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Bagels

OK, I have to throw in the southern holiday favorite sweet potato casserole with brown sugar-pecan crust.
Bake, or nuke, the potatoes, cool, peel, haul out the trusty Kitchen Aid and mix with vanilla, sugar, etc. Chop pecans and mix streusel topping.
For the last 2 years I have been buying the St. Clair's casserole and honestly my family and I thinks it is even better than homemade.
And I appreciate the time to prepare other goodies I can't, or won't, order.
Happy holiday eatings to all.

I read everyone of these and i agree with some of them, but I sense a serious case of laziness running deep in this thread ;)
Nobody said Pâte à choux, or Crème Anglaise, which are more tedious than difficult, I remember making 200 Eclairs for a family gathering, and spending hours whipping by hand and stressing the final result was a labour of real love only to have my favorite aunt say "you could have just used vanilla pudding, nobody would have known any different", I was crushed..I would have known, but made from scratch is worth it almost 97% of the time IMO.. happy HoliDaze Everyone, Love to ya SE!!

I can't believe anyone considers stock a problem to make, just put it in a pot and simmmer. How hard is it to strain,skim and freeze to have fresh stock for your cooking? It only costs a bit of time and is so superior to any you can find in the stores!

Puff pastry is the thing I find totally unnecessary to make yourself unless you enjoy the satisfaction that comes with making such a time consuming recipe, if so then more power to ya!

@chanterelle, the secret to polenta is that you don't actually have to stir it all that often if you put it on a flame tamer, and you don't have to cook it for an hour -- 20 to 30 minutes is just fine. you can also bake it in the oven and it will turn out great.

Amen to pumpkin. During a period of righteous self-sufficiency, I bought pumpkins, cut them up (a perilous chore) and made my own (stringy, mealy) puree for pies and bread. Yuk! Good ol' Libby's every time now. As for stock, I know you can avoid all the preservatives, especially sodium, making it yourself, but there IS a kind that's better than MY homemade: Pacific Natural Foods Organic Free Range Chicken Broth - Low Sodium. Just 70 mg per cup of the salty stuff, and so help me, when rice is cooking in the boiling broth, you'd swear there was a chicken in the oven. Also if I can find it in MY little bitty town, you can, too.

i can't believe people really feel this way about stock! my heart hurts. and my head too.

puff pastry's the one thing i'd never make on my own on a regular basis.. i've failed too many times, and after a while it just becomes a sin to waste that much butter-glorious-butter.

MAKE YOUR OWN STOCK, PEOPLE! If you do it right then you'll realise why it's worth the difference!

Pasta. Boxed dried pasta is cheap and nearly as good as fresh. Also available in great variety of styles.

Pie crust. It's almost the same...and the filling is more important. Well at least for me.

Filo! And Puff Pastry. It's been said before but it bears repeating!

Kitty litter cake. For a cat-loving co-worker. It was so realistic, some other co-workers had trouble eating it. It even included tootsie roll poops!!! Fun!

Stock and pie crust

Puff pastry, stock, baguette, and above all, macarons. Why take the carefree enjoyment out of 2 bites of bought perfection?

@nightmoon, I don't have a real recipe for sourdough or pretty much any other everyday bread I make. Basically, once you have a starter established and you want to make some bread, you start feeding the little bit you've got stashed away, until it fills your container happily (I use jars that are about a pint or so).

At that point, I take out the majority of the starter, leaving maybe a tablespoon in the jar. I give that a litte feed and it goes back to the fridge for a nap until I need it again.

The stuff I scooped out goes into the bowl of my kitchenaid mixer and I add water and flour, maybe tripling or quadupling the amount I have. Keep in mind that none of this is measured, and I really don't think precision is important, because all you've got is flour and water, and it's just going to be more or less goopy. The looser it is, the faster it will rise, so if it's pretty lively, I tend to make a stiffer dough so it won't blow itself out of the container overnight.

The next day, I proceed to make bread using my usual haphazard methods. I add more water and flour to get the right consistency, and I knead it in the kitchenaid. I always add salt -- about a teaspoon. And I usually add some oil -- about a tablespoon or two -- but not always.

On average, I make a loaf of bread or a dozen dinnner rolls at a time, and use about 2 1/2 - 3 cups of flour to one cup of water. Since the sourdough is built in stages, the flour and water don't get measured at all, but I end up with a loaf of about the same size and weight when I'm done. So those numbers are probably close.

I let it rise one more time, like a regular bread, then I shape it, let it rise appropriately, and bake it.

You can skip the rise after the final additions and just shape it at that point and let it rise once before baking, but after it's been around that long, it's not like I'm in a hurry.

Sometimes I add different flours besides white. I seldom add any flavorings to sourdough, though, because I really, really like plain old soudough flavor. Unlike the breads I make with commercial yeasts, I'm not as often temped to start throwing in the kitchen sink. But you can go wild and add all sorts of things -- and you can make pancakes, english muffins, and all sorts of other things with the starter, as well.

I had a rye starter from wild yeast, but it suffered a bit of an accident, and I haven't recreated it yet. The three remaining starters are all fed with plain white AP flour. If I want to add a different flour to the bread, I do that after I've transferred the starter out of the jar it lives in.

If, for some reason, you can't bake when the dough is ready, you can always punch it down and let it rise again. If you do that, it helps to give it another feeding of at least a little flour and water to keep the little yeasties happy.

You can slow down the rising by putting the dough in the fridge, and you can leave it sitting there for days, if you can't get to it. Just let it warm up and give it a little feed before you move on.

Like most other breads, you can make sourdough with very slack (watery) doughs, or you can make a stiffer dough. The wetter the dough, the more active the yeast will be, but if it's too wet, you end up with a flattish loaf because the dough can't keep the structure. A dense dough will take longer to rise, it probably won't get the big and uneven holes that some sourdough people are so in love with, but it will be easier to shape, and it should hold that shape as it bakes.

Some people say that the sign of a good sourdough is when you take it out of the oven and set it to cool, and you can hear the crust cracking. It's like rice crispies, sort of.

If/when you go to the Carl's page, you'll see his suggestions for getting the starter active, and for making bread. He probably uses actual measurements, too. :-) Just make sure you're looking at the recipe that doesn't use potato water.

If you have tap water that's heavily chlorinated, you may not want to use that, or at least let it sit overnight before you use it, so you don't kill the yeast right off the bat. My tap water has never been a problem.

Anyway, I hope that's been somewhat helpful.