an hour before serving

2025 Goal Tracker:

  • Run a 5K: in training
  • Complete Kayla Itsines program: in progress
  • No afternoon Starbucks (except for travel/vacations): I made it into February and haven’t buckled!
  • Top performer at work: on it!
  • Travel: working on it
  • Eat to lower inflammation: in progress
  • Read daily: in progress. I’m reading  The Eagle and The Hart by Helen Castor.
  • Get out of debt: in progress
  • Financial independence: in progress

The most important invention in your lifetime is…

There are so many incredible inventions that have happened during my lifetime. I would say the internet is probably the biggest. It’s changed the world completely for better and for worse.

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Experimenting

I did some experimenting in the kitchen over the weekend. My first experiment was homemade cream cheese wontons. I made pork wontons last weekend, so I wanted to expand my wontons experience a bit. Plus what’s not to love about fried dough and cheese? While I was busy experimenting with the wontons, the hubby whipped up some amazing chicken fried rice to accompany the wontons. It was a great division of the housework.

The wonton recipe was quite simple: cream cheese, wonton wrappers, scallions, garlic powder, green onions and some sugar. I found the wrappers from Target were a bit thinner than those HelloFresh had provided. Consequently, they leaked when being fried. Next time, I’ll use two wrappers instead of one. Also, I’ll fold them into little rectangles as those wontons didn’t leak at all.

Saturday I went back to experimenting in the kitchen. This time I decided to try a new lime cheesecake recipe. I find baking cheesecake infinitely easier in Florida due to the humidity. By contrast, the moisture can complicate a bread recipe. Honestly, it’s hard to bake a dry cheesecake here. This recipe was pretty straightforward except for the mousse topping. It wasn’t that the mousse topping was difficult, but I haven’t baked with gelatin a lot.

Baking the cheesecake went well and it was super tasty. The recipe was pretty easy to follow. It’s a recipe I’ll make again. However, next time I bake it, I’ll cut back the amount of gelatin. The mousse tasted great, but the texture was too stiff for my taste. Next time I’ll cut it down by 1/2 tbsp and see how it goes. It’s not like the cheesecake tasted bad, so none of us will mind testing all of my cheesecake experiments. I’ll put up the recipes for both the wontons and cheesecake tomorrow.

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

My favorite book as a child was Super Fudge by Judy Blume. I’m just here patiently waiting for them to make it into a movie. My other favorite was C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

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Dog Food

Last night, while the hubby was grilling up some of his famous potatoes and steaks, I made dog food for the puppies. I bought a duck breast at Wild Fork a few months ago and defrosted yesterday. Obviously, it’s not something I’ll do all the time, but thought it might be a nice change of pace for the boys.

For their meal, I peeled 3 carrots, cooked 3 cups of rice, bought 1 large duck breast, and hard-boiled seven eggs. Note, I did not use all the eggs for their food. Veterinarians recommend that dogs have no more than one egg per day. To cook the duck, I lined a baking sheet with aluminum foil after preheating the oven to 350 degrees. I placed the peeled carrots on the baking sheet with the duck breast in the middle. The meat and carrots roasted for 20 minutes. Once the duck breast reached an internal temperature of 165, I cut it up into cubes and cut up the carrots.

Once the duck and carrots were cut up, I added them to the cooked rice and mixed them well. Naturally, I poured any of the juices from the duck into the mixture. The last step was to cut up the eggs and add them to the mixture. Ideally, I’d use more vegetables, but I only had carrots on hand. Next time, I’ll use sweet potatoes and peas in addition to the carrots. The recipe is below.

