Hey Reader!

Wow... somehow I only have three work weeks left in Muskoka. This summer is absolutely flying by.

It's also been insanely busy, so a quick apology to anyone who has emailed me and hasn't heard back. I get a lot of emails, and while I'm up here working, I just can't keep up with all of them. I promise I'm not ignoring you!

That said, I had a great week. We had the long weekend off, and I got to spend a ton of time with my kids—basically hanging by the lake, swimming, eating and enjoying Muskoka. Pretty hard to complain about that.

And we had this absolutely nuts sunset one night. No edit needed.

I've got another busy weekend coming up, but first, there's lots of good stuff in this week's newsletter.

In this week's newsletter, you will find:

Back-to-School, Back-to-Baking? 🍞
Walnut Cassis Sourdough 🍞
Another Sourdough Variation: Turmeric, Seeds & Cherry 🌾
The Ultimate Sourdough Grilled Cheese 🧀
This Week in Muskoka: A Dinner with Afrim 🕺

Back-to-School, Back-to-Baking? 🍞

I know, I know... it's only the beginning of August. I'm still very much in summer mode here in Muskoka, but somehow we're already starting to think about back-to-school.

And that got me thinking about baking season.

Last year around this time I released my 50 Best Recipes Excel Workbook—50 of my favourite bakery-tested formulas, all built into the same Excel system I use myself.

The part I love most isn't even having 50 recipes. It's being able to take a formula and actually use it: scale it up or down, adjust hydration, change inclusions, or use it as the starting point for something completely different.

You'll see a perfect example of that later in this newsletter with the Walnut Cassis Sourdough I made for the dinner with Afrim.

I'm bringing the 50 Best Recipes Excel Workbook back for Labour Day weekend at the best price I'll offer.

If you grabbed it last year, you've already got it—this is the same collection, so there's no need to buy it again.

If you missed it last time, jump on the waitlist below. You'll be the first to know when the sale goes live.

👉 JOIN THE 50 BEST WAITLIST

A quick first for the newsletter: You'll see a sponsored ad below. It's the first one I've ever included here. This November will mark four years of sending this newsletter every single week (I was a day late once 😂), so it's pretty cool that we've reached this point.

If something interests you, give it a click — it helps support the newsletter and all the free recipes and baking stuff I share every week. Thank you!

Walnut Cassis Sourdough 🍞

Last week I mentioned that I was doing an event at Cheese Boutique... slight correction 😂. Afrim actually came up to Muskoka, and we did the dinner here.

I wanted to bake something specifically for the cheese course, so I went a little old school with a Walnut Cassis Sourdough. Walnuts, dried fruit, sourdough and great cheese there's a reason this pairing has been around forever.

I used my Walnut Raisin Sourdough Excel recipe and simply swapped the raisins for cassis. That's the beauty of having a solid base formula: use what you have and make it your own.

I'm sharing the original Excel recipe below. Use raisins, cassis, cherries, cranberries, or whatever sounds good to you.

Walnut Raisins Sourdough.xlsx

Another Sourdough Variation: Turmeric, Seeds & Cherry 🌾

Speaking of taking a sourdough formula and making it your own, here's another one of my favourite variations.

This Turmeric Sourdough is loaded with roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, dried cherries and a turmeric paste that gives the crumb that incredible bright yellow colour.

The fun part with breads like this is once you have a solid base dough, you can really start playing with flavours and inclusions. Just like the Walnut Cassis above, think of the recipe as a starting point and make it your own.

I've got the full recipe and method free on the blog if you want to give this one a try.

👉 GET THE TURMERIC SOURDOUGH RECIPE

The Ultimate Sourdough Grilled Cheese 🧀

Apparently this has turned into a cheese newsletter 😂.

Since Afrim was up in Muskoka this week, I thought I'd bring back one of my favourite posts from the blog: the Ultimate Sourdough Grilled Cheese.

I asked Afrim for his best tips when I originally put this together, and one of my favourites is to use more than one cheese one that's great for melting and another that brings the flavour.

He also recommends combining sliced and grated cheese in the same sandwich. The slices give you even coverage while the grated cheese melts into all those little gaps. Simple, but it makes a killer grilled cheese.

I've got Afrim's cheese recommendations, my bread-to-cheese ratios, variations and the full recipe over on the blog.

👉 MAKE THE ULTIMATE SOURDOUGH GRILLED CHEESE

This Week in Muskoka: A Dinner with Afrim 🕺

The dinner with Afrim was definitely one of the busier days for me up here this summer, but nonetheless, it's all part of what I do as a private chef.

We actually started the day with a dock party for about 20 people. We kept it pretty simple: lots of great cheese, caviar and fresh baguettes that we carved right on the dock. Honestly, cheese, caviar and warm bread by the lake... you don't need to complicate things much more than that.

Later that evening we had a completely different group (16) for dinner.

We started in the kitchen garden with cucumber and almond gazpacho, a big cheese and charcuterie spread, and sangria-compressed watermelon with halloumi.

From there, we moved into a three-course dinner for 16, plus a separate kids' dinner for another 8–10. And because Afrim was there, obviously we weren't finishing the night without another pretty serious cheese spread 😂.