Violet Sky

Another month of mostly new bread recipes. I promise I will eventually get off this bread kick and back to experimenting with more non-baking recipes, but for now, I’m really enjoying being able to provide fresh bread for my family each week. I’m also on a mission to perfect the cinnamon swirl sourdough loaf from the featured image there, so I’ve been making that same recipe repeatedly.

New Recipes

Hoagie rolls – This recipe felt like flying too close to the sun. Emboldened by my success with making sourdough every week to replace our purchase of sourdough at the supermarket, I thought that I would simply make hoagies for use in a dinner we had coming up. They tasted great (it’s all the butter) but the texture and shape were definitely not there. I’ll probably try a recipe without butter next time, as I like the lighter, fluffier textured hoagies better.

Asian chicken salad – My youngest wanted an Asian chicken salad, and although I’ve made several recipes throughout the years, I looked up this one for something new. It was really easy and everyone loved it – the grilled thighs really make a difference.

Cinnamon swirl sourdough bread – My white whale. The first iteration was ironically the best iteration, as future loaves didn’t have enough of the swirl for my tastes. I will probably spend some more time this month looking up more inclusion techniques.

Sourdough discard pancakes – In my ongoing quest to use up discard, we tried this recipe. It was fine – not a saver. Luckily, I had success storing my discard in the fridge during October, so my need to constantly use up discard has dropped dramatically.

Revisited Recipes

Creamy Cajun chicken pasta – A family favorite, the only flaw with this recipe is that it only makes four servings at under 500 calories per serving. It’s easy and one-pot though, which is how it ends up on our meal plan so often.

Ginger chicken – I’m a huge fan of The Woks of Life, and I think this is my favorite of their dishes. The slightly sweet sauce with the large ginger slices (they say to discard them, but I like to leave them in) is really great, and reheats well.

Grilled chimichurri steak sandwiches – I deviate a bit from this recipe when I make it. First, I make my favorite ciabatta recipe the day before so we can have these on fresh ciabatta. Second, instead of short ribs, I use flank steak, as it’s easier for me to source. Unfortunately, our source of fresh chimichurri has disappeared, so we had to settle for some mediocre shelf-stable chimichurri. I should really get around to making my own.

Chicken and dumplings – Another one that the kids request pretty frequently, the steamed dumplings are the best part of this. It tastes like a chicken pot pie but with fluffy, thick dumplings instead of pie crust.