Homemade Dog Food

Ingredients:

  • 2 Duck breast/chicken breast/chicken livers
  • 4 carrots
  • 3 cups of rice
  • 1 egg for each dog per day
  • 1 sweet potato
  • 1 package of frozen peas

Instructions

  • Cook rice according to package instructions
  • Prepare a baking sheet with foil and preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Wash produce
  • Peel and cut carrots in half and place on the prepared baking sheet
  • Cut sweet potato into cubes and place on prepared baking sheet
  • Place duck breasts or desired protein in the middle of the baking sheet
  • Roast the duck and vegetables for 20 minutes or until the internal temperature of the duck is 165.
  • While the duck is roasting, cook up the peas according to package instructions and prepare the hard-boiled eggs
  • Once the duck and vegetables have cooled, slice the meat into chunks and the carrots into smaller pieces.
  • Combine all ingredients in one large bowl and serve

I have two large (80-90 lbs) male dogs and split the recipe between the two of them. Going forward, I’ll probably use chicken as it’s much cheaper, but the duck is a nice treat. You could also substitute lamb or beef cuts as well.

What is one word that describes you?

Kind. I love people, animals, and life and want to make the world a better place. Fortunately, I think little acts of kindness go a long way in brightening the world. Consequently, every day I try to be kind to those around me (some days go better than others,)

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Getting Started With Sourdough

Getting started with sourdough can be quite intimidating. As I shared a few posts ago, I started my sourdough journey at the start of the year. To get started there are a few things you should buy or ensure you have on hand. I did include them in my prior post, but so you don’t have to toggle between the posts. Fortunately, you may have a lot of these items on hand.

What you need:

After you get your goodies, the first step in getting your sourdough started is starting your starter. There are a lot of different recipes for sourdough starters, which can make it overwhelming. For my starters, I used the guides that came with my kits.

Sourdough Starter recipe:

What you’ll need: flour, water, starter jars and kitchen scale

Day 1: add 50g of water to the jar followed by 50g of flour. Mix with a spatula until you obtain a creamy texture. Mark the feeding level before covering it with a towel and placing it in a warm place without drafts. Come up with a fun name for your starters. Mine are Dough Pesci and Marlon Brandough.

Day 2: repeat day one steps (try to feed your starter at the same time daily.)

Day 3: you should start to see some signs of activity now, like bubbles on the surface or an increase in volume. Discard 1/2 of the volume and repeat the steps from day 1.

Day 4-7: discard 1/2 of the volume of the starter before repeating the steps from day 1. You should see an uptick in activity with larger bubbles and a slightly acidic aroma.

Day 7: it may be ready to use. I was able to make bread at 7 days with mine, but the bread got better as the starter aged.

If you bake often, like me, keep feeding it daily. Remember the most important part of feeding is to discard at least 1/2 of the starter. If you don’t discard it, there won’t be enough to keep the starter fed and it will die out. To keep up with my baking needs, I feed it about 100 grams of flour and 90 grams daily and have moved it into bigger jars.

If you’re not going to bake immediately, you can put the starter in the fridge and feed it bi-weekly. I’ve noticed that most sourdough recipes include instructions for dealing with starters coming from the fridge.

I live in South Florida, so there is plenty of moisture in the house. Keep in mind if you live in a drier climate, the amount of flour and water you need may be different. Play around with it a bit to find what works for your kitchen. I chose this starter recipe because it was pretty pedestrian, which I needed. I didn’t want an overcomplicated recipe that I may screw up. In the end, my starters flourished, so I guess I was worried for no reason.

Meet Dough Pesci and Marlon Brandough

A couple of closing notes on the starter:

  • Discard into the trash or set aside the discard for use in recipes. There are a lot of great recipes out there that use discard.
  • Be careful if you have pets, as the discard will ill your dogs or cats.
  • Don’t discard the discard into the sink as it can muck up your plumbing.

What’s your favorite candy?

My favorite candy is chocolate. I love it and could eat it all day every day. If only eating it like that wouldn’t make me both severely obese and diabetic. I am a chocolate snob and have Norwegian milk chocolate Freia delivered monthly. Everyone my kids ask where they are, I’m a bit cagey with them. While I am happy having a piece or two a day, they’ll kill all of the bars in a day or two. I’m also a big fan of Milka and Cote D’Or chocolate bars. Also, I’d never say no to Leonidas or Neuhaus chocolates.

