The Friday List and a loaf less ordinary

As of last tuesday I have a new baby. It must be fed every eight hours and hopefully will bring us great joy for many years to come. It's my very own sourdough starter and was born at Brasserie Bread's headquarters in Sydney.

Brasserie Bread is an artisan bakery with scale. The main outlet is a fantastic bakery and cafe in Botany and here they produce a range of beautiful breads; from caramelised garlic loaves to  traditional baguettes, sour cherry fruit bread, seeded sourdough and soft dinner rolls. Under the guidance of founder Michael Klausen, the bakery has also developed an excellent program of baking classes including free ones for children. This week I went along to their Start your Starter class and thanks to the lovely training manager Matt, learned how to do exactly that, and how to work the dough then shape it into classic bread forms.

So Thank you Matt, Michael and Brassserie Bread for getting me started (pardon the pun), and for those interested in learning about sourdough baking I can't recommend this class highly enough! Friday list follows below...

• Strawberry and lavender crumble from Running with Tweezers
• These anzac pears are such a great idea, maybe with peaches in summer? From Whole Food Cooking
• Looking forward to making a loaf of this honey apricot bread tomorrow...
• Gorgeous Australian blog Lemonpi puts my lamingtons to shame with these double chocolate brown sugar ones
• Behind the scenes of a video shoot with two of my favourite bloggers, Nadia of Le Porte Rouge and Aran from Cannelle et Vanille
• Seven Spoons makes oaty ice cream sandwiches, and they look delicious
• Burnt honey, vanilla and parsnip ice cream? Um...I think so
• I've been wanting to go to this cooking school in Sicily for many years...maybe one day I'll get there but for now this little snapshot will do
• Pretty rose and ginger cupcakes from Martha
• I love this illustrated recipe card for ginger bourbon fizz, via Snippet and Ink.