March 20th, 2012

Fast Curd/Quark Rolls

Quarkbrötchen 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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March 11th, 2012

Roll Rustiko

RusticoChristine 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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March 1st, 2012

Sahne-Brioche

Sahne-BriocheBrioche, 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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February 24th, 2012

Overnight Krustis

Übernacht-KrustiAnd 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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February 19th, 2012

Fried dough: Geknotetes and Berliner

Geknotetes I’m always relieved when the time of carnival lays behind us, as I told before. Sarah of Life ain’t no ponyfarm draws comics that perfectly shows how I feel during the “Fifth season”.

So only good thing in carnival for my opinion are the sweet pastry  which is baked during the “jecken Tage”. And baking some kind of fried pastry is the only thing related to carnival I do each year. This year I did Berliner and something which my family calls “Geknotetes”.

This year I used a new recipe which I developed using Water Roux and Poolish for a extra soft crumb and for a aromatic taste. I made the Berliner small and proofed them shorter then last, which created a strong ovenspring which results in Berliner with the typical white “Collar” I am try to get for years. The other important thing is that the frying temperature should not be higher then 160°C.

For filling the Berliner  I used the same  construction as two years ago: a syringe which I combined with a 10 cm long cut of a drinking straw. That works like a charm and I don’t have to buy an extra filling tip.

I am a little bit proud of my Berliner this time, I never get this beautiful collars  before and they tasted good, too.

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February 15th, 2012

Sesame sun

SesamsonneIt’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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February 5th, 2012

Almond Honey Crescents

MandelHonig-Hörnchen 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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February 4th, 2012

Spelt rolls

Dinkelbrötchen 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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January 27th, 2012

Bagel (overnight methode)

Bagel 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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January 23rd, 2012

Schokoladen-Gugelhupf

Gugelhupf

It is done! Not my Ph.D. Thesis – I am still working on that – but the Paper to my side project is published. When I am thinking that this was “only” my side project, its amazing how often it played the chief part in the last  two years . After some rejections is finally accepted and now I can use all of my energy to finish my main project. When everything works as planned I will end the experimental part of my thesis end of this month and will start writing. That is the plan I have at monent … we will see what will happen. Life in lab is never easy to plan…

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