1. Watching the moon rise over the sea.
2. Baking sourdough bread.
Sourdough is the most delicious alchemy, but I stopped baking it on a regular basis because yeasted loaves felt like less fuss. Lately though, I've been embracing the no knead overnight approach. It does still need a little advance planning, but I just mix starter, water, flour and salt before I go to bed, and in the morning I come down to a lovely risen dough which is ready to shape, and by lunch time it's all baked with very little hands on time. There's nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread!
For a long time I've been alternating between the basic Tartine recipe and the Norwich sourdough recipe from Wild Yeast, but I recently stumbled upon Emilie Raffa's blog The Clever Carrot,
which led me to her book, Artisan Sourdough Made Simple and I've been enjoying her Everyday Sourdough recipe. She has a great, straightforward approach and if you're new to sourdough baking then I highly recommend her beginner's guide.
I think I'm going to have to give her Pumpkin Spice bagels a go very soon!
3. Sourdough chocolate cake.
I've been wanting to make sourdough chocolate cake ever since I started dabbling in sourdough a few years back and I finally got around to making one! It did not disappoint. I used this recipe but didn't bother with the glaze and instead opted to cover the whole cake with the chocolate buttercream. I don't think I'd recommend doing that if you try the recipe! The buttercream is incredibly rich, so it's a little sickly over the whole cake, but the actual cake itself was divine and surprisingly simple to make. I'll definitely be backing it again.
5. The evening sunlight at this time of year.
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