Yearly Archives: 2009

June 18th, 2009

Light Wheat Berry Bread

Category Bread  Tags:   7 Responses

Today I worked just half of the day because around lunchtime the plumber should have a look at our bathtub.  While he was searching for leak I used the time to refill our empty breadbox. I choose the recipe for the bread already yesterday evening at Chili und Ciabatta: Light Bread with Wheatberries.

I changed the recipe a little bit, I reduced the yeast amount and instead of normal wheat I used Ebly (tender wheat). I like Ebly very much, because it needs just 15 min untill cooked. Perfect if I have not much time to cook.

The recipe is easy to do and the resulting bread is fluffy but has a distinct bite from the wheatberries.

And the plumber find the leak, too: the soap dish in the tub was not water-proof sealed! If tomorow everything is dry, too, then everything is finde 🙂 Continue reading →

June 13th, 2009

15 min-Ricotta-Gnocchi

Category main courses    13 Responses

After I had my homemade Ricotta, I did directly the next thing on my toDo list:  Ricotta-Gnocchi.

Since Nicky of  DelciousDays posted them in her Blog I could admire them allready at the blogs of Petra (Chili und Ciabatta) and Claudia (Fool for Food). The gnocchi looked so delicious, that I had to try them. Because in both post they tell that the dough is very sticky I was not afraid and resist the whish to add more flour. To form gnocchi with this sticky dough is easy, when you follow the recipe: “Generously flour a board, take a big tablespoon of the dough and scoop it onto the board. It gets dusted with flour (dust your hands generously, too!), before rolling it into a finger-thick roll”

The gnocchi bear their name rightfully: I decided around 1 p.m. that I want to make them for lunch and we had them on our plates at 1.15 p.m.  A very delicious meal!

The recipe is enough for to with not to much hunger, if served with a great portion salad. Continue reading →

June 13th, 2009

Ricotta

Category Cheese    7 Responses

To make my own Ricotta is one of the things I have for a long time on my toDo list. I read a lot about it in diffrent blogs and it sounds not to complicated. The only complicated thing was to choose a recipe, because there are so many diffrent varients:  Claudia of Fool for Food used buttermilk, like Lauren of I’ll eat You,  Nick & Sara of IMAfoodblog used whey from their mozzarella production and the Hedonistin (Low Budget Cooking) grapefruit juice.

I also found variants using vinegar, citron juice or magnesium sulfate. For my first trial I choosed citron juice, but the Ricotta this recipe yielded hat a sour taste and it structure was similar to cottage cheese.

So I resarched a little bit more and found the comment von Ostwestwind (Küchenlatein) on Low Budget Cooking, that when using an acid like citron juice or vinegar you precipitate casein instead of globuline and albumine of the whey like in real ricotta. Continue reading →

June 8th, 2009

BBD#21: Pizzadough with Poolish

Category Bread Baking Day, main courses  Tags: ,   23 Responses

My pizza dough was fermenting in the kitchen, when I thought: lets check the theme for BBD#21! And then I could not belive my eyes: Zorra choosed for the second anniversary of Bread Baking Day the theme Pizza-Party ! Cool, I never had my post for BBD ready so early in the month! 😀

We have pizza ver regular since we have our small pizza oven Alfredo. He is a hot-blooded fellow and can heat up to 450°C (thats 842°F !) so he can compete with a real pizzeria oven. I found him while reading in a forum and fell in love with him immidiatly. Before we own the pizzaoven, I had to heat the bread baking stone for one hour before I could bake two pizzas! My ecological consience scold me every time because of the waste of energy. Alfrdo needs about 10 min to heat up and every Pizza needs just 4 min untill it is done. When I think about preparing dough in advance it is even possible to get a pizza when we came home lately from univeristy without order it somewhere. Continue reading →

June 7th, 2009

Croissants with Pâte fermentée

Category Bread  Tags: ,   13 Responses

For me, there is just one way to eat a croissant: Lukewarm with some nutella. But when I buy croissants in the bakery, they are cold. Of course I can place them shortly in the oven, but that is not the same. But there is a solution: Bake croissants by myself.

The last time I bake croissants I was not satisfied, because the croissants were not so fluffy like they should be. So it was time to try another recipe.

I decided to try a recipe that use pâte fermentée. It needs a lot of time, but most of the time is fermenting time in the fridge, so it does not matter to me.

