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This time of year always arrives with bane and blessing for me. The gray, cold days are hard on everyone, and it seems that we all start moving more slowly. Yet, as soon as it’s just cold enough, we also keep a fire going in our wood stove and have a pot of tea always under the cozy. There’s something so special about a wood fire on any day, but especially on a day that’s dreary outside. Most mornings here find children slowly getting out of bed and pulling up a chair to be close to the fire. Sometimes they have books in hand, sometimes they just gaze into it for a little while. But it warms my heart to see them snuggled together by the fire as the day is beginning.

This week I’m making a special sourdough that feels like the thing for the changing weather. A friend requested this quite a while back, and I’ve been playing with different recipes to find just the right mix of grains. It’s a sourdough loaf made with freshly milled whole wheat flours, tart dried cranberries, and toasted pecans. Friends, this is an absolute delight! I made two loaves earlier this week, and the first was gone as soon as I sliced it. Toasted, with good butter, it will be a fantastic way to brighten your day.

I have a budding photographer in the family who has graciously offered to take bread photos for me! Thanks to a friend who is loaning her a very nice camera to try, she has been photographing anything that catches her eye this week. She spent some time deciding how she would stage the bread, then took it to where the light was best. I think she did a great job!

My house sourdough is available every week, and is a wonderful bread to have on hand. I make every loaf by hand from start to finish, and the freshly-milled flour is a flavor boost like none other. All of my sourdough is long-fermented, which adds not only to the flavor but also to its digestibility. If you have the job of making stuffing for Thanksgiving, you’ll want a loaf of this! Pick up one for stuffing, and one for post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches and you’ll be all set to celebrate.

Orders can be placed at hillsdalehearth.com, and pickup is either at my home or Hillsdale College (Kendall 413) on Thursday afternoon. Please indicate your preferred pickup place when you order. Payment is by cash, check, or cashapp when you pick up, or by credit card when you order.

When I first started baking sourdough I thought that all sourdough bread was simply crusty loaves with mostly bread flour. That’s what I first started making and what has developed into my house sourdough. Little did I know then that practically anything made with yeast can also be made with wild yeast, aka sourdough. This small detail has opened up worlds of flavor and foods for our family! Learning that one of our children reacts badly to yeast set us down the path of alternative breads. I had no idea that so many baked goods could be made with wild yeast! This week I’m making a sweet sourdough for all of you – sourdough cinnamon sugar knots.

In a way, these knots are a bit like cinnamon rolls, but with more texture. And while they aren’t as sweet as a traditional cinnamon roll, they do satisfy a sweet tooth craving! The dough itself is enriched with butter and milk and benefits from a long rise in the fridge overnight to let the wild yeast work its magic. The cinnamon sugar filling is just that – cinnamon and sugar! I’ve made these with chocolate, or with raspberry jam in the past, but something about the spiciness of cinnamon seemed the right fit for a dreary November week.

My house sourdough is available to order every week. It’s made with 25% freshly milled grains and is a true sourdough – no added commercial yeast. Each loaf goes through about a 36 hour process from the time I mix enough starter for the loaves to the time it comes out of the oven. Time is what makes it taste so good, and what makes it so easy to enjoy! If you’ve struggled with gluten, this is a great sourdough to start with as it is only made up of flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter. I’m happy to send some links your way if you’d like to read more about gluten sensitivity and sourdough – just let me know!

Sourdough knots (two in each order) and sourdough house loaves are available to order now through Tuesday, or until sold out. Orders can be placed here, and payments is by credit card online or by cash, check, or cashapp at pickup. When you order, be sure to indicate where you would like to pick up your Thursday bread – either at my home in Hillsdale near the hospital or at Hillsdale College outside of Kendall 413.  

It’s hard to believe that November is here already! Other than the fall colors it’s hardly felt like fall in the least. Nevertheless, the months keep turning over and life keeps on a steady pace.

November subscriptions open today and I’m excited to bake for you this month! Here’s what you can find from Hillsdale Hearth in November:

November 7th offers a sourdough sandwich-style loaf that I’ll make with 100% freshly milled grains. This particular loaf is a mix of whole wheat and spelt, and it’s absolutely delightful. It would be a good one to stash in the freezer for leftover turkey sandwiches later this month.

November 14th will bring something sweet – sourdough cinnamon sugar knots. I’ve made these with chocolate and raspberry in the past, but fall seems just the right time for the cinnamon sugar combination. These are delightfully sweet and a perfect treat for any time of day.

