Category Archives: Bread

October 6th, 2018

Butter Blatz

Category Bread, regional breads  Tags: , ,   24 Responses

Butter-Blatz-23

During the last weeks I planned my recipes according to different leftovers I found in my flour storage boxes. Now, they are (almost) tidy and I can come back to my personal favourites: regional bread recipes.

The special thing on regional recipes is the fact, that they are hard to find. They are often so common in their region that no one recognize them as that what they are: little recipe gems which can be found only in a narrow area. Only when an habitant moves into a area farer away, he or she will learn that this common everyday bread is not known in this part of the world. Nevertheless I stumble over a recipe from time to time or one of my readers askes for a special recipe and so I can enlarge my collection continuously.

The Butter Blatz is such a readers request. Blatz can be found in the southern Rhineland and in the Bergische Land and is baked in different variants:  filled with raisins or almonds or topped with crumbles. The plain butter blatz variant is shaped to long loaf and cut serveal times on both sides prior to baking. This gives the bread the appearance of a leaf and looks just beautiful.

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September 28th, 2018

Ärpelbrot

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: , , , , ,   8 Responses

rpelbrot-13Autumn means always potato time for me. And even after this hot and endless summer, when we had to harvest them already in august due to the drought, I hunger for the first loaf of potato bread. Here – in the region around cologne – potatoes are called Ärpel or Erpel. This dialectal term is a short form from “Erdapfel” (literal earthapple). And so is an Ärpelbrot nothing other then a potato bread.

These Variant is in some points similar to the Oberbergischen Ärpelbrot but is baked with a rye poolish and yeast. And so it is a variant that works well for bread baking beginners too. It is a aromatic bread whit crisp crust and tender crumb.

For me, it is the right bread to eat it – thickly slathered with Plum butter – on a cold, misty autumn morning!

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September 16th, 2018

Emmer Ciabatta

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   10 Responses

Emmer-Ciabatta-43When I was shopping flour in our local mill I discovered a white emmer flour and I couldn’t resist. It was to tempting and I had already the idea of a pure Emmer Ciabatta in my mind.

The “white flour” of the ancient grains can be varying in their “whiteness” as there is no norm to classify it. My flour turned out to be a darker shade of “white”, so I guess it will equal something between a Type 812 and a Type 1050.

Kneading dough with ancient grain flour needs more attentiveness, as their gluten networks is more fragile and easy to over-knead compared to spelt. So testing gluten development during the kneading is a must here. The window pane test will help to judge this.

The flavour of this bread is great: deep, complex and irresistible nutty but without the slight bitterness of whole grain bread. And I’m already thinking of what to bake next with the other half of the flour bag…

Emmer-Ciabatta

yields 4 Ciabatta

AutolysisEmmer-Ciabatta-23

  • 500g white Emmerflour
  • 350g Water

Dough

  • Autolysis
  • 4g Psyllium hulls
  • 50g Sourdough from the fridge (100% Hydration)
  • 25g olive oil
  • 10g Salt
  • 5g fresh yeast

2. Water addition

  • 90g Water

Mix flour and water and let it rest for 60 min at least.

Now add the remaining ingredients of the dough and knead for 5-8min at slow speed, adding the water in small increments while kneading. At the emd, the gluten network should be very well developed and the dough should be sticky.

If possible, place the dough in a square container, as this makes it later more easy to cut the dough into squares. Ferment for 3 hours, folding every 30min, then place the dough in the fridge for at least 16 hours. After that time span dough should be bubbly. If not, increase the fermentation period a bit.

Heat the oven with baking stone to 250°C

Flour the countertop and carefully turn the dough on it. Divide the dough with a dough scrapper into four pieces. Gently stretch the dough pieces to the typical ciabatta shape.

Lay on a couche (floured), cover with a second cloth and proof for 50 min.

Bake on the preheated stone for 35 min with steam.

September 8th, 2018

Three Grain Potato Rolls

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   8 Responses

Dreikorn-Kartoffel-Brtchen-26Slowly I find back into my everyday life after summer holidays. And summer seemed to be endless this year. I can’t remember when we had such a long period of hot and dry weather. But now, beginning of september, I feel that autumn is shyly knocking on our door. On my daily way to work I can see how mist is now filling the valleys around me. These are mornings which wake the memory of my favourite poem from Eduward Mörike.

A memory of the fading summer is this recipe for three grain rolls. Made with einkorn, rye and wheat flour the rolls have a delicious nutty flavour. A bit of potaote flakes helps to keep the crumb moist and tender. They are nourishing rolls packed with flavour and a good portion of whole grain flour. And so they were the perfect snack on our long summer trip to the Normandy.

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July 21st, 2018

Four Grain Bread

Category Bread, Overnight  Tags: , , , , , ,   18 Responses

Vierkornbrot-13I could call this bread a simple “leftover bread”. But this would be to simple as the bread is a really delicious one. But to be honest, it contains a lot of leftover flours. There is the package of einkorn flour I found behind my flour box. And the bag with the little bit of spelt flour and another bag with some leftover rye flour. And as these three did  not yield enough flour for a bread, I added some wheat flour, too.