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Sourdough

After the holidays, I decided I wanted to keep refining my baking skills by adding sourdough to the mix. Consequently, I loaded up my Amazon cart with all the goodies and accouterments one would need to start their sourdough journey. Amazon has millions of options to help you here which can be overwhelming. I’ll walk you through the items I bought later in the post.

Baking with sourdough is a labor of love and patience. It can take a couple of weeks for your starter to get going and be strong enough to use for bread. Once I received all my goodies from Amazon, I got to work on my starters. I started with two starters in case I messed up one of them. The first one I started, I used a culture I had bought from Amazon. The second one I started, I used the recipe that came with the sourdough starter kit. As for the recipe, it couldn’t have been more simple as it was just flour and water.

Patience is a virtue I don’t have, so you can imagine how anxious I was to get baking. Once the starter had been established for a little over a week, I decided it was time to rumble. Consequently, I found a sourdough recipe in my Better Homes & Garden cookbook that was fairly straightforward. The first loaves turned out a bit stodgy but tasted good. I have now made the recipe three times with each attempt looking and tasty progressively better. They say that sourdough practice makes perfect and honestly my family loves all the fresh bread.

I did try Paul Hollywood’s sourdough baguette recipe a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I got desperately ill between the first rise and the second rise. My hubby had to finish shaping the loaves and getting them set for their overnight rise. The following morning I did manage to get them in the oven looking semi-respectable.

If you’re looking to get started on a sourdough journey of your own, here are my must-haves:

Write about your first computer.

My first computer was a Dell desktop that I custom-built and bought for myself as a college freshman. I was so proud of my purchase. At the time, it was a cutting-edge computer. Now it would be an absolute dinosaur. At the moment, I’m rocking with a MacBook Pro having left my PC days just for my nine to five days.

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Greatest Gift

Today’s prompt for Bloganuary is about the greatest gift someone could give. It’s quite apropos given we’re just coming out of gift-giving season. I don’t know about you, but I have gift-giving fatigue. As the boys get older, it’s getting increasingly hard to buy gifts that they’ll use. We bought a lot of experiential gifts when they were growing up, but that’s harder now that we all live in different places.

One gift that I’ve gotten this week is great weather. It’s been nice and cool here, so I started running outside with Arrow. While I had the confidence to restart running outside, I wasn’t sure how Arrow would manage. Thankfully, he’s got no problem going the distance and manages to smile the whole time like Athena used to do. Unfortunately, he hasn’t mastered running right beside me all the time. He nearly tripped me several times when we ran in front or off to the side. He’s also hip-checked a few times, but I was able to keep it steady. It’s a work in progress, but it’s going well.

What is the greatest gift someone could give you?

The greatest gift someone can give you is their time and their stories. I spent a lot of time with my Grandma last month and it was wonderful. She and I talked about many things, but I enjoyed hearing stories of her childhood and raising children. Times were undoubtedly much different when she was growing up and raising kids, but the concerns we face as parents remain the same. We still worry about the family budget, how our kids do in school, and neighborhood bullies.

I found some great pictures of her and her family dating back to the 40s, which were so cool. At my folk’s house, I found an envelope of pics my feet aunt had taken back in the early 80s. There were a lot of pics of my brother and I with my mom and grandma. These ladies are always up for adventure, it’s no wonder I love to explore the world and hike the mountains. There was one picture of my grandma and me that I particularly loved (it’s now hanging on my wall) where I’m leading her through a trail and she’s following behind keeping me safe. It’s a powerful reminder that my grandma has had my back since day one.

One thing that my Grandma enjoyed was hearing that I still make her mom’s recipes. Her face lit up! Recipes and the food we eat have an amazing way of connecting us to our roots and heritage. When we cook those recipes passed down from generation to generation, it keeps those folks alive. Maybe it’s the post-run stupor talking, but your girl is sentimental today. I’ll leave you all with a prayer request for the day. Today some people that I love tremendously experience a terrible loss. Please say a little prayer that God may bring them some comfort.

