Beyond the Box: Baking from Scratch

Bonjour, mes amis! C'est la semaine du pain! That is, it's bread week! (If you're fluent in French, feel free to leave a comment correcting that, if necessary!)  Over the weekend I was making some French toast (which I understand is not actually French), and my recipe uses a bit of flour mixed into the milk and egg. As I whisked in the flour, I thought longingly, "Ooh, I want to make some bread!" and then I realized, lucky me, I had already promised to do bread for my next post! Specifically, the baguettes that Paul Hollywood set as the technical challenge for the GBBO bakers during bread week of Series 6 (Netflix and PBS Season 3). This recipe is also featured in the Masterclass episode that aired with/after that series (available on Netflix as Great British Baking Show: Masterclass, Season 3 Episode 2).  I do truly love making bread, although I don't do it terribly often, and I'm still building my skill. Bread takes time, which I often ha

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you've all had some lovely and festive celebrations with the people you love most! Over the last month or so, we've been fortunate enough to catch up with so many of our friends and family to share laughter, memories, and (so much!) great food. Even though I haven't been posting regular updates here for you, I've been hard at work making great messes in my kitchen and planning where to take this blog and my fine readers over the next year. As much as I enjoy sharing original recipes with you, I can't deny the fact that those posts do not tend to see as much traffic as I would like. I may still do a few now and then (I know I have an update for my chocolate chip cookies in the works), but it is very obvious to me that what the people (or perhaps, web crawlers and bots) want are more posts where I try my hand at the Great British Bake Off/Baking Show technical challenges. Even when I took several months away from Beyond the Box,