Those look wonderful!! And cinnamon rolls sound wonderful! I am trying to avoid any baking........I find I am eating more than usual being confined to home and don't want to get carried away :-) I stocked up on fresh fruit so grabbing a banana, apple or a bunch of grapes when the mood strikes.

Looks great! I’m going to try some rolls and bread soon. Wish I had more flour though. Hard to find now. Everyone is baking now, or at least pretending that they’re gonna.

I have not been able to find King Arthur bread flour around here for several months-well before the arrival of Covid-19. I had written to them recently when I saw that they were out of their bread flour even for online ordering, emphasizing that the flour was unavailable even well before the virus hoarding. I received a nonsensical reply about people ordering excessive amounts because of the virus and the flour would be back in stock soon, but no real explanation for its earlier scarcity.

No flour to be found here either, nor on line. Tomorrow I'm grinding some of my own, I have Einkorn and Madi and Maci are coming to play in the kitchen with me.

Annie

You're so lucky that you can still have family contact. I take it there's no virus in your area? I don't know when we'll get to see family.

I bought KA bread flour not so long ago. Before all this, of course.

For every reported confirmed case, expect that there are thousands of untested cases. Even if your area doesn't have a lot of reported cases yet, assume everyone has it and behave as if you have it.

The main point of testing, which measures the past, only, is to help the statisticians and epidemiologies track the disease. A negative test result will not tell you if you presently have the virus, only whether the disease you had was covid-19 or something else like the flu. They're also retesting people who have recovered to see if they're developing immunities and they're also looking for mutations in the virus. The numbers people are also tracking hospital admissions, telemedicine calls, etc., to try to capture as much information as possible. The reports of numbers of confirmed cases are also talking about the past. The spike in numbers is from new reporting of more tests, not new infections. Again, assume that for every positive test, thousands more have it. There are supposed to be some new tests that they can use in the hospitals that only take an hour to precess, but even then, you can catch the virus between the time the sample was taken and the results are returned. A negative result isn't useful except to the number crunchers.

Tried Paul Hollywood's recipe for French bread. Tasted lovely when hot from the oven but mine are skinny and not puffy. Crispy, crispy crust but within an hour the whole thing (all four of them) resulted in long skinny crackers. I think I'll make bread pudding.

blubird, those challah rolls are just beautiful! Can't blame your Granddaughter for doing what I'd have done!

No flour here either (had it on my curbside grocery pickup list yesterday, and that, among many other things was not available). I did have some flour already. At the start of the covid scare I made a loaf of hokkaido bread (I use that for french toast) and some dinner rolls with the dough and since learning of the flour 'shortage' I made 4 loaves of sandwich bread, which we'll use far more - it's been sliced and food-savored, and sits safely (I hope!) in the freezer to use as needed. Still have some flour left, but am hoarding my own stash just in case : )

Here's the lastest batch

IC, we're "stay home, stay safe", but not entirely locked down. Essential businesses are still operating and the restaurants can still have take out. We can, at this point, still go to the grocery store, pick up meds, go out to walk the dogs, go hiking, etc. We are supposed to keep a 6 foot distance and no do anything that's not "essential", but I'm still allowed to cook and take food to my elderly mother, pick up prescriptions, you can do banking with an appointment, although the lobbies are closed. We do have one case in our county, and the one in the county next door which resulted in the death of an 82 year old man this morning. Detroit is being hit hard, though, and I'm thinking it will be worse before it gets better, so we're still visiting while we can. Tomorrow The Princess will be helping me fix fence so the cattle can go out onto pasture soon, agricultural is also considered "essential", and we have a bit less than 100 acres, so we won't be in close proximity to anyone else except the cows.

Ashley says she comes here and that's all, other than that she stays home. Amanda works at the assisted living facility, so she goes to work and comes home, but she sees only her "residents", she works the midnight shift and no one visits at that hour. We see each other, but pretty much no one else, although the lady across the street came over today to buy some eggs, she didn't want to have to go to the grocery for them.

Annie

Annie, is sounds like paradise where you are with all that space.

