August 2nd, 2015

Spelt Rolls with Sweet Starter

Category Rolls Tags: Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 11 Responses

Some weeks ago a reader asked me if it is possible to bake pure spelt rolls with sourdough. The reason for this question is a histamine intolerance and so I thought directly of using my sweet starter, as the sweet starter fits well in the “shortly riped” scheme. I feeded a part of my starter four times with spelt flour which reduces the wheat in the starter to 0,26%. If you want a pure spelt starter, you can start a starter from a spelt sourdough and some spelt flour as well.

To avoid a dry crumb (what can happen with spelt so easily) I added once again a hot soaker. Some egg yolk and fat makes the crumb more fluffy and the malt helps to deepen the flavour. But using egg yolk and malt is not necessary, if you can’t eat one or the other. Just replace the egg yolk with water. The crumb will be a little bit more dense but the rolls will be still fine. And if you are looking for wheat free recipes, there is a new tag for you: wheat free 🙂

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July 29th, 2015

Pide with Mangold Tomato Filling

Category Bread Baking Day, Tartes & Quiches Tags: Bread Baking Day, Garlic, Mangold, Onions 10 Responses

Zorra asked us to bake flat breads for the Bread Baking Day. When my boyfriends parents gave us a lot of beautful mangold from their garden, I had the idea to fill Pide with them. When I checked recipes for the dough I realized that they all contain much or very much oil. So When I put my recipe together, I opted for a lot oil, some milk for an extra soft dough and a spoonful of unfed sourdough for a better flavour (the pide were a quick decision for dinner with no time for preferments).

Oil, on one hand, makes the dough soft and easy to handle, but on the other hand building up the gluten network is inhibited. So the dough needs to be kneaded intensively on slow speed. But after about 15 min you will get the perfect dough, which can be formed without any sticking.

The pide is delicious warm and cold (perfekt for lunch-at-work) and can be filled with other delicious thinks like spinach as well!

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July 25th, 2015

Blueberry Jam (without gelling sugar)

Category Sauces and Spreads Tags: Blaubeeren, Jam 8 Responses

It’s early in the morning, the air is nicely warm and the wind carries the fungous smell of moist forest ground. All around us are blueberry bushes in the light shadow of birches and pine trees. This means summer for me! Slowly we pick berry and berry. After two hours I feel completely relaxed and our basket contains one kilogram of Blueberries.

Back home we washed the fruits, picked out the leaves and started to cook blue berry jam. Again we decided to go for the purist version using just blueberries, sugar and lemon juice. The lemon juice adds some tartness and is important for the gelling process. Together with sugar the acid is needed to bring the pectin molecules closer together to form pectin chains which is the reason why the jam is gelling.

And as I had the feeling that recipes for jams made without jelly sugar is interesting for some people, is here my recipe for blueberry jam:

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July 24th, 2015

Rose Bud Rolls

Category Rolls Tags: Rye, Sweet starter, Wheat 14 Responses

I hope that you did not start to think that there is no bread baked in our hose anymore. But the hot weather and the start into a new job make me bake less. So we emptied the bread drawer in our freezer (very good, more room for new bread) and I baked “old” favourite recipes like lye rolls or a Sunday braid. Going back to old favourites is sometimes very good, too.

But now the freezer is empty, the temperature is back to tolerable and so I baked rolls for breakfast last Sunday. Nowadays I add some egg yolk into the dough for rolls most of the time, as the lecithin helps to make the crumb tender. The dough is good for rising at cold temperature over night as well, but then you have to take care of degasing it carefully the next morning. Otherwise the crumb of the dough will be to open, and for a breakfast roll I prefer rolls with a even crumb. Big holes and honey goes not well together.

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July 19th, 2015

Black and Red Currant Mousse Cake

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Johannisbeeren, Torte, White Chocolate, Yoghurt 7 Responses

In my parents garden grows one single cassis bush next to the red currant bushes. When I was picking berries two weeks ago I sneaked some cassis into my bowl as well, as I had already the plan in my mind to serve little mousse cakes for the Sunday coffee with my parents.

Light mousse cakes made with Joghurt, berries and white chocolate are especially delicious on hot summer days. I did something similar already as filling of this raspberry charlotte. This time I topped a chocolate sponge with a mousse made of a mixture of red currant and cassis. The mousse hides a kernel of currants and cassis compote. It is a delicious little cake with a slight sourness and bit of sweetness, perfect for lazy Sunday afternoons.