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Frosting fail

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

Today’s prompt is about my most epic baking fail. While I’ve had several, but if I were to pick my most recent one it would be a frosting fail. A couple of weekends ago I decided to make homemade toaster strudel. This was a part of my prednisone-fueled baking fest. I also baked an apple tart, kouign-amann, and short ribs that weekend. It’s no wonder that prednisone makes you gain weight.

The recipe was super simple and easy to make. Yet, I managed to royally screw up the frosting. I mixed everything together and it looked super clumpy. As an aside, frosting should never look like pastry dough. Since it looked so odd, I decided to taste it. It was then I realized I had accidentally grabbed flour instead of powdered sugar. Whoops! So if I may give one piece of advice, label ziplock bags when you put flour or sugar in them.

Another baking fail, and I swear it wasn’t my fault, was when I baked lasagna after Goalielocks’ graduation. My parents were staying with a few weeks, so I decided to make lasagna as it is always a crowd-pleaser. Everything was going well and I put it in the oven. When I checked on it thirty minutes into the baking time, I noticed it wasn’t cooking. That was a fun and expensive puzzle to solve! Ultimately, I was able to cook it in our bottom oven, which was thankfully still operational. Eventually, I got a new oven and I absolutely love it.

I think all bakers and cooks have failed in the kitchen. Often times the failure leads to laughs and second attempts. Some recipes take a lot more practice and refining than others. I, however, find it rewarding to finally master a more difficult bake. It should come as no surprise that I love watching the Great British Bake-off. I often end up baking items I’ve seen on the show. It’s a fun journey that connects me to my mom, my grandma, and all the bakers in my family.

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March Madness

It’s March madness time in more ways than one. This daylight savings time shift has thrown me for an absolute loop. Thus far, the mornings this week have been sub par 0-10 wouldn’t recommend the experience. I know it’s only an hour, but losing any amount of sleep at this stage in the game is no bueno. It’s also time to complete your March Madness bracket. In fact, I just completed mine and have Purdue winning it all. I’m sure I’ll finish in the bottom five.

I did make it to work on time today, which is good. It will take some time to fully adjust back to the time. I had gone to bed early Saturday not feeling great, but also hoping it would stave off some of that time change ickiness. Spoiler alert, it didn’t work. When I finally managed to climb out of bed Sunday morning it was 9:00 am. I usually wake up between 6:50 and 7:30 like clockwork, but not Sunday morning. Hopefully, by the end of the week, my body will be acclimated to daylight savings time.

My lunch was spent getting our TSA precheck interviews done. Well, it’s not really an interview. They verify your information, take your fingerprints and a photo and that’s about it. Usually, it takes three to five days for the process to be completed. I’m hoping and praying that it’s complete before we head out to the Bahamas Friday morning. Honestly, I’m not concerned about having it for the trip there. I am, however, really hoping we have it for the way back. Last year we spent three hours in security lines at Nassau’s airport. I’m not looking to repeat that nonsense. Otherwise, I’ll be hurling imprecations everywhere.

Today’s accountability tracker:

  • Workout: 45-minute spin class, plus 15-minute cooldown courtesy of Apple Fitness+
  • Book: Book: Marcel Proust’s  Finding Lost Time. 
  • Blog: done
  • Word of the day: insight. After gaining insight into the long waits at the Nassau airport, I decided to get pre-check.
  • Today’s song is Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars
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Palm Tree

So today’s prompt is to describe oneself as a tree, so I chose palm tree. First of all, the palm tree is happiness in a plant. Who can’t be happy while sitting near or beneath a beautiful palm? It usually means you’re somewhere tropical with a beautiful beach nearby. There also incredibly strong and built to survive hurricanes. Their shape is perfect as the wind whips around their trunk, while leaving the tree up right. Sure they’ll lose some fronds, but most palms survive the storm.

Like the palm tree, I’m able to survive’s life’s worst storms. Thankfully, my parents raised me to be confident, strong and full of faith. My life is filled with incredible people that have supported me and my family through thick and thin. I’m forever grateful for the strong support system in my life. These past couple of months they have been absolutely incredible.

