March 1st, 2013

Baguette

Last week Lutz baked Baguettes, inspired from a post of MC about her visit in different bakeries in Paris. This bakeries belong both to the best of France. Lutz used the discription of their baguette dough to build his own recipe.

And so baking baguettes was on the top of my to do list for the weekend. But during the long and cold rest of the dough in the fridge, the dough developed not only an incredible good taste but I fell sick with a bad flue, too. And on Sunday, after about 40 hours in the fridge, the baguettes could not wait any longer. And so I dragged myself in the kitchen, ignored the fever and formed and baked some baguettes.

And this baguettes are really worth it. With a great taste, a crispy crust and a wait open crumb make them to one of the best I ever baked.

Continue reading →

February 25th, 2013

Chocolate Pear Tarte

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Chocolate, pears, Sahne 3 Responses

When I saw the pears in our fruit basket I had the Idea of baking a pear tart. In my recipe folder in Zotero I found the Birnentarte mit Mascarpone from Chaosqueen. The tarte sounds very delicious but Mascarpone is nothing you will find normally in our fridge. Chocolate on the other hand you can find nearly always in my baking cupboard. And so I checked the internet for a recipe. On Confessions of a tart I found a delicious looking recipe, a Chocolate Pear Tart.

I was to lazy to convert cup to gramm and so I decided to use one of my short crust recipe, and when I cooked the pears I followed my own directions, too. But for the chocolate filling I read the recipe attentively.

While the Tarte was baking the whole kitchen was filled with a seductive smell, and the still warm Tarte for our “Kaffeetrinken” was very delicious!

Continue reading →

February 17th, 2013

Flake rolls

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls Tags: Gerste, Hand kneaded, oats, only with yeast, Rye, Spelt, Über-Nacht 4 Responses

At winter mornings when one look out of the window make me shiver I need something warm and filling before I go out in the dark and cold morning to catch my train. A porridge made with rolled oats is easily made and a favourite winter breakfast since my childhood. Sometimes I buy a rolled grain mix instead of rolled oats to have a variation for breakfast. This grain mix contains rolled oats, wheat, barley, rye and spelt and is very delicious.

One morning I decided that I could add some porridge into a bread dough, too. And so I made some overnight rolls with rolled grains and porridge. The roll stay nicely moist but the dough was easily to handle, too.

For baking the rolls I used the same trick as for my “normal” rolls: I placed the rolls together with a small oven proof bowl on a baking tray, filled the bowl with boiling water and covered them with a second baking tray. The steam is trapped between the baking sheets what improved the oven spring quite nicely. It is similar to baking a bread in a dutch oven. After half of the baking time I removed the cover and the bowl.

With this trick the rolls turned out great. A soft crumb with a crunchy crust, a complex flavour due to the long rise over night which underlines the nutty taste of the rolled grains.

Continue reading →

February 16th, 2013

Food-o-grafie # 1

Category Technical Tags: Food-o-grafie 3 Responses

Zorra has revitalized her Food-o-grafie event. A good Idea, because I love to look behind the curtains and see how other food blogger take their pictures. In the first event, Zorra asked us to tell a little bit about our camera and if we bought them especially for blogging.

For me, taking pictures is as naturally as breathing. I grow up with cameras around me because my father is a amateur photographer. My first camera was a christmas present for my sister and me. It was a Olympus compact camera – of course it was an analog film camera . I think I was around 10 years then and I used this camera for a long time. When I started at university I bought my first digital camera, a little HP, no Zoom but with 2 MP resolution. Today any mobile has a better resolution, but 10 years ago it was state of the art! But soon I wanted more, a better resolution and a Zoom. And so I bought my Kodak Z740 in 2005. I take the first pictures on this blog with this camera. But then the prices for digital SLRs started to drop and 2009 I saved enough from my salary as Ph.d-Student to buy the camera I’m using since then as a birthday present to myself:

Continue reading →

February 12th, 2013

Spent Grain Flour

Category Bread, This and That Tags: Treber 12 Responses

If you, like me, do not like to waste food, then you too has to think sometimes about recipes to use leftovers or byproducts. Such a byproduct is the spent grain, a leftover from our homebrewing. I added a part of it directly to a bread and dried the remaining spent grain overnight in the oven. I found this great idea on this site.

During the night a delicious malt odour filled our flat and spent grain was compeltely dry. Milling with my home mill was easy. I got a slightly coarse flour with a slightly sweet malt taste. Its taste reminds me strongly of roasted grain “coffee”. I think it will make a great substitution for bread and rolls or whole grain cookies or even for the dough of a quiche. And beeing figh fibere (50%) and high protein (23%) makes it a healthy substitution, too.

Another interesting point for me is the fact that 1.5 kg malt yields only 500g Spent Grain Flour. That means that about 1 kg starch is converted to sugar during the mashing process. Now that it does not amaze me any longer that the wurt was so sticky.

