Beignets for Second Breakfast

This morning, I woke up, ate first breakfast, took my physics final, and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again with a brilliant idea for second breakfast: beignets!! (New Orleans style doughnuts). It's basically a choux paste that gets fried.

Whipping the chouxish dough to satiny ribbons!:

Frying in bacon grease:


A landscape of beignets sprinkled with cinnamon-butterscotch-sugar:

Bread!

With nearby Essential Bakery moving far, far away to South Seattle in search of cheaper rent, Alex mentioned that we should start making bread. My first reaction was excitement at the possibility of Alex learning to make bread, then I realized maybe I could make bread too. I haven't had much luck making bread in the past several years, but I did have 48 hours with nothing but studying to do and Baking With Julia. This is roughly the Country Loaf recipe, the big change is all the flour I used is equal parts white flour and whole wheat flour.

Yesterday I made the "sponge" (basically a starter) and let it sit on the counter covered with a cloth for about 8 hours:
Then I put it in the fridge to ferment over night and pulled it out in the morning to warm up before adding the rest of the ingredients and making the bread dough. Here it is, in a lightly oiled bowl, ready for it's first rise:


I let it sit for several hours while I ran some errands and it rose a lot!:


Next I shaped it and let it rise a second time for about an hour before putting it in the oven:


Finished Product:


Delicious!