Although it seems like a forgiving dough - I can taste that I cheated on the overnight ferment. Sorry your casserole dishes aren't big enough. I bake in a toaster oven so when my bread rises it burns on top. Another reason P a L'A is good - it spreads out more than up. I brush the bread with some slightly salty water right before it goes in the oven. But I lose that lovely floury rustic surface. Do you have a pizza stone? That helped me get a better crust back when I last had an oven - now I use it in my grill to make pitas. Also I read somewhere or another about using a SS restaurant dish lid as a cloche though I've never seen one large enough. I am currently jealously watching a neighbor build a stone wood-fired bread oven by his pond - the ultimate bread oven. He says he will advise me when I am ready to build one - and I definitely do not lack for rocks. However right now my 'yard' is festooned with logs, brush and firewood piles. Hopefully in the near future the logs will become a woodshed and I can move the firewood inside. Then maybe a bread oven - which will entail moving rocks. I'm tired just thinking about it all. Making some tea and toast and taking a nap.

Mine is food.com It even has a place you can sign up and then collect recipes in your own "cookbook". Then you can go through all that appeal and add them to your cookbook and go to that when looking for something. Don't have to search each time. I have over 600 in my cook book. I go there first when looking up a recipe. See if I found one there already that appealed to me. For blogs, I signed up on stumbleupon and put in your interests and then you will "stumble" upon new sites/blogs, that might not come up in a search. I have found tons of great recipe blogs that are so interesting to read and see recipes that I might never have found before.

1. I grow my own stevia plants and harvest the leaves each fall and I convert some of it to a liquid extract and some to dried leaves to make extracts later. Remember, stevia is NOT sugar, just plant leaves which are sweet tasting. 2. Your dried leaves will have varying levels of sweetness depending on the growing season and variety of plants - somewhere between 10 to 30 times sweeter than sugar. Depending on the variety of plant that was grown, stevia has a bitter component and some varieties are less bitter than others. So you have no idea how much sweetness is equal to 1-cup of sugar - you'll just be guessing. 3. Pure stevioside extracts of stevia in the form of a white powder or clear liquid are 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar. So commercial stevia products are entirely different, and usually much sweeter, that those made from the stevia leaves. 4. Stevia has it's own unique taste (a little like licorice). Therefore, if you are using it for baked goods, I'd suggest buying a commercial stevia product which has less bitterness and a more neutral flavor, and the sweetness is regulated so you know how much of the product equals sugar. 5. Sugar in baked goods has attributes that you can't duplicate with stevia. Sugar is a tenderizer and it's hygroscopic and attracts moisture. It also helps with browning. Stevia does none of those, so you have to include some ingredients that will aid those attributes, not just substitute stevia for sugar. 6. Since one cup of sugar could be replaced with as little as 1/4 t. of concentrated stevia powder, that will throw off your ratio of liquids to solids. Baking is also a science. 7. If you plan on having any kind of success making banana bread, find a recipe that is already designed for using stevia and use the kind (powder, liquid, sugar replacer packets, etc.) called for in the recipe. 8. Expect a somewhat different flavor, especially an aftertaste that takes time to get accustomed to as your taste buds switch from sugar to stevia. 9. Try to make small loaves. Baked goods made with stevia tend to get dry very quickly, so plan on using it quickly and refrigerate or freeze any leftovers so they don't dry out. Wrap it tightly in foil to help maintain the moisture. 10. By converting the leaves to a concentrate by carefully cooking stevia leaves in water, it will make a dark, syrupy liquid which is better used as a substitute for molasses or brown sugar in recipes. It is stable for months and the flavor "improves" with age. So how it will taste just after making it doesn't mean that's how it will taste 2-months from now. It would also be helpful to know what your food goals are by substituting stevia for sugar. Is the banana bread for a diabetic, for instance? If so, they are still consuming high-glycemic flour and I could suggest a better recipe that includes low-glycemic almond flour. For diabetics, it's the total amount of carbohydrates, whether it's from white flour or white sugar. Perhaps the recipe below will help you with your sugar to stevia conversion, but I don't have a recipe using homemade stevia concentrate from cooking the leaves in water. BANANA BREAD Source: "Stevia" by Rita DePuydt 2 very ripe, medium to large bananas 1/4 t. powdered stevia extract 1/2 t. stevia concentrate 1 T. lemon juice 2 c. whole wheat pastry flour 1/2 t. baking soda 1 t. baking powder 1/4 t. salt 1/3 c. oil 1 large egg 1/2 c. plain nonfat yogurt or buttermilk 1 t. vanilla extract 1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional) Preheat oven to 350-degrees F. Oil a medium-sized loaf pan (7-1/2x8-1/2x2-1/2 inches). Mash the bananas in a small bowl. Mix the stevia extract, stevia concentrate, and lemon juice into the mashed bananas. Set aside Sift the flour, leavenings, and salt together in a bowl. Beat the oil and eggs together in a mixing bowl until creamy. Bean in the yogurt or buttermilk and the vanilla. Stir in the mashed bananas into the liquid mixture. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring as little as possible. Mix in the walnuts just before the flour is completely blended. Place into the loaf pan. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour until a toothpick or fork stuck in the middle comes out clean. Turn out the loaf and cool on a rack. Yield: 12 servings Per serving: Calories: 162, Total Fat: 7 g., Protein: 5 g., Carb.: 20 g., Fiber: 3 g., Sodium: 141 -Grainlady

As soon as I get off this computer, I plan to put the ingredients for Edie's Bread into the bread machine and will let it make the dough. I need bread for tomorrow and do like to let it cool overnight. Having mostly leftover potatoes/onions/carrots left from the roast chicken (chicken in gone). Will do a hamburger patty in the air fryer and maybe a salad - haven't decided yet. You know I have been self-isolating so long that this week I had to think about what day of the week each day was. I sure hope and pray this we will be safe to go out and do things in the future. I don't want my brain to deteriorate. Have been doing crossword puzzles, sudoko, and other type of brain stimulation, but that gets old, too. Enough. Got to get in the kitchen.