Christmas Dinner

We are going to my sister's house for dinner and I am bringing the bread. Simple, yes? I am making Meyer lemon and rosemary bread, half white hard wheat berries fresh ground from my grain mill and about 30% white bread flour. The white flour is mixed half and half to make a starter, started from 50 grams carefully saved in the refrigerator, and tripled until 500 grams total. Takes ~12 hours to be bubbly, expanded and ready. 50 grams is returned to the fridge. Then the fresh ground flour (~1000g) and grated Meyer lemon rind and chopped rosemary (only 20 grams each) is added along with additional water, salt and the freshly ground whole wheat and mixed by hand. The dough is stretched and folded into 9 layers, put in a 80 degree space to ferment, and repeated 5 times at 45 minute intervals. Then shaped into oval, free form loaves and placed on the bottom of a large sheet pan dusted with coarse ground wheat to rise, several hours. When ready, oven at 520F, the loaves are slightly wet, slashed, sprinkled with salt and transferred to a hot baking stone into the oven. Boiling water is added to a hot baking pan below the baking stone and the oven closed and turned down to 430F. Lots of dangerously hot steam. The water is removed after 20 minutes and the bread continues to bake for about 50 minutes total, until it sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom of the loaf. Cool on a rack until room temperature, slice, enjoy! Two day part time job...
Disclaimer: My first career was as a chef in fancy private clubs, starting from dishwasher, for about 10 years. Awful job to do, hot and heavy and stressful, worked odd hours and every weekend and holiday, poor pay. Wonderful to have had that experience, the boy knows how to cook!

The most important ingredient in making great bread is time, lots of it, for the flavors to develop...
 
Charles.
If we were closer I would bring my roast beast to your place.
That Duck and Pork belly alone makes you an honorary Southerner. The only thing missing is the collards and cornbread.
***Merry Christmas Brother***G***
 
We have a pot luck for Christmas each year. This year, I'm making a bone-in Ribeye Roast coated with garlic and a crust of raw sugar/rock salt/coarse ground pepper, smoked and slow-cooked in a rotisserie. I'll also do a Ham with a Cherry glaze from my Mom's recipe stash.

BUT what I'm missing is Bob Korve's bread!

My sincere wishes for a safe and happy Holiday Season to you all!
 
We have rib eye steak and shrimp when all the kids and grandkids are here--but this year we will have "prime rib" with shrimp. We normally have our Christmas dinner with family the weekend before Christmas but this year will be the weekend after so everyone can make it. That's 5 kids (with spouses), 19 grandkids (and spouses) and 4 great grandkids. It's a house full and sometimes have to slip off to the shop for some quite time:grin:
 
Well first I must confess....I LOVE turkey. At any other time we don't mind frozen turkeys, but for Christmas my wife insists on fresh. We just picked it up this morning... 21 succulent pounds.

To go with it we have butter nut squash just quartered and baked. I like the skin..once the wax is all gone of course. Turnip is a must and last year steamed cabbage was a hit, so repeating that this year, and of course mashed potatoes.

We used to do Christmas pudding with hard sauce, but eventually everyone was too full to eat it, and we really didn't need it, so we stopped that.

Now I am noticing that more people are including seafood with their Christmas dinner. We do love Lobster as well, so we may consider adding that in the future.

Merry Christmas to all my colleagues here.

David
 
My grandmother on my mother's side was a great cook, as was my mother. One of the boasts among my cousins and I is how well our wives can make granny's dressing. Since my granny immigrated from US, I will get American cuisine at it's finest . Roast turkey with sage and onion dressing, candied sweet potatoes, apple salad, home made cranberry sauce, and those other things like mashed potatoes that I have no room on my plate for. There are three pies, apple ,lemon meringue and pumpkin. My wife made trifle this year, too.

Merry Christmas
 
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