I did it. I submitted my Ph. D. thesis yesterday. A great part of the work is now done. Now I have to prepare my defense in may. So I will prepare a talk and start reading paper and learning once again in some days. But at the moment I try to relax and enjoy the luxury of not writing 16 hours a day.

During this 16 hours-writing days in the last days before submission, baking bread had to be something fast. But to stop baking at all was no alternative, I needed it to keep myself grounded. The recipe for the Quark/Curd rolls is a fast one, at least in my eyes. It does not require a Starter, Poolish or Pâte fermentée , so you can immediately start with preparing the dough. It only require a Milk roux, which needs about half an hour for preparing and cooling down. I decided to call the Water Roux in recipes where I prepare it with milk “Milk roux”. It fits better to the ingredients used.

The fast curd rolls are very soft and stay fresh very long due to curd and milk roux. The curd give the roll a little tanginess, balancing the missing  flavours from a starter or prefement. Perfect for days with less time!

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Christine mentioned in a comment to the Overnight-Krustis, that a recipe for kneading with hand would be nice. That is true, of course and so I tested for the next rolls a variation without kneading by a machine. Really kneading was not necessary either, because the gluten network was developed by folding the dough every 30 minutes for 2 hours. After folding 3 times the dough had a nice silky sureface, telling me that the gluten network was now fine.

For Forming the rolls I tried a new Idea. After folding the dough into a square I used my dough scrapper to cut it into smaller squares. After I placed the rolls on baking tray, I used the dough scrapper again, pressing it lengthwise for about 2/3 into the roll. Then I left the rolls to proof overnight. The next morning I just had to place the tray in the hot oven without fussing over slashing rolls. They had a nice ovenspring and cracked nicely along the imprint I made with the dough scrapper.

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Brioche, that is a featherlike Breakfast pastry. The recipes vary, from rich to very rich with more than 50% Butter and Egg in relation to the flour. That tastes good, but it’s really rich. So I hesitated to bake them, but then I thought about a leaner variation. My Brioche contains 2 Eggs for 500g flour and about 20% Fat from Butter and cream. I heated the cream with some flour for a Water Roux (or more correctly Cream Roux) so I could add a higher amount of liquid to the dough. The amount of yeast is very low so I could leave the dough to proof overnight on the counter.

I do not own Briocheforms, so I bake them in a Muffin pan. I do some as typical Brioche a tête and some as bubble top like in this recipe from Dorrie Greenspan I found on Bon Appétit. To prevent the brioche from sticking to the pan I placed each Brioche on a baking paper squares and transferred them with the paper into the pans.

Due to long kneading and water roux the crumb is soft and regular and can be tore into long fibres. The taste is complex, buttery and creamy – perfect for a sunday morning breakfast.

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And now I am posting the next overnight recipe. Dear readers, I am afraid that you have to get used to overnight recipes. As long as I’m writing as a maniac such a relaxing method for fresh breads or rolls is a good counter balance.

At the moment I try to find the perfect recipe for rolls which rise overnight on the counter. This time I baked “Krustis”, which I formed in the evening. In the morning I just had to place the tray in the oven, wait for 20 min and then I had some crispy rolls for breakfast. The rolls had a good ovenspring and a nice open crumb with a deep complex flavour. I really like them!

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It’s time for a proof of life. I survived the last week but worked more than even I imagined. It was the first time in my life that I worked non stop for 15 hours and 45 minutes in the lab. But now I try to work less in the lab and write more at my thesis. The time is running now…

And so I baked once more a bread which I can proof in the fridge. Its easier to squeeze baking bread in my writing routine if I have not to spend so much time on the loaf each day.

This bread contains only one kind of seeds: Sesame. I used white sesame and some of the black sesame an Asian friend gave to me. It’s not so easy to find black sesame in German supermarkets.

The taste of black sesame seems to be similar to the white variation. I like it because it gave the bread crumb light and dark speckles. And of course I liked it because I like sesame.

