epic holiday bread baking

This year for xmas I made my family bread, lots of bread. 7 sourdough loaves, 2 stollen, 32 butter rolls, and 6 pizzas (which sort of counts as bread).

First on the agenda was Rose Levy Beranbaum's butter dinner rolls from The Bread Bible. I made a dozen for Thanksgiving and everyone loved them, so I doubled the batch and made them a bit smaller so I could distribute them to more folks.

I had some trouble adjusting to my parents' electric oven and the rolls came out darker than I would have liked, but no one else seemed to notice.

Next up I made a double batch of bread mostly following Susan's recipe for Norwich Sourdough. I made boules and stuffed them with various things (as per my siblings' requests). I made 6 loaves in all, one with caraway, one with cheddar cheese inside and on top, and the rest with varying combinations of roasted garlic paste, kalamata olives, rosemary, and thyme.

I make the stuffed boules by rough shaping into a ball, then gently flattening the ball (seam side up), placing the ingredients inside about an inch from the edge, then folding the edges in like a letter on one side, rotating, and doing the same for the other, then gathering it up again into a ball and letting it rise seam side down. You have to be careful about slashing too deep, because if you hit the "pocket" of ingredients they ooze out everywhere.

This one has roasted garlic paste, olives, and rosemary.

I cut everyone's initial into the top to try to keep them all separate.

Here's the spread!

All wrapped and ready to go!

Then I made another favorite from last year, stollen. I followed Reinhart's recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, using raisins, apricots, and cranberries for the dried fruit (I always use dried instead of candied fruit).

Shaping the "blanket" folds.

Finished loaves.

Generously dusted with powdered sugar!

Everyone seemed to like the bread, so I guess it was a hit despite leaving my scale at home and using a strange oven! A little late but happy holidays everyone!