Day 8 of our Bake!-Cation

There was mist rising this morning  

Welcome to the final two days of our BAKE!-Cation, where two glorious days turn you into a yeast professional! This is the ultimate playground for home bakers.

Over the next two days the only thing rising faster than our dough is the fun! This will be a classroom brimming with laughter, expert bakers, and enough flour to start a bakery (or a snowstorm, depending on how things go). And our BAKE!-Cation today and tomorrow comes with breakfast and lunch—because who can bake on an empty stomach? We made sure to pack an extra suitcase to haul back many of the delectable goodies we've whipped up!

It's a weekend extravaganza of bread baking that’s so intense, it's a shame it doesn't qualify as a workout! Our bread lineup, includes fan favorites like Farm Bread, Jewish Rye, and French Baguettes. But wait, there’s more! We’ll also bake some top-secret recipes, like Country Multigrain and a tantalizing demo of Chocolate Cherry. And because we believe in balance (and a little sweetness), we’ll finish things off with beloved Banana Bread—because what’s a baking adventure without a little potassium? Are you ready to 'rise' to the occasion? :) 

Farmhouse Bread: The French Countryside Experience

Imagine sitting down to dinner around a large farmhouse table, somewhere in the French countryside. This would be the bread served at the start of the meal. To make the Farm bread, we started with the star of all naturally leavened breads: the sourdough starter. Then we added organic wheat flour, a handful of freshly milled whole wheat flour, water, and sea salt. Perhaps the most important ingredient though is time; it can be up to 17 hours from the time you mix the starter to the time you bake. But trust me, it makes your morning toast and sandwiches feel like they just got a VIP upgrade!

Our classroom

Instructor showing us how to knead the dough. 

Kneading the farm bread dough

Kneading the dough

Every hour for three hours we did a fold. 

Loaves are placed in the banneton baskets, face down. 

After final proof we turn them out and make the cuts with a lame

Turning the loaf out onto the oven rack

Loaves are scored and ready for the oven. 

an amazing contraption to get the loaves all into the oven 

We went into the bakery and watched the pros scoring the loaves. You can tell they have a bit of practice. This bread was an all day process. We had just put it in the oven right before we left for the day. 

Jewish Rye: The Bread That’s Seen It All

Let’s talk about Jewish rye bread. This isn’t just any loaf; it’s made from a natural rye sour that gets its daily dose of love, yeast, and organic wheat flour, along with freshly milled Michigan rye and ground caraway. This bread has been the unsung hero of Zingerman’s Deli’s famous Reuben sandwiches since 1992. Traditional Jewish rye is practically an endangered species in the U.S., which means we need to treat it like the rare gem it is. 

This isn’t just any rye; it’s the rye your grandparents would’ve devoured on the Lower East Side in New York. With about 25% rye flour (most American “rye bread” is more like a sad loaf of white bread in disguise), it also features a “natural rye sour” and an “old” (mush made from leftover rye bread and water). Yes, that’s a real thing! It’s like a time machine connecting the past and present while giving a cheeky nod to our frugal ancestors. Throw in some ground caraway and locally sourced organic rye from Janie’s Mill, and you’ve got yourself a loaf that Saveur magazine dubbed “America’s very best rye.” No pressure or anything!

We learned how to make a rye sour: there are diced onions and caraway seeds in the cheese cloth that we pushed down into a mixture of rye flour, a tiny amount of yeast and water. Tomorrow we will take out the bag and will be left with the rye sour used to make the Jewish rye bread. 

Shaping the rye bread into a batard and baguettes. 

A batard looks like a football

Our finished loaves of Jewish rye

Chocolate Cherry: Dessert in Bread Form

Oh yes, you read that right: chocolate bread is a thing, and it’s even better than you can dream! This is for all the chocoholics out there. The dough is infused with cocoa and 68% bittersweet dark chocolate from artisan pals at French Broad Chocolate in Asheville. Then, she threw in chunks of semi-sweet dark chocolate and Michigan dried cherries. Pop it in the oven, and soon the kitchen was smelling like a cocoa factory exploded. I can’t wait to make this one at home. Spread it with a hint of sweet butter or plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, and you’ve got yourself a dessert that’ll make you weak in the knees!