Fortunately, this weekend I was able to get out and see some of my non-hockey friends. It’s nearly impossible to do anything social during hockey season, so this weekend was a treat. Yesterday I met my friend Stacy for drinks at Batch. I haven’t seen her since before I got laid off. God, I’ve missed that woman. We had the best time.

Today I made a Swiss cake roll in the morning. While that baked, I took care of the laundry, the dishes and the floors. Afterwards, I headed to Boca to spend the afternoon with my dear friend Terri, who just happens to be Jake’s girlfriend’s mom. I always have a fabulous time with her and today was no exception. We had tried a couple of weekends ago, but Covid and Flu exposure put a damper on those plans. Thankfully, we were able to get together today.

It was quite cold this morning, but we didn’t see any frost. Even if we did, the palm trees would be fine. After all, like me, they’re quite resilient. I was a little worried, however, that the passion fruit tree wouldn’t weather the cold. Fortunately or unfortunately, it still looks quite robust. It had literally taken over the entirety of our back garden. We’ll have to trim it back and train it on a trellis or it will cover everything.

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Swiss Cake Roll

I have loved Swiss cake rolls since elementary school, but I never thought of baking my own. After all, Little Debbie did a hell of a job with the tasty treat. And then I saw them bake a Swiss cake roll on the Great British Bakeoff. Consequently, I knew I had to give it a try. Yesterday I baked one for the first time and it was delicious, so I thought I’d share the recipe tonight.

Swiss Cake Roll

Prep time: 30 minutes
Bake time: 10-12 minutes
Rest time: 3:5- 4:00 hours
Total Time: 4-4.75 hours

Tools needed:

Ingredients:

For the cake:

  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • ⅓ cup cocoa powder plus ¼ cup for rolling
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp salt

For the filling:

  • 1 cup heavy whipping cream
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the glaze:

  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
  • 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Instructions:

For the cake:

  • Preheat oven to 375°F.
  • Line a standard 11”x17” jelly-roll pan (rimmed baking sheet) with parchment paper; spray paper generously with nonstick baking spray. Do not skip the nonstick baking spray. Set pan aside.
  • Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and vanilla together on high speed for 4-5 minutes, or until mixture turns foamy and lemon yellow in color.
  • Add sugar to the bowl in (3) separate ¼-cup additions, mixing for 1 full minute after each addition.
  • Add oil and mix until well combined.
  • In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Fold flour mixture into the egg mixture until just combined.
  • Pour batter into prepared baking pan. (Tip: Spread batter evenly to edges using an offset spatula.) Tap pan on counter several times to remove air bubbles.
  • Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until cake springs back when touched in center. While cake is baking, lay a large, thin kitchen cloth on counter. Sprinkle cocoa powder generously on top of cloth.
  • Once baked, immediately flip hot cake out onto the cocoa-dusted cloth. Remove and discard parchment paper. Starting with a short end of the cake, roll up cake (and cloth). Let rolled cake cool completely (2 hours) before continuing.

For the filling:

  • Using a medium mixing bowl, add whipping cream, sugar and vanilla extract. Beat with an electric mixer for 3-4 minutes, or until stiff peaks form.
  • Carefully unroll cake and spread frosting evenly on top of cake. (Tip: Make sure to frost all the way to the edges.) Roll cake back up (this time without the towel). Wrap cake roll in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

For the glaze:

  • Remove the plastic wrap from the cake and place on a cooling rack set over a sheet pan.
  • Using a medium microwaveable bowl, add chocolate chips and whipping cream. Microwave in 20 seconds intervals, stirring after each round, until mixture is smooth.
  • Let stand at room temperature for 5 minutes, or until mixture has thickened slightly but is still pourable.
  • Pour chocolate glaze evenly on top, spreading evenly over entire cake.
  • Refrigerate cake for 30 minutes to allow glaze to set before slicing.

Notes:

  • If you like mint, you could substitute mint extract for the vanilla extract in the filling
  • You can add sliced strawberries or raspberries on top of the filling for added flavor
  • Cooling time may very based on your climate. The times in this recipe are based on the South Florida climate.