Monthly Archives: June 2014

June 27th, 2014

Light Spelt Bread

Helles Dinkelbrot (3)

With the new oven I had to bake a bread immediately. I didn’t have a pure spelt bread for some time and so I decided that spelt bread should be the first bread baked in the new oven! With some sourdough and poolish for a good, complex flavour and a hot soaker to keep it moist.

But really existing was the moment when I placed the bread in the oven. I turned the oven to “Hydrobake”, which is the oven programm that traps the steam inside and throw some ice cubes inside to create some more steam. And then I sat in front of the oven and watch the bread rise the same way like other people would watch a thriller. The oven spring was indeed nicer then in my old oven. But the most impressing thing is the great colour and shine of the crumb which shows the importance of steam for a the maillard reaction.

I’m really happy with the new oven. And I’m happy with the bread as well. It tastes great, has a nice open crumb and a very crisp crust! It tastes so good, that I had no change to freeze one loaf because we it so fastly!

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June 24th, 2014

Sesame Flowers

Sesamsonnen

Some month ago, my colleagues had the idea that I should asked the editorial stuff of our coworker journal if they would like to publish one of my recipes. After some very nice mails I started to develop a recipe.  And because I’m working in the botanical institute I decided to bake rolls in form of flowers.

The dough follows my favourite principles: a little bit yeast and a long fermentation in the fridge, which helps to build a great flavour.

And for all who do not read the “Mituns” (which should be most of you), here is the recipe which is printed in the current issue:

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June 22nd, 2014

A new oven

 

DSC_6328

When my dearest and I move together eight years ago we did it on budget. I was about to start my diploma thesis and he just startet at university. It was not the time to buy our dream kitchen. And so we started with my old second handed stand alone oven which broke some month later. By that our kitchen layout was for a stand alone oven and so we replaced it with a similar cheap oven. And this oven worked well all the time.

But I got more and more frustrated by the fact that spills would flow between kitchen cabinet and oven and were hard to clean. And after finishing my Ph.d. I started to dream about a new build-in oven. But I do not choose easily when it comes to investing some money. I needed about a year to decided which oven I wanted. I read a lot and decided at the end to buy an oven with hydrobake function from Siemens, together with an induction stove (Siemens EQ861EV01R ). The hydrobake function keep steam inside the oven instead of letting the steam coming out during baking.

Last week the oven was delivered and we used the elongated weekend to partly deconstruct the kitchen and build it up with the new oven once again. Here are my before/after pictures and some steps in between:

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June 19th, 2014

Little Peach Tortes with a red heart

Pfirsich-Himbeer-Törtchen (2)

When I looked through my freezer two weeks ago I found some red currants from last year and some peaches, which seems to hide themselves when I was baking peache torte in February. Looking on the the berries and peaches I decided to bake some little mousse tortes.

For the Sponge I used a recipe from Matthias Ludwigs . He whips the egg white together with starch to soft peaks. I could not believe that it should work but it did! It helps to fold in the flour, starch and egg white in the dough without loosing its volume. For the filling I created once again my own recipe.

Because pentecost was a really warm day, I froze the tortes for four hours. And even then the 15 minute ride in the hot car was enough to defrost them. At my parents place, we enjoyed them together with iced coffee, ginger basil lemonade and an elder flower lemonade in the shadow on their veranda. There is no better way to spend a summer sunday!

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June 13th, 2014

Günther Webers White Bread

Weißbrot nach Günther Weber (2)

Micha praised  Günther Webers book, Lutz like it, too and now I’m joining the chorus: The recipes are great! And yes, the book contains only few recipes, but they are worth every cent! A good example is this gorgeous white bread.

The bread is simple to make and follows my favourite method: the dough rise over night on the kitchen counter. The trick which made the bread so irresistible, is adding a tiny bit of sourdough. This builds a complex, very aromatic flavour. The warm temperature speeded up the fermentation and after 8 hours the dough had already tripled. But it was no problem for me because I’m an early bird. And so I form the bread before the first coffee. And I had the already the feeling that 90 minutes for proofing would be way to much for my lively dough. And so I heated my baking stone directly. And I was right. Already after 40 min the loaves has risen a lot. And after 50 minutes the loaves could not wait any longer and I placed them in the oven. Luckily they had still enough power for a good oven spring.

And the bread I took from the oven was – as mentioned before – just gorgeous: a soft crumb, crisp crust and then an overwhelming flavour. This bread is a new favourite! And I will play around with new overnight recipes with a little bit of sourdough!