To get fresh baked croissants on sunday morning, I started thursday night the pâte fermentée, friday night I prepared the dough, sunday i did the roll-in of the butter and formed the croissants. On Sunday morning I just take out the baking tray and placed the croissants in the oven. After all, it was not much work on each day, it just needed a lot of time!

But the outcome was perfekt: fluffy, layered, buttery taste … thats how croissants have to be!

Croissants mit Pâte fermentée

yields 12 Croissants

Pâte fermentée:

  • 125 g flour (Type 550)
  • 85g water
  • 1g yeast
  • 2 g salt

Dough:

  • whole Pâte fermentée
  • 500g flour (Type 550)
  • 145g milk
  • 165g water
  • 25g butter
  • 15g yeast
  • 10g salt
  • 80g sugar

Roll-in:

  • 225g butter

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

For the dough mix alle incredients aside the sugar and kneat them with the kitchen machine for 6 min at low speed.

Now ad the sugar in small portions and knead one minute before adding the next portion. Adding the sugar later helps to build up the gluten!

Put the dough into the fridge untill next morning.

Take out the cold butter and place it between two plastic foils. Then hit the butter with the rolling pin untill a plate has formed and the butter is softend.

Roll the dough to a square with an edge length of 30 cm x 45 cm and put the butterplate in the middle. Fold the doug over the butter and roll again.  Fold the dough in thirds (like a letter) and cool in the fridge for at least 45 min (better 1 hour).

Repeat the rolling, folding and cooling Steps for another two times.

After the last resting periode, roll the dough to an 40 cm x 45 cm rectangle

Cut the dough into 2 stripes of 20 cm x 45 cm and each strip into 6 triangle. Roll them up from the  small side.

Place them on a baking tray, cover it with clingfilm and place it in the fridge untill next morning.

Heat the oven to 225°C and place the tray directly out of the fridge in the oven. Bake for 15 min.

June 1st, 2009

Vanillacream Torte

Category Cake & Pastry    6 Responses

This week it was my Dads birthday, but while the birthday was in the week, so we meet at the weekend for coffee and cake. I promise to bring a cake and after thinking a little bit, I decided to make a Vanillacream-Torte. The making was easy and luckily I took a picture because the summerhot car was not a good for the torte. The chocolade dekor on the top melted and the sides became soft. 🙁 Arriving at my parents place I storm inside without greeting and place the torte in the fridge. This rescued the rest of the torte. Luckily the taste was not harmed 🙂 and I have a picture to proof that once the torte looks nice 😉 Continue reading →

May 27th, 2009

Bagel

Category Rolls  Tags:   8 Responses

When I get my new copy of Bertinets “Crust” I discovered immediately the recipe for Bagels. It was one of the first recipes I had to try.

Since this time I baked bagels often, because we both like them very much and they are fast and easy to make. But in the last weeks I baked so much new recipes, that I neglected this recipe a little bit. So my boyfrind asked me this weekend, if I could make bagels again. Of course I could!

The dough is a very stiff one, so that the machine had to work very hard, but the good thing is, that you can work with the dough without sticking.

Another nice thing about bagels is, that you can refridgerate the formed bagels over night, at the next morning you just has to boil and to bake them, so you get fresh bagels for breakfeast without alot of work. Continue reading →

May 25th, 2009

BBD#20: 4 grains bread with mixed seeds

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day    5 Responses

The theme for Bread Baking Day No. 20 is “Multigrain Breads”. That is a perfect theme for me because I love the gain of flavor that the diffrent typs of grain give to the bread.

My first plan was to bake a bread containing a mixture of diffrent kinds of rice. I have a very nice mixture containing wild rice, red rice from camargue and unpolished rice. But while this mixture is delicious as a part of a meal, it get lost in the bread. Both the red rice and the unpolished rice could not stand up against the wholemeal wheat dough, neither in taste nor look. Only the wild rice gave nice dark spots in the bread. So I end up with quite normal tasting wholegrain bread, that did not live up to its promise. But luckily I had a Plan B: 4-grain-Bread containing wheat, spelt, corn (as polenta) and cooked oat, and my favorite mixture of seeds: Pumpkin seed, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and sesame. I baked this bread before and know, that it taste delicious. Continue reading →

May 22nd, 2009

Titanwurz-Update

Category Botanic    One Response

 

Yesterday, my parents went to the botanical garden to have a look at the titan arum. At the evening, they send me an email with this picture and the question, what we did to this poor plant. 😉

Nothing, Dad. I am afraid that this is the circle of life.

 

Continue reading →