November 21st I will be making a rustic loaf studded with dried cranberries and pecans. This loaf is as delicious as it is beautiful! It’s lovely as toast, or to serve alongside of soup, and it can stand on its own as an appetizer.

For Thanksgiving week I plan to have orders ready on Wednesday, November 27th. I will be making sourdough pumpkin dinner rolls – light, fluffy, tender, and so beautiful! I’ll also be making buttermilk lemon & apricot scones. These will be great for a light Friday morning breakfast when everyone needs to eat, but no one wants to prepare any more food!

House sourdough loaves are available each Thursday in November except for Thanksgiving week. Those loaves will also be ready for pickup on Wednesday, November 27th. Subscribers will receive several buttermilk biscuits with their first week’s pickup in November. I love a good biscuit – it goes with everything and rounds out simple meals in a perfect way. They can be savory or sweet, equally as good with butter and jam (or strawberries and cream!) as they are dipped in a hearty beef stew. I hope you’ll like these as much as we do!

I have a friend here who loves to bake, and we’ve been looking for a time to bake together. We pored through each other’s baking books and decided on a donut theme! We made donuts with choux pastry (think cream puffs), some with chocolate and rye and filled with vanilla cream, and an apple cider donut cake. There are nine children between us, so we had plenty of taste testers! Mostly, it was wonderful to have an afternoon to chat and to watch kids having fun together. The delicious donuts were the cherry on top of a great day!

This coming week I will be making scones fit for the fall, with pumpkin and cinnamon. These are so delightful without being too sweet. They will also freeze well – pop some in the freezer for company, or for an easy breakfast on a slow morning. 

My house sourdough is available each week, made in part with freshly-milled flour. If you’re curious about sourdough, this is a great place to start. It’s hearty, it’s filling, it’s full of good-for-you vitamins and minerals, and it’s delicious! This is our most common bread, and even after years of making it, my family still swoons over a warm slice of bread.

If you subscribed in October, this will be your last week of your subscription. November subscriptions will open on Friday, November 1st. Watch your email next week for the month’s menu. I love fall flavors, and Thanksgiving is around the corner, so there are good things coming your way!

Orders are open now until Tuesday, or until sold out. Pickup is on Thursday afternoon at Hillsdale College or at my home in Hillsdale. Payment is by cash, check (made out to Rachel Mumme), or cashapp, or by credit card when you order.

I recently came across a bread recipe that quickly moved to the top of my ‘to be baked’ list. A sourdough loaf with whole wheat flour, dark chocolate, toasted walnuts, and flax meal. If you’ve only ever eaten cardboard tasting healthy bread, you are in for a real treat. We polished off a loaf nearly all in one day and I asked my family what I should call this one. The youngest declared, “It tastes like fall!” He’s not wrong – something about the warm flavor of the toasted walnuts makes this the perfect slice to have on a cool, fall morning. A slice of this bread, toasted, makes an outstanding breakfast! 

The garden work is coming to an end; this weekend we’ll pull all of the remaining vines and plants to clear it out for its winter rest. The hot peppers were all ready at once, so I decided to try making giardiniera – the spicy vegetables you’ll often find on a real-deal Italian beef sandwich. I’m excited to get these out when we next make that for dinner!

My house sourdough is available every week – four different freshly milled grains go into each loaf, and the long, cool proofing gives it great flavor and makes it easily digestable. I don’t find this bread overly sour; it has a nice, tangy flavor that goes as well with jam as it does with cheese.

Orders are open now and will be available until Tuesday or until sold out. Breads can be picked up at my home in Hillsdale, or at Hillsdale College – just indicate your preference when you order. Payment is by cash, check, or cashapp, or by credit card when you place your order.

I can’t remember a time when my garden has still been producing in the middle of October. Granted, there’s not much left, but enough to have me thinking about what to do with all of the basil and hot peppers just waiting out there. I have everything ready for pesto after stocking up on walnuts and olive oil. We love it on pizza as an alternative to tomato sauce, or as an easy dinner tossed with pasta and some fresh veggies.

