Taken when I made Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Bread!
Cooking With Christie: Outtake
King Arthur baking Company
Cooking With Christie: Everyday Sourdough
Inspiration: Over the past few years, I’ve struggled to make and maintain sourdough starters. Much like my fermentation experiments, my forays into these fermented starters always seem to crash and burn before I ever get to the good part — baking! Irritated at the latest failure, I sat down with a stack of cookbooks devoted to sourdough and started studying. Whereupon I found two simple tips/tricks that kept my starter alive long enough to bake with.
First and easiest fix: wrapping the jar of starter in a kitchen towel. Apparently, my kitchen is a tad too cool for a starter to thrive and it needed a blanket.
The second solution required a trip to our local farmers’ market, more specifically to the stall selling organic heirloom varieties of flour. According to several books, these small-batch flours contain a variety of micronutrients that help starters flourish, whereas plain old white flour from the grocery store strips away these nutrients.
And it worked!
Happy to have finally made a sourdough starter that lived longer than a couple of days, I started scouring these same tomes for a recipe and found a simple one in King Arthur Baking Company’s Baking School — a straightforward Sourdough Sandwich Bread recipe.
And it turned out magnificently fluffy!
Unsurprisingly, within a week of making this loaf, my starter died — again. But now I’ve hope!
There’s a similar recipe on their website, but it has way more steps and ingredients. I would highly recommend purchasing the book instead. Over the years, Baking School‘s become the baking book I keep turning to when I need a recipe that turns out beautifully the first and one hundredth time. (BTW: I’m not paid for this review or for making the recipe; I just really like their stuff.)
Christie’s Canon of Characters: Though Agatha Christie’s sleuths often struggle to find and nail down that book’s ne’er-do-well, I don’t know if they’d apply the same deductive reasoning to their failed bakes. Poirot probably would, though I can’t imagine him flubbing up repeatedly on something as supposedly simple as a starter.
Miss Marple probably mastered this technique early on and teaches it to the long string of maids she hires to help her out around the house. Perhaps Tuppence would struggle? Only because she’s pulled hither, thither, and yon by her three kids, husband, and murder cases. Colonel Race globe-hops entirely too much to even contemplate something as needy as a starter.
Superintendent Battle, yes, he’s the one who would both want to try making bread and figure out why it failed. He strikes me as a man who would enjoy puttering around the kitchen with his wife and daughters during his off hours. Perhaps not failing on purpose, but still enjoying the exasperation of one of his female family members showing him “the right way” to ensure the bread turned out every time!
P.S.: Here’s a picture of the modest Dagwood Sandwich I made that night for dinner using the sourdough bread!
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
Cooking With Christie: Outtake!
This is the baked off loaf of bread in which I used the harvest grain medley from King Arthur Baking Company.
And it turned out pretty well! Especially for a first attempt!
Cooking With Christie: Boredom
Inspiration: Every now and then, for reasons I don’t fully understand, I get bored. And the only real cure, for me at least, is to try something new. A fix that is a tad difficult to achieve when you’re stuck at home — but not impossible.
Fortunately, I’d finally figured out a method (that works for me) for making sourdough starter. Hopping onto one of my favorite baking websites, I found a completely unfamiliar recipe for Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Bread. Always wishing for Autumn in the middle of summer and excited to bake something new, I got to work…And quickly discovered I didn’t have all the ingredients.
Happily, it was only the raisins and walnuts.
Substituting raw pumpkin seeds and chopped crystallized ginger, I followed the rest of the recipe to the letter. And it turned out great!
Once you get everything measured the batter comes together very quickly.
Admittedly, the ginger didn’t add the same texture as the raisins would, but the burst of concentrated spice flavor more than made up for it, whilst the pumpkin seeds, which are naturally a tad bitter, helped keep the loaf from being overly sweet. Whilst the sourdough starter added a subtle, twangy note to the whole affair.
Christie’s Canon of Characters: Remember when, in Hallowe’en Party, Ariadne Oliver goes off apples for just a bit? I wonder, being as it was spooky season, if she switched to pumpkin flavor to fill that apple-shaped void in her life?
Admittedly, Christie set Hallowe’en Party well before pumpkin spice was a thing that infiltrates our lives from mid-September to the end of November. However, both fruits pair well with allspice, butter, cinnamon, cloves, honey, ginger, nutmeg, thyme, and vanilla. Although pumpkin isn’t generally eaten raw, the similar spice palate could have helped Ariadne satiate her apple craving. Especially if she consumed something akin to the aforementioned bread recipe with some apple brandy.
Or maybe she switched to pears until Poirot solved the case.
Which, honestly, sounds more likely.
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
Cooking With Christie: Distractions
Inspiration: I don’t like to fly.
Though, weirdly enough, I enjoy airports. All the different people mingling together, the opportunity to study them whilst standing in lines, and the eccentric selection of goods and services one can find leading to the terminals fascinate me.
I think this love stems from my parents taking me to watch airplanes take off and land as a small kid. On those evenings, when the terminals were quiet, I would tire myself out running hither, thither, and yon.
And all it cost was the price of a partial tank of gas.
Of course, these were the days before you needed a ticket to pass beyond the TSA’s metal detectors.
Interestingly, my first-ever flight didn’t frighten me at all. In point of fact, I found it exhilaratin, probably because the Captain spotted a pod of blue whales swimming in the Pacific Ocean and tipped the plane so we could see them too! Even thousands of feet in the air, these sea-faring mammals were monstrous in size, and I cannot help but thank this unknown Captain for showing them to us.
(Not my photo, my little Kodak Brownie camera did not capture this much detail. Nor, thankfully, did we get this close in a 737. Thanks to Unsplash for this image.)
