Cooking and Baking Up a Storm

Sunday is usually my day for grocery shopping, cleaning, or relaxing. Sometimes spent studying for tests that I have the upcoming week!

I’ve been having the urge to bake and cook but during the week its so hard, so Sunday I usually make a big batch of something for the week.

I was eying a recipe for a roasted veg mac and cheese that I spotted on Pinterest a few weeks ago. Thankfully I remembered the ingredients when I went to Trader Joe’s on Sunday!

It came out looking so great! It was pretty easy to make too.

I also tried baking real bread for the first time ever. I’ve made a lot of quick breads, beer bread and Irish soda bread before, but have never tried a real crusty bread before. I had this recipe pinned for a YEAR, and finally got around to trying it. I tweaked it a bit–I used 2 cups of whole wheat bread flour and 1 cup of white flour vs. the 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour. I just switched it because I found whole wheat bread flour in the bulk section of the Healthy Living Market. I also swapped maple syrup for molasses since I didn’t have any molasses on hand.

It seemed easy enough–just had to make time for it to rise (12 hours + 2 hours for a second rise). I may have cheated a little bit. I also didn’t want to be putting bread in the oven at 11pm. Plus, it didn’t look like my dough was rising all that much?

It ended up getting nice and crusty. But I realized I had the oven shelf too close to the bottom of the oven, and the bottom got a bit too dark.

It still tasted delicious, though! I will definitely be making it again. I’d really like to do more bread baking since its pretty easy when you follow the steps!