As I planned to bake the bread in the wood fired oven in our regional history museum, I had to plan accordingly. For an relaxed baking day, I prefer to knead the dough friday night and let it rise over night in the fridge. But this normally means that I have to prepare the preferment in the morning before I leave for work. But – with school years end so near – I knew I would be to tired that morning for mixing a preferment at 5:30 am. As workaround I decided to let the poolish ferment in the fridge as well. It needs about 24 hours then, but with a bit of planing ahead, it minimize the time I had to spent each day with preapring the bread.

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July 8th, 2018

Spelt Potato Braid

Category Bread  Tags: , , , , ,   12 Responses

Kartoffel-Dinkel-Zopf-23Sometime it is good to have a delicious recipe at hand, which works well for those, who are not eating milk, eggs or wheat. For me, it is important that these recipes do not taste like “replacements” but are delicious stand-alone recipes.

The Spelt Potato Braid is one of this recipes. The dough is made without milk or eggs and if you replace the egg for glacing with the optional shiny glazing mix the recipe is vegan. The potato keeps the dough moist and tender, and a good portion of almond butter supplies the dough with an extra portion of fat and adds flavour. The almond flavour can be further enhanced when some grounded tonka bean is added to the dough, too.

And so, the braid is delicious and full of flavour: a braid with tendency to be a new favourite!

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June 23rd, 2018

Rye bread in a jar

Category Bread, Presents from the kitchen  Tags: ,   34 Responses

Roggenvollkornbrot-im-Glas-16One tradition in Germany I value very much: Giving bread and salt to newly wed couples or when someone moves into a new house. And when two very dear persons got married beginning of this month, I started two think directly about the traditional gift. But as the two lives two far away as that I could simply drop a basket there, I decided to send it per mail.

To make sure that the bread survives the trip in the parcel and stays fresh until its arrival, I bake a simple rye bread in weck jars and canned them afterwards. Treated like this, the bread keeps fresh for several weeks.

If you want to avoid the canning, you can close  the lit on the glass directly after baking. But as I have the tendency to burn my fingers in this process I prefer variant one 😀

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June 17th, 2018

Kleenroggen

Category Bread, regional breads  Tags: , , , , ,   36 Responses

Kleenroggen (3)[3]I am still surprised how widely spread the use of rye flour in traditional sweets bread was. Surprised because nowadays it is rather hard to find such breads in bakeries. And using rye flour to replace some portion of wheat flour makes perfectly sense as rye grows in much rougher conditions as the fastidious wheat. And so rye grew even in regions with poor soil and colder climate like you can find it in the Eifel or here in the “Bergische Land”.

When I stumbled upon the Bread called “Kleenroggen” (litterally little rye) I was buffled as I never heared from such a bread before. Researching deeper yield not so many information, but it seems that this tradtional bread was once baked from the “Bergische Land” up to the Sauerland. And it must have been a fairly common bread, as there is even a church which is called “Kleenroggenkerke” (Kleenroggen church) in the local idiom due to its pan bread like shape. And it always describes a sweet bread with currants and a good portion of rye.

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May 31st, 2018

Spelt Einkorn Baguette

Category Bread, Overnight  Tags: , , , ,   10 Responses

Dinkel-Einkorn-Baguette-23

For a family BBQ I had opted for bringing bread (anyone surprised by this?). And as I had some left over Einkorn flour from the Ein-Korn-Rolls I baked last week, my plan was made fast: Spelt Baguette with a good amount of whole Einkorn flour.

As Einkorn has the tendency to destablize the gluten network, I decided to use some enzyme active bean flour. The enzymes of this flour start oxidative processes in the dough, which leads to a better links between gluten proteins and thus to a stronger gluten network. If you need alternatives for bean flour please take a look at this post.

To watch the oven spring was mere “oven tv” for me. I sat happily before the oven and watched its oven spring. It was such a beautiful ovenspring, that it was very hard to to wait until the breads cooled before I sliced them. But then I was very happy: the crumb is for baguette with such a weak gluten network and one third whole grain flour surprisingly open. And the flavour is complex with its deep nutty undertones from the einkorn flour.

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May 12th, 2018

Flatbread

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   44 Responses

Fladenbrot-25We had a delicious dinner this week, made of Falafel, lukewarm zucchini salad from Ottolenghis Plenty and Flatbread.

The dough for the bread I had already mixed around lunch time. It contained only a wee bit of yeast and some sourdough and was left on the counter for fermenting over roughly 6 hours.

After this time, the very soft dough was beautiful bubbly and I preshaped it as gentle as possible to keep the dough bubbles. While the preshaped dough rested I heated the oven as hot as possible. Baking was then only a question of minutes and we snacked the first loaf already while cooking the rest of the meal – it was just so good.

The bread is just as a flatbread should be: wild open crump under a thin crisp. And I’m asking myself why I bake flatbreads so seldom…

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