Continue reading →

February 11th, 2013

Spent Grain Bread

Category Bread Tags: Caraway seeds, Fenchel, flaxseeds, Koriandersaat, Poppy seeds, Schabzigerklee, Sesame, Sourdough, Treber 15 Responses

Since I gave my boyfriend a home brewer set as birthday present, we learning how to brew beer. For our first try we used the beer kit that came with the set, which is malt extract with hop extract. Nice for the start, but it reminds us of cooking with packaged mixes. That’s not what we want, we want the real adventure.

And so we started a second try using real malt and hop. After mashing – the break down of the starch to sugar in the malt – we had the spent grains as byproduct. Our recipe mentioned that this spent grains can be fed to chickens or cattle or that it can used for bread baking.

It can be used for baking bread? Pass me the sourdough, sweetheart…

The Spent grain bread has a compact and moist crumb and if I would not know that I added some all-purpose flour, I would thought it is a whole grain bread. It is a hearty loaf with the aroma of sourdough and the spices I used. The spent grains add a nutty taste. It goes very well with some strong cheese.

And what am I doing with the remaining spend grain? It is drying in the oven right now, I want to test milling it into flour…

Continue reading →

February 3rd, 2013

Pommes Duchess

Category main courses Tags: Egg, Muskat, Potatoes 5 Responses

I complained here about my piping bag with which piping always was a pain.The Christkind seems to read my blog, too and so I found a new, strong one with nice tips under the christmas tree.

And so I needed a niece recipe for the first test of the new piping bag. After thinking about it for a while I remembered that we had not had Pommes Duchess for quite some time because piping needed always a lot of time and strength.

And so I boiled some potatoes, mashed them and mixed the mash with egg.

Drum whirl, entry of the new piping bag…

Before I could realize it, all of the pommes duchess were piped, perfectly easy and fast. And once again the saying proofed true that good tools make your life easier. Thank you, dear Christkind for this great present!

Continue reading →

January 27th, 2013

Wheat and Rye Bread – Bread couture for BBD #56

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day Tags: Brot couture, Pâte fermentée, Sourdough 20 Responses

January is nearly gone and the deadline for Bread Baking Day is near. Jenni from The gingered whisk would like to have a bread fashion show this month. And this is not an easy topic for me. I struggled hard this month to find a good idea how to decorated my bread. Because most of the time I choose soberly some straight slashes when I bake bread. I was near to give up and wait for the next BBD!

But the weather this weekend changed from snow to rain then to rain and snow to freezing rain and back again and forced me to stay indoors. A good time to snuggle myself in a blanket and do some surfing in the web in search for inspiration. Finally my creativity was awakened and a plan was formed.

As basic for the decoration – and we want a good basic, of course – I decided to make a light wheat bread with some additional rye, sourdough and Pâte fermentée for a more complex taste.

Continue reading →

January 26th, 2013

Marzipan Snails

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: almond paste, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée 10 Responses

During Christmastime I always have a wide variety of baking ingredients in my storage cupboard. And so every January I have to face the fact that I have a lot of leftovers which have to be used in the next time. A good example is the Marzipan I had left from baking Stollen. And what would be a better treat for a chilly weekend in January then lukewarm Marzipan Snails with a cup of hot coffee?

The dough was quickly made in the morning – a big batch of preferment was already waiting in fridge. The handling of the dough is easy, it is a soft but not sticky dough. When cutting the Snails they kept their form very well.

For the filling I kneaded Marzipan with butter – a very greasy work – before I added sugar and egg and creamed it with a handheld mixer. If anyone has a better idea to mix the ingredients to a smooth filling, please tell me!

The Marzipan Snails taste delicious with their soft and fluffy crumb and the delicious taste of marzipan.

Continue reading →

January 20th, 2013

Caraway seed Bread and Rolls

Category Bread Tags: Caraway seeds, Molke, Rye, Sourdough 2 Responses

During lunch at work, a dear colleague and I discussed about bread making. I gave him some sourdough last summer as part of his wedding present as well as a recipe for Vinschgerl– a favourite bread of his wife and him. They bake this flatbread regularly but this time the taste of caraway seeds was overpowering the other fragrances, because the fresh batch caraway seeds he bought taste much stronger then the old one. “The bread taste more like a caraway flatbread”, said he and I was instantly dreaming of caraway seed bread.

I could not stop thinking about Caraway seed Bread during the day and when I was home I decided to bake some. I made a dough with some whole rye and wheat flour and a good portion of caraway seeds. I added some whey – a leftover of cheesemaking – to the dough, too.

The bread was baked with falling heat which gave a nicely crispy crust to the bread. The bread fits well with some hearty cheese, but is very delicious with some butter and salt, too.

Continue reading →