Yet another post about baking

This morning, I had freshly baked sourdough muffins with my coffee!  Fresh and hot out of the oven, they were absolutely delicious.  I used Betsy's recipe from The Bread Book.  The dough is mixed up in the evening, left to sit and ripen over night, and then spooned into muffin tins and popped into the oven.  They bake for just 20 minutes and then- voila- fresh muffins!

They were great on their own, with an interesting slightly sourdough taste and a nice spongy texture, but they also would be great to smear things on.  Thayer thinks they'd be great covered in butter (but then again, what isn't).  I think a tart orange marmalade would be fab.

 

And they were really nice with coffee.  The cabin temp was about 54 F when we woke up, so warm breakfast was greatly appreciated.

You must think that all we do is bake.  It's not true, I promise!  The thing is, our other activities aren't particularly blogable.  I'm knitting a lot of Christmas presents at the moment, and since their recipients read the blog, I can't show you pictures.  We're doing grad school apps at the moment, and that's just not very interesting to most people.  But maybe you'd like to know where we're applying?  So far, it looks like I'm applying to the University of Oklahoma, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and Cornell University.  And it looks like Thayer is applying to Michigan State University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Minnesota at Duluth.  These lists aren't quite finalized, and we're still waiting to hear back from some folks, but it gives you an idea.

And we're reading.  Right now, we're reading aloud Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  I'm reading The Great Mortality: An intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time, by John Kelly.  Kelly tells the story of how the plague impacted (mostly) European cities and why its impact was so severely dramatic (I'll give you a hint- marmots).  I'm also reading English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David, which I've talked about in previous posts (and was suggested by Scott).  Thayer is reading The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood.  We haven't forgotten your recommendations for reading- those are on our lists, too!  We've also become slight news junkies- Thayer reads the BBC news and I the NYTimes, among other things.  As we go about our very fast-paced days, we're listening to NPR and classical public radio (Chicago and Minneapolis).