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At the moment I stay often very long in the lab to finish the missing Experiments of my thesis. Around late afternoon/ early evening I often get hungry when lunchtime was already 5 hours ago. And when I am hungry and tired I am lacking motivation and concentration. That’s not good if I plan to work another two hours!

To prevent this I baked some wholewheat almond-honey crescents for the coming week. The original Idea is from “Das große GU Vollwert-Kochbuch”  but I changed the recipe so much in the last years that you can not recognize the original recipe anymore. I use more liquid and less yeast, I removed the soybean flour from the recipe and added a sourdough. The filling contains less butter, cinnamon and eggs but additional cacao and a pinch of salt.

I like the result very much: Delicious, filling with enough honey to give me a little more power. The long days in lab can come, I’m prepared now!

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And now the next recipe for people like me, who like to eat fresh rolls for breakfast without getting up very early in the morning.

This time its very easy, with yeast, water, salt and spelt flour.

The spelt flour and the long fermentation gave a very delicious taste to the rolls. The dough was rather wet, but with some flour I could handle it good and that a wet flour has positive results on the crumb I could already hear when I drew them out of the oven. The rolls crackled and sing and when I cut them I had a open crumb halfway to the open crumb of a ciabatta. They taste very good still warm with orange marmalade or cold later the day with some cheese and lettuce.

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There is not always space in my fridge for trays with rolls. Ok, to be honest there is nearly never room for a tray in my fridge. Even when I put two proofing baskets in the fridge I have to be creative. Normally I start to stack things on each other to make room for the baskets. And when my boyfriend wants to eat some cheese in the night? Then it’s time for Jenga!

That’s why I like recipes which I can keep overnight at room temperature . And since I bake the saffron stars I knew that I can even proof rolls overnight at room temperature as long as I use a really small amount yeast. So 1 g fresh yeast in the bagel recipe is no mistake. To improve the taste I also add a little bit sourdough. I did not dare to use a higher amount of sourdough, being afraid that the long and relatively warm fermentation  would turn the dough into sourdough.

But with the small amount it worked very well and the next morning I just had to place the bagels in boiling water and bake them. That’s only 30 min in the morning till we had fresh bagels for breakfast.

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Its time again for a whole grain bread her in the Blog. The last weeks I baked mostly Breads I posted before but last weekend I created a new recipe, using two of my favourite ingredients: rolled oats and buttermilk.

I proofed the breads in baskets in the fridge and they develop a lot of aroma during the proofing. I was very skeptical in the beginning, when I read that in Tartine they proof sourdough breads in the fridge. Its a methode I used for breads made with yeast before, but I was afraid, that sourdough breads would be to sour. And I really don’t like sour bread. But nothing like this happend and now its one of my favourite proofing methods! It seperate preparing dough and baking and that is the perfect method in stressful times for me.

The bread has dense crumb and is rather moist, which enhance its shelflife. It’s a delicious and filling basis for lunch break.

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Yes, this will be no post for all of us who new years resolution is  healthy wholesome eating. And I have to admit that after one slice of this bread I head to it a lot of fruits and vegetables to save my conscience. But (and here are now the excuses why I baked it anyway) it was love on first sight and I need a complex bread for relaxing because of all the stress I have in the last month before starting to write my Ph.D. thesis.

The idea for this bread had TXfarmer who baked some time ago a “Lamminated Sandwich Bread”. Her bread looks better then mine, she really knows how to bake laminated pastry. Her Croissants are a dream! The dough is a soft sandwich bread laminated with butter. After a single and a double fold the dough is cut into stripes and braided.

I did some modifications so that the recipe fits better to the weaker german flour. And this time I mixed the butter for laminating with some flour to make the handling easier. It works good for puff pastry for me and it helps here, too.

And how tastes this bread? A soft and evenly open crumb with a divine taste of butter, like a good croissant.

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