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June 9th, 2014

Pentecost Rolls

Pfingst-Brötchen

We spent this Pentecost sunday with my parents in their garden. At evening, when my sister and her family headed home to put their exhausted children to bed, my mum and me started to fill the dishwasher and to tidy the garden. My mum asked me then: “I prepared a poolish in the morning. Do you have an idea for breakfast rolls?” Of course I had and while she collected the toys flying around in the garden, I kneaded a dough and chatted a little bit with my dad. We put the dough in the cold cellar so it could rise overnight.

The next morning my mom send me some pictures from their breakfast table and the note: “The rolls are great” . And so we decided to do this blog post together, with her pictures and my writing and the rolls we did together!

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June 8th, 2014

Ginger Basil Lemonade

Ingwer-Basilikum-LimonadeWhen I’m asked which refreshment I would like to have I answer most of the time “water, please”. For me there is nothing more refreshing then sparkling water! But on humid summer days like the one we have at the moment I sometimes like to have some “flavour” in my water, too.  Adding a dash of juice or syrup is then my first choice.

And when I discovered a recipe for a ginger basil lemonade on a flyer a colleague brought to the lab after lunch, I wrote down the ingredients instantly. But – and that is typically me- I did not follow the recipe completely. My variation use lemon instead of lime and I added lemon zests to the syrup as well. And I use less sugar.  In the beginning I was a little bit doubtful about the basil, but it fits into the mixture very well, and even my dearest one who is normally no friend of experiments when it comes to lemonade, liked it very much!

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June 7th, 2014

Hot Walnut Ring with Koharsan Wheat

Feurige Walnuss-RingeThe last time I phoned my sister, she told me about a “Baguette” she ate in a cooking class some days ago. She liked the combination of hot pepper, walnuts and whole spelt flour, but the bread had a very thigh and doughy crumb. So I wrote down the recipe and promised to build a better recipe. For that I had to change nearly the whole recipe.

I take out the egg from the formula (no egg is needed in a baguette), but add a good deal more water but much less yeast. I reduced the amount of walnuts only a little bit for a better balance between bread and nut and added some chopped sweet red pepper for the good look. The amount of hot pepper should be adjusted by the personal taste, the amount of Habenero I used brings the recipe definitely to the hot side. If you want a milder version I would decrease the hot pepper and use more sweet pepper instead.

I kneaded the dough as I would knead a baguette dough and in the end I was rewarded with a soft but not sticky dough. It was easy to form some rings out of it. And after a propper fermenting and proofing time (something the original recipe omit) I was rewarded with a great aromatic bread. The Khorasan wheat, which I used instead of Spelt, gives a sweet nutty flavour to the dough which goes very well with walnuts and hot pepper. And the crumb is nicely open, especially when you consider the high amount of whole grain flour. A perfect bread to bring to a BBQ or to eat as a side with a summer salad!

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June 2nd, 2014

Bread Baking Day # 68: “Ancient” – The Roundup

breadbakingday-roundup

It is hard to believe but May is already gone and so it is time to round up the recipe for Bread Baking Day! I enjoyed your submissions very much, they show the whole spectrum of the word “ancient”. There are recipes made with ancient grains like Kamut, Emmer and Einkorn, traditional recipes from France, German, Bulgaria and Italy, even a historical recipe which stems from Roman times was submitted. And you will find a bread from the “ancient” blog past was baked once again, too.

I hope you enjoyed digging into the past as much as I did and that you maybe take away some new (but ancient) ideas. I do for sure! Thank you so much for your submissions!

The next BBD will be hosted by Der Gourmet . He will tell us the new theme on 6th June!

And now please enjoy the round up of “Ancient” recipes:

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June 1st, 2014

Brioche

Brioche (3)

Since some weeks I have some niece little brioche forms sitting in my cupboard which are only waiting for being filled with a new recipe. This long weekend was the perfect time to try the idea of baking Brioche with sweet starter. This strong, not tangy sourdough adds a niece complexity to the dough while the big amounts of egg and butter yield a soft and fluffy crumb.

But this big amount of butter makes it necessary to use a kitchen machine for kneading. When the butter is added, the dough loose all of its strength and becomes soft and smeary. So soft and smeary that I had my doubts if I could knead it to good consistency. But during  intensive kneading with the kitchen machine the dough gains back its strength and after 15 min the gluten network was fully developed. But it is worth to find the patience to knead for such a long time because this will result in a fluffy crumb which can be torn into long fibres.

The only thing I will change the next time is that I would form the upper ball for the Brioche à tête a little bit smaller so that the head is easier to recognize.

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