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July 12th, 2015

Bread Baking For Beginners XVIII: Seeded Beer Bread

Category Bread baking for beginners, hand kneaded Tags: Beer, flaxseeds, Hand kneaded, Kürbiskerne, only with yeast, Poppy seeds, Roggenpoolish, Sesame 15 Responses

There are three different ways to soak seeds or flour: You can either cook them, or soak them in hot water or in cold water. For this bread I decided to soak the seeds in cold water. They do not absorb not as much water as when hot water is used, and this results in seeds which have still some bite. As the seeds have to soak overnight some salt is added to prevent them from fermenting.

Seeds in a dough can inhibit gluten development and so the soaker is added after ten minutes of kneading. The dough is firm at the beginning and will get softer when the soaker, which contains some free water as well, is added.

For a hearty flavour I bake this bread with some beer. It is a mild organic weiss beer, but you can start to experiment with different kinds of beers. A dark brew, for example, would bring the beer flavour forward and would yield in a very hearty bread.

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July 5th, 2015

Orangeade

Category Drinks Tags: Limonade, Orange 9 Responses

Nearly always I prefer to drink water for refreshment, most of the time sparkling water, sometimes tap water (the tap water here has a very good quality). But when the temperature rise I sometime I like to have water with some flavour. A virgin hugo for example or a simple glass of water with a piece of orange or lemon. And when the temperature hits the 37°C mark like in the last days, I even like to have a glass of a cool homemade Orangeade.

My version 2.0 profits from the experiences with making orange powder. Simmering the orange and lemon zests sets free much more flavour and colour then simple infusing the zests in the orange juice. That I double the amount of the zests helps of course as well. And if the second orange is not needed for juice then cut them in pieces and use them to serve with the orange. This adds even more flavour and looks beautiful as well.

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July 4th, 2015

Raspberry and Red Currant Jam (without gelling sugar)

Category Sauces and Spreads Tags: Jam, Johannisbeeren, raspberry 14 Responses

The 1:1 gelling sugar was sold out this weekend in our supermarket. Buying 2:1 or 3:1 was not an option for me as I like to avoid having preservatives like potassium sorbate in my homemade jams. All 2:1 and 3:1 gelling sugars contain some preservatives to cope with the reduced amount sugar. And so I stand in the sugar aisle, mused about jam making and decided to cook it in the “good old way” without gelling sugar.

Since some years I cook already my quince jelly only with quince juice, sugar and citron juice if needed, and always get an red-orange jelly with an intense flavour. Red currants contains a lot of pectin as well and so cooking them without gelling sugar sounded like a good idea. To reduce the risk of burning the jam, I let the berries simmer for 20 minutes without sugar, before I pass the softened fruits through a sieve and mixed it with the sugar. Starting with 1750g berries I ended with 1000g berry pulp and about 350g leftover seeds, meaning that a lot of water was evaporated. This leads to a dark red, aromatic jam and I’m sure that I will do my red currant jams in this way now all the time!

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June 29th, 2015

Falafel

Category main courses Tags: Garlic, Kichererbsen, Kreuzkümmel, Onions, Petersilie, Salzzitrone 6 Responses

After the successful disputation we always have a little party with delicious food. After the exiting defense the newly made doctor need something to refresh and we others need it as well. There is nothing more existing for all of us!

For the last defense I was asked to make Falafel and so I spend the morning rolling them. I needed 45 min to form 100 Falafel and after 50 I asked myself if I was doing to many. But when I then placed the freshly fried falafels on the buffet, they were gone so fastly that I knew that 100 was the perfect number. And when I was asked if the recipe is already on the blog, I had to say no. But now it is 🙂

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June 28th, 2015

Chubz

Category Bread, hand kneaded Tags: Fladenbrot, Sourdough, Sweet starter 16 Responses

Do you know this? You take a photograph, and another one, and another one. And nothing looks good. This Arabian flatbread, Chubz, is one of this cases. It is so … flat. After ten minutes of unsatisfying pictures my beloved one turn nervous and declared that bread and falafel would be better in our stomach then on a picture. And he was right, of course. So I put away the camera and we sat down to eat.

Chubz is a stable in the Arabian cuisine. In Germany you will find it falafel stalls where the chickpea balls are wrapped together into the bread. They are traditional baked in clay ovens, where they are place on the oven wall. They are simple breads made with flour, water, oil, salt and yeast. My variant of the flatbread uses wild yeasts from two kinds of sourdough what makes it very aromatic. They are baked at highest temperature in the oven (300°C) and there they need only 90 seconds until they puff up and got golden brown speckles on the surface.

The next day I give the picture another try and after a night of sleep my creative brain was working better. I put the rolled leftover breads in a glass to gain some height which gave me a more appealing picture.

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