July 24th, 2017

After Work Bread

Category Bread, Overnight  Tags: , , ,   32 Responses

Feierabendbrot-33Sometimes it can happen even in a bread loving household: no bread! This happened to me some weeks ago when we had to defrost our freezer and so started to eat our way through all frozen goods. And then – in the middle of my working week – all bread was eaten and only to lonely rolls where left in the freezer. Enough to ensure our breakfast the next morning – but for the rest of the week we needed bread. And so I checked the flour stocks, took out some sweet starter and sourdough from the fridge and kneaded a dough before I went to sleep. The dough rested in the fridge meanwhile.

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July 16th, 2017

Klever Schwarzbrot

Category Bread, Bread baking for beginners  Tags: , , , ,   24 Responses

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There are so many different variants of black bread in Germany that I always feel sorry that my stomach can not cope to much of it. So I can bake one just once in a while and to bake me through all the regional variants will take some time. One really fascinating black bread recipe is the “Klever Schwarzbrot”. It uses buttermilk instead of sourdough. This adds enough acid to make the rye bake-able.

The bread has fine lactic flavour in combination with the sweetness of the molasses makes this bread special. And to add some complex flavour notes I added for my recipe a preferment with rye meal, buttermilk and tiny bit of yeast. The preferment adds not only aroma but helps the meal to soak up enough liquid which makes the bread more moist. The same is true for the soaker: the roasted bread crumbs add flavour and the nuts and coarse meal can soak up the liquid. And while this two additional steps makes the recipe more complicated then the “fast” variant with a lot of yeast but it makes it so flavourful that it is worth work. Continue reading →

July 8th, 2017

Croissants with sweet starter

Category Rolls  Tags: , , ,   12 Responses

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I fine tuned this recipe for quite a while. It started back last summer and I need about a year until I was nearly satisfied with the croissants. The crumb could still be more open but that is only a question of practise. Theoretically you could use more butter for the tourage (300-500g) but for me the croissants are then way to fatty. And so I keep practising and share the recipe meanwhile with you so you can start practising as well 🙂

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July 1st, 2017

Whole Wheat Braid

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   17 Responses

Vollkorn-Sonntagszopf5And the next recipe is again a recipe which circled for a long time in my mind before I would write it down. But as soon as I had penned it to paper I was itchy to try it. But with sometime circumstances slowing me down. This time it was first the bread baking course I gave and then the monthly bread baking day in the old wood fired community oven in our local history museum which keeps me from testing. And as I bake more then one bread in the wood fired oven my freezer was afterwards well stocked and with no free space. But…

… I found an excuse for baking the recipe anyway (visiting family or friends is always a good excuse – I can not come with empty hands, can I?).

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June 22nd, 2017

Porridge Bread with roasted Buckwheat

Category Bread  Tags: , , , , , ,   22 Responses

Hafergrtz-Brot-mit-gerstetem-BuchweiSome breads sneak their way into my my mind and stay there for awhile while my subconscious mind works on the recipe. This time it was a short sentence about a bread MC from Blog Farine tasted in Sandeep Gywalis Bakery: Porridge and roasted buckwheat, filled with many complex flavour notes. There was not much more information but this was enough for my brain to come up with a recipe.

The monthly bread baking day in the  local museum Bergneustadt was the perfect opportunity to bake the bread. Because what can make a delicious bread even more delicous? Right – baking it in an old wood fired community oven! And so I roasted the buckwheat the night before and then milled the roasted kernels to a fine, dark brown flour. The smell of the flour was astonishingly delicious: Malty and buckwheaty notes creates a rich and deep flavour. And it was suprising how much water the flour needed when I mixed the sourdough with this flour. The sourdough developed rather strong sour note.

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June 16th, 2017

Potato Rye Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , , , , , , ,   38 Responses

Wrziges-Kartoffel-Roggenbrot-53Already for some time I had the idea of a mild aromatic pure rye bread in my mind. But I need  – as everyone knows – someone to share breads with high percentage. A big family get together for which I volunteered to bake all bread needed was the chance to bring my idea of this bread to life.

My wild sourdough was build in to stages to ensure both mild flavour and good strength to rise the loaf. But at the moment my sourdough is a bit to wild and the second stage doubled its volume after just one hour. That was to short to develop enough lactic acid and other flavour components. And so I placed the bowl at a cooler spot and let it ripe for another two hours until the flavour of the sourdough was right. But the amazing power of this sourdough was unbroken. After not even one  hour(instead of the normal two) the loaf peaked over the rim of the proofing basket.

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June 9th, 2017

Baking course review: Bread baking afternoon

Category news  Tags:   6 Responses

DSC_34873 As you could see already last week at Instagram was the last baking course im Raum44 very successful. In a small group, we baked in just three hours an aromatic buttermilk loaf and a bunch of different shaped rolls. For the participants which were all beginners in baking it was a good opportunity to take a first step into the world of bread baking. And as you can see in the picture all were very successful in forming rolls and loaves. And beside kneading and forming there still enough time for all the questions and for bit of chatting.

And now I’m  thinking about the courses for the upcoming autumn and here I have a question: Would a course about “wheat free” baking with only spelt, emmer, einkorn and kamut interesting for you? I personally like the idea and would start working on recipes during the summer when there is some interest from your side.

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June 8th, 2017

Spelt Squares

Category Rolls  Tags: , , , , ,   38 Responses

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At the moment my heart belongs once again the wide variety of rolls. Especially the square once which are just cut from a high-hydration dough are favourites. And so it would be sad if this recipe would get lost in the whirlwind of inspirations in the last weeks. I baked this spelt squares already some weeks ago, their were part of our easter brunch as I felt that we would need some whole grainy beside pretzel rolls, cheese rolls, bakers rolls and my beloved Kieler Semmeln. And so I took the same matrix that worked so well for the Luftikus and this whole grain rolls: A long rise and a high hydration.

This time I used the combination of poolish, yoghurt and a long rise to give a complex flavour to the rolls, while the physiilum seed hulls helps to make the highly hydrated dough easy to handle. The Oat bran in which the crust is covered adds a crunchy effect to the crust and helps to achieve a fairly crispy crust which is not so easy for psyllium grain rolls.

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June 1st, 2017

Caraway Seed Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   14 Responses

Kmmelbrot-1_thumbSometimes the spontaneously created breads are the best. Breads that base on the actual stock in the ktichen cupboards can turn out to be new favourites, just like this potato rolls. And this caraway seed bread follows this route.

After refreshing my differnt starters I had some leftovers that needed to be used. And as I planed to visit my uncles birthday party later this day  I decided to bake a bread that would make him happy: Caraway Seed bread.

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May 26th, 2017

Salzweck

Category regional breads, Rolls  Tags: , , ,   15 Responses

Salzweck (1)[5]Another discovery of my search for regional breads is the Salzweck. Its a roll which stems from the region Baden and which is formed in a special way. Its rim is folded in a similar way like used for Kärntener Kasnudeln  or for the Handsemmeln. Its not so difficult to form and to proof this I took a video from the forming process.

The roll comes golden brown out of the oven and provides a fluffy soft crumb under its crisp crust. This is due to the combination of the macial combination of egg yolk, butter, enzyme active malt and vitamin C from the powdered rose hip. To make the flavour deep and complex, I added a Biga to the dough, too. Taken together this yields a beautiful looking roll with great aroma!

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