However, sometime betwixt my 18th and 23rd birthdays (when I took my second flight), this wonder transformed into terror — that I’ve yet to shake….Despite boarding a plane about once or twice a year. (Until Covid, when my long-range travel came to a standstill.)
In any case, since then, I have discovered a few tricks to get me onto the plane. One of which is providing myself with something to look forward to on the other end. This helps curtail a nearly irresistible impulse to bolt from the plane, down the terminal, and out of the airport while declaring, “This is my new hometown now.” (When flying home.)
In this instance: Golden, Colorado.
Though a wonderful city, this sea-level girl did not exactly thrive at altitude. And yet, I still needed something besides my own bed to get my sneakers to stay still.
Then, King Arthur Baking Company sent me an email about a sale on their baking supplies.
Inspiration and credit card in hand, I ordered a modest assortment of specialized ingredients from their website. Amongst which was a bag of Harvest Grains Blend, which included a recipe for a new-to-me type of bread.
And it turned out beautifully.
Despite needing to substitute actual milk for powdered milk called for in the recipe, which I didn’t have on hand. And, since I was already straying off the beaten path, I swapped malt powder for white sugar. Since my palate thinks the flavor of malt pairs better with wheat than plain sugar. (I also used their Climate Change wheat blend, which paired beautifully with the grains and malt.)
Nutty and full of flavor, it made excellent sandwiches!
Christie: Speaking of sandwiches…..I think Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp would appreciate this loaf. Especially since I see both men as sandwich enthusiasts. Japp, whilst he staking out a person or place for either Poirot or his superiors. Unsurprisingly, I think Hastings would do the same whilst helping Poirot. Though, as an added wrinkle, I can also see Hastings making a sandwich or two for dinner during his bachelor days!
My 52 Weeks With Christie: A.Miner©2025
Cooking With Christie: The Obvious Use of Blueberries
This Week’s Recipe: Blueberry Hand Pies
I love a handpie. Even better? Recently, I learned how to make pie dough via a food processor, which utterly changed and simultaneously upped my pie game! Turns out, I wasn’t adding enough water and my hands were entirely too warm to work with such a temperature-sensitive mixture, hence, why the food processor was such a game changer.
So when I found this recipe for blueberry hand pies, I was excited to try it! Even better? They turned out beautifully the very first time.
The reason my pies are circular rather than square is on account of my kitchen’s lack of a pastry wheel and a reluctance to cut my silicone baking mat to ribbons made me avoid using a knife or a pizza cutter. Then I recalled purchasing, forever and a day ago, a pastry cutter (think cookie cutter but bigger) the approximate size called for in the recipe.
(And because I’m me, I also added a pinch of cinnamon to the filling.)
Agatha Christie: I can see Captain Hasting sinking his teeth happily into one of these pies on a summer’s day during a picnic he arranged with one lady or another!
Cooking With Christie: Cheater Sourdough
This Week’s Recipe: No-Knead Crusty White Bread
Inspiration: Looking to up my bread game, as I’ve mastered my regular white loaf, I started perusing the King Arthur Baking Co. website. (BTW: This is not an advert; I just find their recipes easier to replicate than some other sites.) In any case, I ran across the No-Knead recipe, which apparently won their 2016 Recipe of the Year award.
What I love about this recipe: After you make the dough and it goes through its first rise, you stick the dough into the refrigerator! Where you leave it for up to seven days – or – scoop out a chunk and bake yourself a loaf of fresh bread for dinner a couple of times during the week.
However, the longer you leave it the funkier, light sourdoughy taste it gets! All without needing to invest time in creating a sourdough starter.
Okay, I know my loaves aren’t as pretty as they could be, scoring wise, as I’ve yet to invest in a lame (a razor used to score bread).
Christie: I can easily see Miss Marple or Tuppence whipping up this recipe. The smallish loaves are great when you are only baking for a couple of people or want to impress an unexpected supper guest.
Plus, the bread works really well for French Toast the next day!
Cooking With Christie: Pizza!
Inspiration: Recently, my favorite pizza place closed unexpectedly, leaving a wedge-shaped hole in my heart. Since it was one of the few pizzerias I could actually eat at (as it used non-enriched flour), I’ve been missing my bi-weekly pizza runs!
Deep Calming Breath
I’ve tried making pizza dough in the past, and it was…okay. Not bad, just not great either. So I decided to up my pizza game and bought the following book.
King Arthur’s Baking School has all kinds of basic recipes for simple and complicated bakes, accompanied by helpful hints, tricks, and advice.
So, I tried the book’s pizza dough recipe….with a few tweaks. To add some extra flavor, I mixed in dried basil, majorum, and parsley. I also swapped half the all-purpose flour with bread flour to give the dough a bit more chew.
And it turned out beautifully!
Then I discovered the pizza sauce I thought was in the cupboard magically disappeared. (I swear it sprouted legs and wandered off.) Undaunted, I winged it. Using regular spaghetti sauce fortified with tomato paste (to thicken it and make it taste more tomatoey), I added extra herbs, a dash of sugar, and a healthy amount of gochugaru pepper flakes.
Helpful Hint: Make a sauce like this the day before. It will taste oodles better the next day as all the flavors have time to marry together.
Spreading my improvised sauce, I loaded the pizza with veggies and vegan chorizo and baked it….It turned out great! With more practice, it might even become excellent!
Doesn’t it look pretty!
Christie: Honestly? I’m not sure I can see any of Christie’s detectives making this…Save Superintendant Battle who I think would like feeding his family something that requires time to make and a bit of improvisation.
My 52 Weeks With Christie 
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