One of the things that is still growing out back is rosemary. When I transplanted it this spring, it can’t have been more than about 2 inches tall. It has taken all summer and through the fall to get big, but now it looks great! I’ll use some of that, along with chopped garlic, to adorn the sourdough focaccia for you this week. Focaccia is one of the most versatile breads I make. We eat it just as it is, or slice it for sandwiches. We dip it in olive oil or eat it alongside a big salad. We’ve made pizzas from focaccia, or top it with grated cheese and broil it for just a few minutes. It’s light and airy, and substantial enough to keep you full. If you haven’t tried it you won’t want to miss this version that’s amped up with garlic and rosemary.

I have the honor of contributing a basket this weekend for a fundraiser for the Early Pregnancy Loss Association. This non-profit supports women and families experiencing miscarriage, providing help in physical as well as spiritual and emotional ways. If you’re attending the banquet, you can bid on a few of my freshly baked items as well as a month-long subscription. There *might* be sourdough cinnamon rolls in the basket, so get your tickets if you haven’t already! If you’re not attending but would like to donate, you can find more information at miscarriagecare.com.

Available weekly is my house sourdough loaf. I mill four different grains just before mixing, and they each add a different bit of flavor to this bread. This is a fantastic bread to have in the freezer for those nights when you don’t have anything ready for dinner. It makes a killer grilled cheese sandwich, a BLT, or buttered toast to go with eggs. (Breakfast for dinner is a regular occurrence at our house). An easy way to freeze and thaw a loaf like this is to slice it before freezing, then just pull out as many slices at a time as you need.

Orders are open now until Tuesday, or until sold out, and can be placed at hillsdalehearth.com for pickup on Thursday, October 17th. Please choose either Hillsdale College (Kendall 413) or my home in Hillsdale as your pickup location. Payment is by cash, check, or cashapp, or by credit card when you order.

This week I’m making a nostalgic food, one that always reminds me of our time in Germany. We spent five years living there while Jonathan worked on his doctorate. We lived in a quaint university town in southern Germany for half of that time, then moved to Berlin for the remainder of those years. In both places there were bakeries (yes, plural) just around the corner from our apartment. Saturday mornings would often find us on a walk to one of the local bakeries to enjoy a delicious German breakfast of fresh rolls, meats and cheeses, jams and Nutella. We would sit and watch the world go by as we leisurely ate roll after roll. *sigh* Pretzels were also ubiquitous at every bakery. The southern Germans made them softer, somehow, than the Berliners, and sliced and smeared them with good butter. I would often pick one up as I biked into work, savoring it for a snack later in the day.

Those days may be behind us, but I’m bringing the taste and scents of those bakeries to Hillsdale this week. Soft sourdough German-style pretzels are the bake of the week. I make them in the traditional way, with long fermentation and a dip in a lye bath before sprinkling with pretzel salt and baking. These are really best on the day they’re made, but could also be frozen to enjoy later, if they even make it home!

Always available is my house sourdough loaf. I’m still using triticale in the grain mix and have also added back in red wheat, white wheat, and spelt. It’s a great combination and the loaves are full of fiber and nutrients, both from the freshly milled flour and the long, slow fermentation I use with all my sourdough breads.

Sourdough soft pretzels and house loaves are available to order now until Tuesday, or until sold out. Orders can be picked up on Thursday, October 10th either at Hillsdale College (Kendall 413) or at my home in Hillsdale. Please indicate your pickup location when you order. 

Payment is by cash, check, and cashapp when you pick up, or by credit card when you order. If you are paying by cash, please note that there is not always someone available to make change for your order!

A new month is almost upon us and it’s a glorious time of year. The trees seem late in their color change and the warm weather has given us the feel of a few more weeks of summer. This week we’ve been enjoying the fair; it’s fun to see all of the creative skills that people have and demonstrate!

As October rolls in it’s time for a new month of breads. Fall flavors are one of my love languages and this month is one you don’t want to miss! Here’s the lineup for the next five Thursdays:

October 3: Oat porridge sourdough – this bread is like comfort in loaf form. So good for everything from toast to sandwiches to a thick slab next to a bowl of soup.

October 10: Sourdough soft pretzels – these are a crowd favorite and always take me back to our years in Germany. 

October 17: Sourdough focaccia with garlic & rosemary – classic focaccia flavors, a slab of this is just the thing for a great sandwich.

October 24: Chocolate, walnut, and flax sourdough – this is a new bread for me and it’s packed with nutrition in addition to great flavor pairings.

October 31: Pumpkin cinnamon scones – October wouldn’t be complete without something pumpkin flavored. These are tender and just sweet enough without being cloying. 

