SMiLes by Meg

Salted Chocolate Caramel Knot

I know I still haven’t shared my go-to sourdough bread recipe yet, but I make it so often it almost feels like cheating to put it on the blog. Instead, this week I’ll share a different recipe from the same cookbook (Artisan Sourdough Made Simple). It uses sourdough starter, but also the wonderful ingredients of Nutella and dulce de leche. If you don’t have sourdough starter in your fridge yet, and you live in DC, let me know – I’m happy to provide some of mine. It’s great to have, very hard to kill (unlike my house plants), and I

Fig and Olive Oil Challah

This was fun to make. I’m home for the long weekend, having a girl’s weekend with my mom, and she agreed to humor me and make a complicated braided bread on Saturday night. I love challah, she’d never had challah, and the idea of somehow getting a flavor woven into the challah made it a recipe I couldn’t skip. Start by making the base dough. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the yeast, warm water, and teaspoon of honey. Let sit for 10 minutes until it starts to foam up. Add the remaining honey, olive oil, eggs

Nutella Babka

So I didn’t actually have time to make babka this weekend. I had errands to run. And work to do. And laundry to fold. But I really wanted to make this babka. It’s so pretty! And full of Nutella! And this Tuesday is Fat Tuesday, so I needed something good to treat myself before my yearly no-sweets-for-Lent challenge. Plus, Cloudy Kitchen, who has an amazing instagram, made it look easy. So I decided to go for it. When I told my mom I was making Nutella Babka, she balked. “You make too many Nutella things,” she accused. First of all,

Braided Nutella Bread

I have been on a big yeasted bread kick this year, which is really quite a step forward in my baking life. I used to be terrified of recipes that included yeast. You invest so much time up front in making the dough, that the fear of it not rising often scared me off from starting at all.