I don’t like it when I have left overs in the fridge. They tend to grow old and after some days I will throw them away. And I don’t like to throw away food! Normally I plan our meals so that we eat everything or that the left overs are enough to be packed as lunch at work on the next day. But this saturday there was some potatoes left. Nothing else, only potatoes. And we had a invitation for Lunch the next day, so cooking something with something with them was out of question.

I inspected the fridge and found following things: Some Pâte fermentée, made because I wanted to bake something but without any recipe in mind, a cup of buttermilk and as I told before, potatoes. Looking on these things I had a Idea at last: I would bake some nice rolls for breakfast on Sunday.

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The weekend two weeks ago was very rainy and grey, and after a exhausting week in the lab I was in a really bad mood. But instead of staring out of window and asking myself where the summer has gone I decided to do something that cheers me up. Baking something is always good to brighten me up and it is my favourite cure against stress and and bad moods.  To knead a dough, to feel how it develops and becomes soft and silky, to see how the dough slowly rise and to smell how the tempting aromas fill the house when it bakes in the oven relaxes me and make me happy again.

This time I decided to bake a Mohnstriezel (Poppy seed braid). Because the taste of poppy seeds alone in the filling can be overpowering I decided to mix the grounded poppy seeds with semolina pudding which I flavoured with some lemon peel. And because its sometime boring to use always the same form for this kind of bread I did a variation and cut the filled dough halfway in slices and fan them a little bit. This looks very attractive and taste so good!

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When Susan blog about how to shape a bread to a pinwheel I was hooked. I liked the form very much and thought directly about using this shape for rolls. And on saturday I tested this Idea.

Because rolls are much smaller and I did not want to roll them to thin  I decided to lay them just crosswise without curving the blades of the wheel. So they look more like a windmill now. Thats why I call them windmill rolls.

This rolls are perfect for barbeque or to be served with soup or salad. mehr…

My colleagues are the best colleagues in the world and so I protested when they claim that I would NEVER bake cinnamon rolls for them. That is just partly true, but in the last month I bring nut triangles or cookies for our morning coffee break. And so its been a really long time since I bring cinnamon rolls.

So I promised to better myself and looked at the internet for a interesting recipe. A recipe that hooked me directly is the one for Korvapuustit – a Finnish cinnamon roll with a very nice shape. And I like cinnamon rolls with a nice shape! They remind me of Hamburger Franzbrötchen, who knows, maybe they are distant relatives?

Because two of my colleagues are lactose intolerant I create a recipe without dairy, similar to my lactose free challah, but with an additional Water roux to make the rolls more fluffy.  And I included a for me  essential spice for Scandinavian cinnamon rolls: cardamom.

When you serve them still oven warm with a cup of coffee then everyone will be happy!

Korvapuustit – Finnish cinnamon rolls

Pâte fermentée

• 125 g flour (Type 550)
• 80 g water
• 1g fresh yeast
• 2 g Salt

Water roux

• 30 g flour Type 550
• 150g Water

Dough

• all of the Water roux
• all of the Pâte fermentée
• 500g flour Type 550 s
• 50g Water
• 125g Eggs (2  eggs size L)
• 80g Oil
• 100g sugar
• 10g fresh yeast
• 5g Salt
• 1 tsp cardamom

Fillung

• 120g soft Butter (or Margarine for lactose free pastry)
• 100g sugar
• 5g cinnamon

Mix all ingredients for the Pâte fermentée and proof it for 1 hour at room temperature. Then put the dough into the fridge for 12 hours.

For the water roux whisk water and flour untill lump free, then heat it up to 65°C (needs about 3 min) while whisking. Fill the water roux in a bowl, cover its surface with cling foil and let it cool down to room temperature.

Dissolve the yeast in water, then knead in the kitchen machine with eggs, oil, salt, flour, water roux and Pâte fermentée for 5 min at slow speed.

The knead 7 min at middle speed. Because the sugar inhibits the gluten development, the sugar is added just now. Add always a tablespoon at once and knead in between always for 1 min.

Proof for one hour.

Flat the dough to a rectangle of 50cm length and 25 cm width. Spread with butter and sprinkle with sugar cinnamon mixture. Roll into a log from the long side and cut them into slices which one side is 1.5 cm long and 6.5 cm on the other side.

Use a chopstick or the handle of a wooden spoon an press it firmly on the top of slices.

Proof for 1 hour.

Before  baking brush with some water and bake at 200°C for about 22min.

When I was small I loved to eat “Hörnchen” for breakfast. This crescents made of a sweet dough are still a favourite treat when we sometimes have breakfast at the cafe that is attached to my favourite bakery.

