Sourdough Bread, Soup Recipes and Cooking Tutorials: What’s New with Dawn McNaught
I am writing this quick post to let you know what is happening as I move more of my work onto this website. I’ll also be sharing and updating posts from my original recipe blogs here, bringing more of the recipes, educational material, art and writing together in one place.
Sourdough Recipes Blog Update Plus More
This website and my YouTube channel are now the best places to find my new material, updated recipes and tutorials. My original recipe blog is not going anywhere, though. It will remain a resource for anyone who uses it, and there is plenty there to explore.
I have over 400 recipes on that blog alone , if you include the variations, soup stocks, sauces, oils and breads. I have two other blogs which still get a little traffic, but I’ll close those down and stay focused on food as a whole, rather than focusing only on dietary needs. I no longer have the garden. My herbs are grown indoors these days.
I’ve gathered many of my older notes into a pile I can work from now and have made headway on two cookbooks. That meant separating a LOT of information into categories. I am now compiling sourdough bread recipes and accompanying meals that work well with the breads I’ve created. Some of those experiments, and the breads that worked out, will have tutorials on YouTube too. I'll be finishing these sourdough based books while finishing the illustrations for the two snaller books. I have applied for those ISBN numbers!
I may wind up with two more cookbooks as well. My interest in history has me gathering some recipes into a category for medieval experiments based on what I read. Honestly, some of the recipes from my childhood are creeping into their own category too. So much of the food from my past has a history thread I’ve been pulling on. Green-eyed Dragons and split pea soup are just a taste of those connections, some reaching back a hundred years or more. (Seriously... look up the song Green-Eyed Dragon.)
But I am letting my thoughts wander...
Alongside the new material, I will be putting energy into updating the older recipes on my original blog, testing them again, checking measurements and possibly replacing the photography where an upgrade is needed. Some of them do need one. As I work through those recipes, I’ll share updated material here too.
While I work through the recipes and finish the cookbooks, I will be adding older and newer resource material, plus links or references where I think they are warranted. Some of my knowledge comes from experimentation, and some comes from working as a baker, in restaurants and making food from scratch at the coffee shop. But my learning never went dormant. I was always buying books, trying new ideas and figuring out how to recreate a dish I had tasted. I’m not done upgrading my skills as I move through life.
As I settle into this new routine, I still need to focus on my art, writing and flavour projects. I am definitely mixing them together more. Having them here on the website gives me room to share those connections.
I’m also going to play with creating a look or “feel” for the YouTube channel. I am not a performative person. I see the value in keeping a calm theme throughout the videos and using the video cards to describe more complicated ideas when my thoughts run ahead. I like a little music when I’m not talking, whether I’m demonstrating something or showing cards.
I am still working out the details. Years of graphic design and writing, along with making a few social media videos, are part of my mixed bag of skills, but I need to improve there too. I’m always researching something, it seems.
Anyways, I am planning one or two soups a month for the channel, as I have so many of those recipes ready. I’ll also revisit and update the older bread recipes, including the decorative styles, and mix in the teas I enjoy. Along the way, I’ll share techniques for carrying a flavour into other dishes or drinks. Those are things I’ve learned through experimenting in my kitchen, reading books, watching other people and talking with them.
Some of these recipes are completely my own. Others have a foundation in culinary books and the bread books I purchased to improve my understanding of the craft.
Bread baking is a craft. It can take decades to learn its many techniques, and you could dedicate much of your life to baking and still have more to learn. In a sense, I have done so, just not through a formal system.
So, you will still get the odd story as I work through the website and original blog. If you’re looking for a recipe from my older collection, please visit my original recipe blog. For demonstrations, educational material and some of the basics, head over to my YouTube channel. You can follow along there as I revisit older recipes and try new ideas.
Here on the website, you can browse the categories for newer recipes, art, stories and gifts. Yes, I am plugging the other parts of my website... LOL. Please help yourself to the free material I’m posting for educational purposes. That’s why it’s there.
I’ve had a few takers on the newsletter too. You can sign up here if you’d like to keep in touch. I’ll see how it goes over the next year, with plans to publish once a quarter as the seasons change.
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