Scrumptious! Jo Anne was not a huge fan but I was. She doesn’t like cherries with her chocolate. 

We also had a pizza dough demonstration and will be having pizza for lunch tomorrow with the dough she made. Yay!

Today for lunch we had soup, sandwiches, 1/2 cookie and a brownie bite, my sandwich was roasted red pepper, mozzarella and pesto on focaccia. Jo Anne had the the 3 piggy. 

What a day! Besides the demos and two breads we made today, we made a levain for the multigrain bread we’re making tomorrow, a rye sour, a stiff starter and a poolish for the French baguettes we’ll make tomorrow. 

This is our freezer even without all the goodies we’ve shared with our hostess. 

The sun is setting on another glorious day. 

Meet Jean, our adorable little hostess! She had one of the chicken pot pies today and said she was going to take one over to her neighbor but decided after she ate it, she was keeping them all for herself. She was struggling to stand, said she needed to sit down, and we figured it was her hip acting up. But then she casually dropped, "I started drinking early today." Let’s just say we raced down those stairs, barely holding ourselves together! 

Food for Thought

Ever have those moments when you feel like something in your life is just running out—whether it's time, strength, hope, or patience? Well the name I looked at this morning was revealed for exactly that moment, and it speaks to me loudly in this season of life. El Olam, "The Everlasting God" or "God of the Ages."

Take a look at Genesis 21:33. "Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God." Here’s a man who had been wandering for decades, yet he chooses to plant a tree and declare God’s name in a way that's easy to overlook. Abraham, at this point, was old and weary, worn out from years of following a God who kept asking him to wait a little longer. After settling a dispute over a well and making peace with a local king, he finally plants a tamarisk tree—hardwood, long-lived, the kind that lasts long after the planter is gone. And right beside that tree, he calls on El Olam.

El Olam isn’t just about "forever" in a vague way; it’s rooted in a beautiful Hebrew concept that points to the horizon—the spot where our sight fades and the world feels limitless. Picture yourself standing on a beach, gazing at that perfect line where the ocean kisses the sky. Kody, I’m remembering walking on that beach in Ireland looking out to the endless sea. El Olam serves as a reminder that God is already waiting for us beyond our vision, always present, even when everything else seems to fall short.

Maybe you’re facing a medical situation with a timeline you didn’t choose. Or perhaps you’re dealing with a financial burden that’s been weighing you down, forcing you to do the math at 2:00 a.m., desperately searching for something that just isn’t there. Maybe it’s a relationship—a marriage, a wayward child or grandchild, or a friendship that’s starting to fray, and you’re not sure how much longer you can hold on before it all breaks apart.

Or maybe it’s something harder to identify—just the slow erosion of faith, the creeping doubt that anything is ever going to change. Beneath it all, there’s a fear that we often don’t voice: the fear that God’s patience might have a limit, that He’s waiting for us to figure things out, and we haven’t done it yet. The fear that the window for change is closing, that what was once available may not be for much longer.

This is why Abraham called on El Olam—not in a moment of victory, but in a quiet, reflective moment after years of wandering. By planting that tree, he was defiantly declaring, the God I serve isn’t bound by my timeline. He doesn’t run out when I feel depleted.

We all have our vanishing points, but El Olam doesn’t. Just like Abraham, I choose to plant something in faith today. I’m trusting that what I can’t see past, He’s already holding. He is El Olam. He doesn't have a vanishing point, and everything I trust to Him is safe in His forever.

As Isaiah 40:28 reminds us, "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable." And in Psalm 90:2, we find, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." 

I hope that encourages you and gives you hope as it has me today!