Rejections and Bread - Anthony J. Rapino

It seems that all of my recent posts have been about rejections and bread.

Guess what. This one is no different.

So, I had a couple of rejections. One was from Raven Electrick for an old piece that I thought I would try sending out again. I think there were other rejections, but I can’t remember right now.

I did send out a bunch of new submissions, so hopefully I’ll have good news soon. I still have a piece being held by Doorways Magazine, so maybe that will pan out. I’m also waiting to hear back about a fellowship that I entered which would pay for me to go to a week-long workshop in Oregon.

So, this weekend I baked a few things. First I made some cranberry lemon scones. These came out great and were a nice snack to have with my coffee.

Then I decided that I wanted something else to go with breakfast, and I decided on some raisin cinnamon bread. It wasn’t too tough to make and it came perfect. I toasted some oats on top just for extra texture.

By this point I started feeling guilty for neglecting my poor sourdough starter. I’ve been trying to take him out of the fridge every weekend for his feeding, and I figure I might as well bake with him while I’m at it. This week, considering my unintended breakfast theme, I went with sourdough english muffins. I didn’t photograph the proofing, sponge, or dough stages, but I did snap a few after cutting out the shapes.

You might notice some brown specks in the dough. That’s just some wheat flour. I decided during the last feeding to add some wheat instead of white to the starter.

To my surprise, I found out that english muffins aren’t baked in the oven, but in a skillet. And I’m not really sure you could call it baking at all.

The english muffins also came out great. They had a nice tang due to the overnight ferment, but they weren’t overpowering because the dough has milk and honey in it. It was nice to have a Sunday morning variety.