Monthly Archives: April 2009

April 30th, 2009

Pane Francese

Pane francese is italian and means french bread. It is the Italian version of baguette. Having the look of a ciabatta, the crumb is similar to a baguette.

It is a very tasty bread with a rustic look, that contains a small amount of whole wheat flour and such a minimal amount of yeast, that I really doubted that the dough would rise.  But never underestimate these small creatures. The long fermentation period give them enough time to proliferate and the bread had a nice oven spring. Continue reading

April 28th, 2009

Brownies

Another collegue finished her PhD thesis, and today was the great day of her disputation. It is a custom at our university that the new Doctor get a selfmade Doctor-hat, a Doctor-wagon and a Doctor-cake. So I was asked if I could bring a cake, a question I will always answer with yes 😉

For the last two disputations I do Schweizer Rüblikuchen, something that is very delicious, but I thought it would be not very creativ to bake it a third time. Filing through my recipes at Chefkoch.de I found a recipe for Brownies.

Containing a lot of sugar and cacao you get nearly a sugar-shock when you eat more than a tiny bite, so it is really perfect for my lab mates 😉

The Recipe is very easy, so its perfect, if you come home from work late in the evening (like me in the last weeks). The decorations I did this mornig at work together with a collegue. Continue reading

April 25th, 2009

BBD#19: Pain d’Epi

I promise to bake some bread for an Easter-Dinner with my parents. It’s been a long time since I baked Baguette, and there are so many nice recipes in “Advanced Bread and Pastry” that I had not to think about what kind of bread I want to bake.

The recipe I choosed worked fine and forming the baguettes was easly done. But when I tried to put the first Baguette to my peel, I realized that it was to big! But thats no problem, I thought, the oven is longer than the peel. I take second peel to support the part of the bread that did not fit to the peel and  transported the bread to the oven. When I had the baguette halfway on the stone I realized that the oven was to small for my baguette, too! I pushed the loave somehow into the oven, produzing a funny bended bread that deserve not the name baguette. Continue reading

April 23rd, 2009

Rohrnudeln

After my Bread baking Adventure I did not bake at this weekend because the freezer was filled with bread.

But today I came home earlier so I had some time to do a more complicated dinner then usual. I like Rohrnudeln very much, with a soup as a starter they are my favorite sweet maindish, so I decided that it was time to bake them again.

I serve them u

nfilled, with custard and apple sauce.

Continue reading

April 16th, 2009

Multigrain bread with levain and prefermented dough

We do house-sitting at my parents place during the Easter holidays. The weather was fine, so we spend a lot of time in the garden. But free days are not perfect without baking for me. I brought sourdough, seeds and grain from home, my mum has a kitchen machine and a lot of bread pans.

I was so glad that it’s really a lot of bread pans, because I underestimate the recipe. I was a little bit worried, when I looked into the bowl of the kitchen machine and saw how much dough was inside.

I end up with more then 3 kg dough, which yields 5 loaves between 500g and 1 kg. Luckily I have enough space in the freezer to freeze most of them.

I reduce the recipe for the blog, so it yields now two loaves of 750g.

The recipe is from “Advanced bread and pastry” from Michael Suas, I just replaced the rye flour with millet.

The special part of the recipe is that it uses both levain and prefermented dough, which create a very tasty bread with a light crumb. Continue reading

April 12th, 2009

Colombina

I learned two years ago, that there exist a Easterbread called Colomba, when my italian collegue brought one from Italy after easter holidays with her parents. With this incredibly soft texture of the crumb unter a sugar crust it was one of the delicouse things I ever tested. To sad that my collegue did not bake at all, so she had no recipe for me.

But from that point on I wish to bake a colomba. But I learned very fast, that it is nearly impossible to get a colomba papermold in Germany (and i do not plan to buy 100 papermolds, just for baking one or two colombas per year) Continue reading

April 9th, 2009

Brioche Tropézienne

I planed to bake brioche since months. In my new favorite baking book “Advanced Bread and Pastry” I found three diffrent recipes, using no preferment, sponge or prefermented dough. I liked the sponge most because I had not to rember to put the dough into the fridge after one hour.

While filing through the diffrent recipes I found the shaping option Brioche Tropézienne. These Brioche filled with Vanillacream and with streusel topping sounds perfect for my mums birthday. So I decided to do half of the Brioche as Brioche Tropézienne.

The look of the Brioche Tropézienne turned out not as nice as I expected. Part of the streusel topping slipped of the top. Maybe because I do not bake it in small round pans  like the recipe asked for. Maybe that is a good argument for buying a muffinform, because nevertheless they taste great! Continue reading

April 2nd, 2009

Ciabatta

Somewhere in germany, in the middle of the night: a dark figure sneaks out of the sleeping room and tiptoes into the kitchen. The alarm clock shows three o’clock. In the kitchen, the figure opens quietly cupboards and take out bowls, yeast and flour and prepares a poolish.

Then I tiptoe back to bed, think about if this is a case of “acute baking delirium“. But I plan to bake ciabatta this afternoon, so who  cares 😉

The Ciabatta that Steve from Bread cetera bake using the douple flour addition/ douple hydration, is very impressiv. White open crump, perfect crust, thats how a ciabatta should look like. And that exactly what I want to bake, too! I baked ciabatta maybe two or three times before, and was never satisfied.I had some biger air cells, but most of the crump was more or less dense. Continue reading