I don’t know why I never baked them at home. Somehow this idea did not occur to me. But last weekend I changed this sad fact and baked “Hörnchen”. They are so easy to do!

I decided to prepare a sweet yeast dough with pâte fermentée for more aroma and structure and water roux for a soft crust and a fluffy cumb.

And when I drew them out of the oven I knew that they are success. The crust is soft, the crumb fluffy and the taste is great. I love them for breakfast on Sunday, spread with honey from a local beekeeper.

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Finding recipes for the 37. Bread Baking Day was an easy task for me – it was much harder to make a decision what I want to bake because the topic “Bread with preferment/sponge” is really my kind of bread making. Nearly all breads and pastry I bake are made with one or more preferment.  One very delicious is JT’s Rustic bread with three preferments. It use three diffrent Preferments: Poolish, Biga, Sourdough. And this three diffrent preferments create an incredible tasty bread.

For my entry for BBD I planed something similar. Poolish, sourdough and Pâte fermentée make this bread very aromatic. With a nutty taste of whole wheat and the complex flavours of the preferments with a mild acidity in the background. The bread has a fine crumb and a thick crisp crust.

To get a nice crisp crust I used the convection modus of my oven and opend the door slightly ajar, so that the steam can escape and the cust becomes crisp.

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I like Braids – the one made of dough, my hair is to short for braiding – and you can see this in my blog, too. I bake already a six strand braid, the fluffy Egg-Bread, Challahs  with and without Lactose or flavoured with orange liquor , and  a zopf filled with nuts.

A slice of fluffy soft Zopf with some homemade marmelade and a big cup of café au lait – is there a better way to start a sunday morning?

For some days there was an idea floating through my brain of a braided bread made with curd. And last weekend I finally put this idea into practice and baked a two stranded braid. Like in most of my Braid-Recipes I used a Pâte Fermentée, because this adds aroma and structure to the bread. And the curd adds a slightly sure taste and makes the crumb niecly soft.

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I like rolls with seeds. And flaxseeds are always fine. And so I like the idea of spelt flaxseed rolls wich Ulrike posted on Küchenlatein very much but I prefer recipes with less yeast and a preferment. And I had no spelt in the pantry, so i decided to bake some wheat flaxseeds rolls using my own recipe.

The dough contains a Pâte fermentée and is slightly softer then the recipe that Ulrike used. The dough is still easy to handle and to form the rolls is easy. Just flatten the dough thinly and then roll it into a log.

Half of the rolls I cut in length wise like Ulrike the rest I cut two times in an angle of about 15°  like you would cut a baguette.  The lengthwise cut allow the roll to expand mainly in the width, while the diagonal cuts keep the tension that was created while shaping the roll and so the roll expand in the width and high during the oven spring. I like the diagonal cuts more, to be honest, they gave a nice look to the bread and the shape is more pleasing. I use them most of the time when cutting oval breads and rolls.

The rolls are tasty, aromatic with a nice crumb and good crust but I miss the nut like taste of whole wheat. The next time I would replace 20% of the flour with whole wheat flour.

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This bread results from a misunderstanding. My boyfriend asked if I could bake this delicious “Toastbrot” again. He was thinking about this bread that I baked already in different a Variation for last World Bread Day. I used this fast and easy recipe often in the last month because it is delicious and easy. And delicious and easy recipes were what was needed in the last busy month.

But I would never call it “Toastbrot”. It is very soft and fluffy for a whole wheat bread but typical “Toastbrot” is a white bread for me.

So I designed a recipe for a soft white sandwich bread and vanished into the kitchen. And when I just started to put the loaves into the pans my boyfrind look into the kitchen, take a look into the pans and asked me puzzled what I was baking. Well, that’s toastbrot, isn’t it?

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The last weeks were very exhausting. My work in the lab is very time consuming at the moment and it seems that it stays like this until middle of September. That’s why I posted not very frequently in the last time and I am afraid that I will not post regulary until the most important experiments are done.

The Spelt and Seeds roll I baked on saturday last week. The Idea for this recipe came to me when I thought about what to do with left over boiled spelt grains. I decided to use them in a dough for rolls. I added a soaker with rolled oats and flax seeds. This made the rolls soft and hearty.

The combination of whole wheat flour, white spelt flour, spelt grains and flaxseeds is perfect for a delicious sandwich for lunch break.

For this week I am to late for Yeastspotting, so I send it for next weeks edition of Susans weekly showcase of yeastbaked goods.

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