I like Christmas markets – if they are not crowded – and when I visit one with friends or colleagues we normally end our tour at a Glühwein stand. I do not like Glühwein not so much so I drink one of the non alcoholic drinks their offer. The hot chocolate is often not so good and the qualitiy of the “Kinderpunsch” differs very much from market stand to market stand.

This year I tested one that was just made from white grape juice and spices which was not bad but for my taste it was to sweet. And then I discovered the Apfelpunsch stand at the Christmas market on the Altermarkt in cologne. This was very delicious, a not so sweet heated apple juice, seasoned with cinnamon and clove.

Coming home after a long walk in the snow we both liked something hot to get warm again. And so I recreated the Apfelpunsch at home. It is easy to prepare and delicous so I think I will serve the punsch more often this winter. mehr…

It has been month since I bake with sourdough the last time. I was always very busy and neglected my sourdough completely. The little glass in which I store the sourdough vanished somewhere in the depth of the fridge. Now, as the time gets more quite, I planned to bake with sourdough again. But when I opend the glas the dough looked not good and its smell was strange. I tried to reactivate the dough but it was beyond hope. I think I starved it to death.

Lucky for me that I never had a close relationship to a batch of sourdough. I’m not the kind of girl who gives its sourdough a name and a personality, for me it is just a mixture of different bacteria and yeasts. So my dead sourdough did not left me heartbroken at all but a little bit exited because now I had the change to do what I really love: Starting a Starter. It is really the most enthralling part of baking with sourdough. Seeing how the first bubbles are formed and the dough starts to rise, to realize how the smell change that’s the right thing for a biologist.

I love projects in my kitchen which bubble and ferment. And I always planned to post about starting a Sourdough starter. And so we start: Please take out your flour, we start a starter today.

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While last year I need a lot of time to find a recipe for Zorras culinary Advent calendar this year it was very easy for me to decide what to prepare. In October when Zorra asked us to send her the title of our posts I spent some time to find the perfect method to candid orange peel. I needed some tries until the recipe worked for me. And the recipe that results from my tests is surprisingly easy and the candid orange peel are really delicious. And when you coat them with chocolate make them even better, a kind of orange praline.

My recipe is very similar to the recipe I found in the “Schrot und Korn” from December 2009, but I let the peels infuse longer in the sugar syrup and I heat the syrup up to 108°C so the sugar will crystallise while the peels dries. For me this method is better then coating the peels with extra sugar after the process of candy.

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I planned to bake this Bread at the last weekend. But my sourdough was not willing to work anymore so I needed another plan. I used a part of the dough I mixed the evening before for breakfast rolls and which I allowed to rise overnight in the kitchen. A dough that is allowed to rise slowly is a good preferment. Mixed with home milled Spelt flour and Wheat flour I created a delicous whole grain bread.

After I mixed the dough I placed it in the fridge to rise slowly while I spent a part of my Sunday in the lab. When I came home five hours later, the dough had doubled its volume, so I formed two loaves and placed them seam side down in two bread forms. After proofing and turning the loaves over on the oven peel the seam side is now on top of the loaves. The crust will crack along the seam unevenly in the oven which creates a rustic looking loaf.

I sent this bread to Yeastspotting, Susans weekly showcase of yeast baked bread. mehr…

The harvest of quince was as good as the apple harvest this year. So we give away a lot of quince to our neighbours, friends and colleagues because I have still a lot of quince jelly in the pantry from last year.

Last year I miscalculated how much jelly two persons can eat during a year. So my boyfriend was totally against cooking more jelly because he like to eat some other jelly then quince for breakfast sometimes.

Already two years ago I made some quince chutney with my mom. That was really delicious especially with some cheese. The mixture of sour and sweet harmonize very well with the flavour of the quince and the hot pepper adds a nice nuance.

But be prepared! You will need a very sharp knife because quince is not so easy to cut!

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It is time to use up the last apples of this years apple harvest. Now the remaining apples are at the end of their shelf live, so they start to shrivel now.

I saw apple turnovers at Chili und Ciabatta some days ago and I like the idea to bake some turnovers. But I love turnovers which dough is mellow and flaky. So I decided to use a variaton of the dough of this mushroom quiche. I added some sugar to the dough and reduced the amount of salt, so it fits to a fruit filling.

The filling is a simple one: some Vanilla, sugar and apples, bound with a teaspoon starch.

The turnovers are delicous, the dough is like I liked them and stay fresh at least for two days. It is the dessert for my lunch at work. mehr…

I can not belive it but it is already my second Blogversary. Since my first Post I wrote 174 Posts and got 970 niece comments. Thanks to all of my dear readers!

To celebrate I baked croissants because a birthday needs a special treat.

The recipe is similar to my other recipe for croissants with Pâte fermentée that I posted about one year ago. But this recipe contains more butter and because I did two single folds and two double folds the dough contains 144 layers.

This 144 layers make the croissants crisp and flaky and they taste delightful buttery.

I froze most of the croissants after proofing, so I bake some for Sunday morning breakfast. When I start with a cold oven I can bake the without defrosting. Just the time for baking has to be about 5 minutes longer. mehr…

I like to bake early but on weekends I also like to sleep a little bit longer.  During the week I am a early bird but at weekends I like to stay in bed until 8 o’clock or even a little bit longer. To get freshly baked rolls for breakfast I have to think about some tricks. One possibility is to proof the rolls in the fridge. But at weekends my small fridge is often already filled with food we bought for the next week. There is no room left for a tray of rolls.

So I was hooked when I read Martins recipe for Yoghurt Sesame Rolls. The dough is mixed at the evening and ferment overnight at room temperature. Yoghurt, little yeast, long fermentation, that are everything I need to try this recipe.

The rolls are delicious – soft and a little bit tart because of the yoghurt. A simple and fast recipe I can really recommend! mehr…

Christmas seems to be still far far away. You could buy Spektulatius and Lebkuchen in the supermarket since months but I ignore this fact since month, too. For me it is still autumn!

But then I realize that in three (!) weeks we have the first Sunday in Advent and that I have to bake christstollen right now if I plan to serve a christstollen infused with all the flavours that only three or four weeks of storing can create.

And so I bake again the same recipe like last year – the one I invented for a super moist stollen. The Taste of it is great: some vanilla, cinnamon, cardamom and mace fused with raisins and candid orangepeel and citron peel. Make sure to buy the best ingredients you get, the quality of the ingredients affect the quality of the stollen!

For the recipe, please look at my last years post here.

It’s again time for a bread recipe for the blog. The last weeks I played with two different methods: Cold Autolyze like Phillipe Gosselin used and the 3/4 Sponge I found in a recipe of Dan Lepard (scroll down for the recipe).

The recipe for the bread with 3/4 Sponge use only a minimal amount of yeast which is completely  added to the sponge, something that always fascinate me.

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