December 25th, 2011

Saffron Stars

Category Overnight, Rolls, Special Occasions  Tags: , ,   6 Responses

SafransterneI was very sad when Martin from Pain de Martin posted this summer that he would stop blogging. I liked Martins Ideas very much and his recipes often inspired me to my own recipes.

And so I was very happy when I saw some days ago that he started his new blog Lite mer bröd.  When I read the new entries I found directly one I wanted to try: long fermented saffron buns with an orange filling.

I decided to try a variation of this recipe for breakfast on Christmas. So I skipped the filling and reduced the sugar amount. For kneading I do it like I do all sweet dough: I knead the dough until medium gluten development without sugar and butter. Then I add the sugar gradually and at the end the butter. That yields a dough with a good developed gluten network because sugar and butter cannot interfere with it.

 

Continue reading →

December 24th, 2011

Merry Christmas

Category This and That  Tags:   2 Responses

Merry ChristmasBecause we will have no snow this year to Christmas, I want to whish all my readers “Happy Christmas” with a Snow-Picture I took last christmas. I hope you have a peaceful christmas!

December 23rd, 2011

Christmassy almond cloud

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day  Tags: , , , , ,   3 Responses

MandelwolkeThe last Bread Baking  Day of the year 2012 has the theme “X-mas Edition” and is hosted at Cindystar. I get the idea for a bread fitting to this theme some days ago, when I was on my way back home from work. It was already very late, I had lunch about 7 hours ago and I was hungry. So I stopped at the bakery in railway station and bought a bun called “Little cinnamon almond cloud”. That sounds good, doesn’t it? But when I take the first bite I was disappointed. The bun was not stuffed with crunchy almond pieces but with very sweet marzipan in a very sweet dough overpowering completely the faint cinnamon taste. Not what I expected when I read the beautiful name!

When I was sitting in the train I started to think about how I would do such a kind of bread. And so I used the time to develop a recipe for a sweet bread seasoned with cardamom, Cassia buds and allspice and enriched crunchy almond pieces. Its a rich bread with a lot of egg and butter and its perfect for breakfast on Christmas mornings. I achieved a cloud like look with dusting the bread thickly with powdered sugar baking.

This bread with its delicate spices and almonds resembles much more my idea of an almond cloud

Continue reading →

December 18th, 2011

Orange flavoured Hot Chocolate Mix

Category Presents from the kitchen  Tags: , , ,   2 Responses

Orangentrinkschokolade A homemade Hot Chocolate Mix is a simple but delicious little Christmas gift. In the cookbook “Süße Geschenke aus der Küche: Leckereien backen und verpacken” I found not only nice recipes like a Hot Chocolate Mix flavoured with cinnamon and cardamom but also great Ideas for beautiful decorated glasses, bags and boxes. After I prepared the “normal” Hot Chocolate Mix, which I liked very much, too, I started to experiment with the recipe to create a orange flavoured mix.

I had this idea because some of my colleagues like an orange flavoured cacao from Quai Sud very much to flavour their coffee with it. But this cacao is expensive and hard to get. So I thought a homemade hot chocolate mix would be a great Christmas gift for them.

The best way to get the orange flavour into the chocolate mix is to grated a lot of orange peel, dry it in the oven and ground it together with sugar in a food processor.

I like the taste of the orange flavoured hot chocolate mix very much – I hope that my colleagues like them, too.

Continue reading →

December 11th, 2011

Little Plum Packets

Category Christmas Cookies  Tags: , , , ,   4 Responses

Pflaumenpäckchen Its already the third advent and I still did not post a single Christmas cookie recipe! I have to change this immediately!

But until now I bake the traditional cookies in our family: Vanilla crescents, Liebesgrübchen, Black and white Kisses and Linzer Rings. But in the December Magazine of “Schrot and Korn” there were a cookie recipe that temped me very much. Little Plum Packets a butter cookie filled with plum butter and ground nuts.

They looked very complicated but when I read the recipe I realise that they are much easier to do the I thought. You just has to cut out stars, place a little bit of the filling in the middle and fold the pointed ends of the star over the filling and close everything with a hazelnut.

The cookies are great: a soft fruit and nut filling with hints of vanilla and cinnamon. I like them very much!

Continue reading →

November 26th, 2011

How to form a Christstollen

Category Bread baking theory  Tags: ,   6 Responses

Christstollen formen

If you did not bake a christstollen until now, you should do it now because a good christstollen should be stored for four weeks before eating so that the aromas can melt into each other.

I baked my Christstollen recipe which I developed two years ago. It is still my favourite.

Two years ago I searched still for the best method to form the Stollen. Now I have found a method that worked good for me: Continue reading →

November 21st, 2011

Three grains bread with Cider

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day  Tags: , , ,   15 Responses

Dreikornbrot mit Cider

Autumn means for me nuts, especially hazelnuts and walnuts. But I bake already a Potato bread with walnuts, Apple-Hazelnut Bread and Pain aux Levain aux grains mélangés e noisettes. And before everyone (including myself) get bored with so much breads with nuts I decided to bake a bread with cider for BreadBakingDay because Apples are strongly connected with autumn for me, too.

The recipe I created included a small portion rye, just enough for some nice taste but not enough to challenge my stomach. I used some rolled oats and whole wheat flour, together with grounded caraway seeds which gave the bread a very nice taste. And spiced bread belongs to autumn/winter for me, too.

I liked the bread very much, especially with a hearty cheese and homemade mustard.

Continue reading →