We're pretty lucky here as it's a small place, most people are behaving and we have a house and a garden. I feel for people in cities, stuck in flats and in close proximity whenever they go out. We can go out once a day in a radius of 1km from our house for essential, basic shopping, medical visits or exercise. We have to take a paper with us for every trip.....I try to shop once a week only and don't leave my garden the rest of the time. There too many people who don't think restrictions apply to them, just the rest of us🤔

Your challah rolls are beautiful! Are they simple knots? I baked a batch of larger challahs a couple of weeks ago, trying to use up my flour and yeast, but you've inspired me - after Passover I'lll be baking rolls.

Thanks, helou49. The challah rolls are just simple knots. The recipe makes 9 large or 12 medium. I'd be happy to share the recipe if you’d like.

We are able to go out to shop for food, or pick up takeout from restaurants, but only “essential” businesses are ooen, which include agricultural. Getting eggs has been a big problem, though. I should ask my back neighbor; he's got a rooster and a couple of girls And offered me eggs a long time ago, actually almost 20 years ago. Barely seen them since then. i assume different chicks now ;-)

With Passover coming, we need lots of eggs and that's a problem. Although we apparently won’t be having a family dinner, I will bake and share if I get eggs.

Gorgeous rolls.

I think many will still be tripping over their toilet paper and their two 25lb sacks of flour in 6 months.

Or hopefully plenty of baking is going on with families home and now have the time. I know many of my friends and co-workers do bake but not that often. Most of the good bread related books have been best sellers as well as fermentation.

We failed to stock up but have enough flour, 1/2 bag, and some whole wheat and corn meal in the freezer. Couple pounds of wheat berries I can grind. Just can't make for neighbors. We are not big bread eaters. Once a month cornbread, once a month a couple boules and freeze some for soups.

Could not even get Masa. Really wanted to make tamales this weekend but even the restaurant wholesale supplier was out of it. No tacos?! , (no fear, DH ordered a case, lol) ...would rather make my own.

Last weekends boule.

Sleevendog, what a gorgeous boule! Bet it tastes as good as it looks...

For eggs you could try local farms. DH just logged on to our farm share to adjust the order....we will not need chicken for a while and decided to postpone an extra month but the were asking those of us with full freezers to do just that. End of April will be fine. And we added 2 dozen eggs, an add-on.

And delivery only. Used to be pick-up. They are swamped with new customers in need. Previously most would find it inconvenient to pick-up. It is a co-op of farms.

This might be a good outcome to help the farmers and once everyone gets a taste of quality meat it is hard to go back.

Blubird, your rolls are gorgeous. I'd love you to share your recipe if you could.

Here, too we're social-distancing. But a lot of people either didn't get or ignore the message. Groups of people hanging out in the parks, young people playing together, neighbours visiting neighbours for a coffee. smh.

Our grocery stores are really committed to doing the right thing. I was at the pet store and they have the whole store cordoned off. You walk in the door, stand at a spot and tell the employees what you want, and they retrieve it for you. No more millions of fingers touching the product.

The one grocery store has every-other checkout open with rope guiding customers, and tape on the floor to stand on.

Here's the recipe. I don’t know where i got it from, but it was originally attributed to “Secrets of a Jewish Baker” by George Greenstein. Dough is made in a bread maker, but it can be mixed by hand as well.

Challah Rolls

Wet:

1 cup water

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 whole egg (I use 2 whole eggs, no additional egg yolks)

2 egg yolks (it comes out okay - slightly less rich subbing one egg for these)

Dry:

19.5 oz (4 - 4 1/2 cups) bread flour

2 oz (1/4 cup) sugar

0.8 oz (2 tbsp) yeast

0.4 oz (2 tsp) salt

Glaze

1 egg plus 1/2 shell of water.

Set the bread machine to the regular dough cycle. Put in all the liquid ingredients. Then put the dry ingredients. Start the machine. Take the dough out at the end of the dough cycle.

Cut into 8 (large rolls) or 12 pieces (medium rolls) and shape into 12” “snakes”. Shape into rolls. ( you can also braid into a whole challah but will need more baking time)

Blend the egg and water for the glaze. Brush onto challahs.

Proof for 40 minutes in a warm place.

Brush with glaze again and, if you like, sprinkle on sesame or poppy seeds.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15-18 minutes.

Make a whole wheat version by replacing the 20 oz of bread flour with:

9 oz white whole wheat flour

10.5 oz bread flour and adding 2.5 tbsp more water