For subscribers this month I’ll also make you shareable-sized apple hand pie with apples from a local orchard.

Subscriptions are available for both house sourdough loaves and for the bakes of the week, as noted above. You can choose one or the other, or order both to ensure that you receive all the varieties this month. If you’re going to be out of town one Thursday, it’s a great time to gift a loaf of bread to a friend – someone else can pick up bread on your behalf. 

If you’re just looking for baked goods now and then, you can also order week by week. Orders open on Fridays and close on Tuesday evenings, or when I sell out. This week, oat porridge sourdough and my house sourdough are available to order now for pickup on Thursday afternoon, October 3rd. When you order, you can choose to pick up at Hillsdale College or at my home in Hillsdale. 

Payment is by cash, check, or cashapp, or by credit card when you order. 

Please let me know if you have any questions or special requests. I am so very grateful to be your local baker!

We’re headed into fair week – it’s our first time participating and it’s been a learning curve for all of us. Projects are all mostly wrapped up, and the kids are excited to bring their hard work to the fair this weekend. If you’ve never been, it’ll be a happening place next week!

As we head into fall, despite the summer weather, I like to bake with traditional fall flavors. Apples are the first food that come to mind, and caramel apples are such a joy. Since I’m a baker and not a candy maker, I’m taking those flavors and infusing them into scones this week. Caramel bits, fresh apple, and a slightly sweet scone make for a delightful breakfast or coffee break. I make these by hand with flour and butter and everything else that makes scones delicious. 

This last week I made salsa with our garden peppers and tomatoes. My husband is a big fan of spicy foods, so I added a few mystery spicy peppers that I picked up at the college plant sale. Well. I’ve succeeded in making a salsa that he can barely eat! Good thing I have six quarts of it in the basement  🙂 

We’ve been going through bread like crazy lately. Our chickens are laying prolifically right now, but without toast no one really wants eggs for breakfast. I’ve recently taught one of my daughters to make a basic all-purpose sourdough sandwich loaf, which works well for lunches and for toast in the mornings. She makes three loaves on the weekend, and we enjoy that along with whatever other breads I’m making! My house sourdough is also available this week, with a great mix of freshly-milled grains in every loaf.

If you subscribed in September, this is the last week of your subscription. October subscriptions will open next Friday, September 27th, and stay open through the weekend or until sold out. Stay tuned for October’s menu next week! If you like fall flavors like I do, you’re going to love it.

Orders are open now and will remain open until Tuesday or until I’m sold out. This past week I closed orders on Sunday, so be sure to order early if you want house sourdough or caramel apple scones!

This week you’re in for one of my favorites: sourdough baguettes. These are so, so versatile – they’re perfect for bruschetta with fresh tomatoes and basil, for serving alongside charcuterie (easy dinner!), to go with a fried egg for breakfast, and really anything else you can think of. I’ll be freezing some of these to have on hand when the weather turns cool and we’re enjoying more soup for dinner. If baguettes have ever left you underwhelmed, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with these. The natural leavening, or sourdough, adds nutritional value but also this depth of flavor that simply can’t be manufactured. I make all of my breads by hand, paying close attention to my sourdough starter and the fermentation of each batch of dough. All of my sourdough breads are at least a 2-day process – time is what gives bread great flavor, and is also what helps the body digest this kind of bread more easily.

We’re currently renovating our porch, which had been screened in but needed some tlc. There was water damage on the ceiling and some rotting wood around the windows (which were a strange sort of clear vinyl, I think.) In any case, we’re adding an interior wall and dividing the space into an office for my husband and a more dedicated baking space for me! We’ll let the professionals take care of things like windows and electricity, then we’ll set to work on the interior. It may be some time before it’s finished, but I’ll keep baking throughout the process. If any of you enjoy interior design and would like to give me your best suggestions, I’d love some input!

I’m baking my house sourdough this month with a grain called triticale instead of my usual blend. We’re really enjoying it, and I hope that you are, too! Triticale is high in fiber and protein; my house sourdough packs in 25% of its total flour with freshly-milled triticale. In October I’ll go back to baking with a mix of red wheat, white wheat, and spelt. I’ll find other uses for the triticale going forward!

Orders are open now until Tuesday, September 17th, or until I sell out. House sourdough and sourdough baguettes will be available for pickup on Thursday, September 19th at my home in Hillsdale or at Hillsdale College. Payment is by cash, check, or cashapp, or by credit card when you order online.