June 12th, 2010

Mandelstuten – sweet almond bread for BBD#31

MandelstutenLast Weekend I saw a Mandelstuten – a sweet bread with almonds – at our local baker. But while I love to eat breakfast in the Café that belongs to the bakery, I nearly never buy bread there. I prefer to bake it at my own. But I make for my own: Bake Mandelstuten! And when I read the anouncement for 31. Bread baking day it felt as if Zorra from 1x umrühren bitte read my mind. The Theme she choose for the 3rd anniversary is Bread with nuts. Isn’t this perfect?

When I tried to decide which dough I should use as a basic for the Mandelstuten Paules post reminds me of the Hokkaido Milk Bread. This recipe use cream instead of oil or butter and I liked the idea to create a dough similar to the Milk bread. I included a preferment and add more cream to the dough and removed milk powder from the formula. And because the Mandelstuten at the bakery was braided and then baked in a bread pan so I braided my bread, too.

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June 6th, 2010

White Chocolate-Mousse Torte with raspberry filling

Weiße Schokoladenmousse Torte

I planned to bake a special cake for my dad’s birthday. In Michaels Suas’ “Advanced Bread and Pastry” I found a recipe for a White Chocolate-Mousse Torte with raspberry filling. That sounded perfect for this hot and sunny Summer afternoon. The recipe sounds a little bit complicated but the sponge and the raspberry filling can be prepared in advance. And it is really helpful to have an empty dishwasher, so you can put away all the bowls you will need while preparing the torte.

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June 4th, 2010

Raspberry curd cream

Himbeerschicht-Speise When Zorra asked me to host 57. Blogevent I knew really soon that the topic would be “Food to take away”. I take always some lunch snack to work because I do not like the meals in our cafeteria. Most of the time it is a sandwich of homemade bread with cheese, lettuce and tomatoes, sometime its a leftover from last nights dinner. Rarely I prepare something more complicated at the weekend like little pizza snacks (I realize that I did not post them until yet!).

I love a nice picnic, too but we do this rather seldom. But now the rainy may has gone and June started with sunshine and warm weather. So its time to pack our picnic basket and find a nice spot outside!

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June 3rd, 2010

Seeded Bread with two preferments

Saatenmischbrot

I did not planed to post this recipe (I posted some similar recipes already) but the boyfriend praised this bread so much that I decided to write it down in case he asked me to bake it again.

For this bread I had to smuggle sunflower seeds in the house and to my surprise he did not find it in the pantry. But as soon as I opened the package he appeared in the kitchen and started to nibble the seeds. But at this time I had the amount I needed already weighed.

I used two preferments for this bread: Sourdough and Pâte fermentée which gave a lot of flavour to the bread while the soaked rolled oats and flax seeds made it nicely moist.

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May 30th, 2010

Granola Bars

Müsliriegel

Last week Steph of Kleiner Kuriositätenladen baked granola bars for the Blogevent “Essen für Unterwegs” (which I hosted this month). Her recipe contains cranberries but no nuts. I wanted my own granola bars, but I wanted something with nuts, something with almonds and apricots.

So I did a research at Tastespotting and after reading some recipes I had a plan. I combined details of different recipes: oat meal, rolled oats, almonds, apricots, some seeds. Then I add some egg white to the mixture to improve the texture.

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May 24th, 2010

Burger Pretzels – Bread Baking Day #30

Burger Bretzeln

Bread Baking Day’s Topic is “Breads with a Twist” and its hostess is Natashya form Living in the kitchen with puppies. While still thinking about a recipe I saw a show on TV where they explained how to make “Burger pretzels”. This is a local speciality which is selled mostly around the castle Schloss Burg and which is part of the “Bergische Kaffeetafel”. This is a tradition similar to afternoon tea in Greatbritain. The “Bergische Kaffeetafel” is served with Coffee from the Dröppelminna, the dark rye Schwarzbrot, sweet white bread called Stuten or Platz, heartshaped waffles, rice pudding with sugar and cinnamon, Burger pretzels, curd, sugar beet molasses, cheese and bacon.

This preztels have not the typical form of a pretzel we know from South Germany but its ends are twisted for four times.

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May 22nd, 2010

Dinnete

Dinnete

The oven was broken this week (he is repaired now, but I will tell about this later) but luckily we own the small pizza oven Alfredo and could bake our Dinnete!

Dinnete is the swabian variation of Tarte Flambee. It is a flatbread topped with sour cream and onions, potatoes, bacon or cheese. We decided to try a combination of thin potato slices, onions and cheese.

My boyfriend look a little bit unhappy when I told that I would like to top the Dinnete with potato slices, but the taste of the baked Dinnete won him over.

This is a recipe we will bake again!

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May 16th, 2010

Hot Pepper Mayonnaise (egg free)

DSC_2732I am counting the days until my broken oven will be repaired. Luckily the repair is not so expensiv,it will cost us around 90 Euro.

My phone call with the service was funny. After I explained the problem the service man explained: “I think the fuse is not burned out. It is just a little bit scorched. But it has to be repaired!” I agreed with him because that’s why I called him! 😉

And as long as I can not bake I focus in other things. Cleaning the kitchen got boring after some time so I did a photo shooting with some hot peppers I bought.

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May 13th, 2010

No bread today

… because our oven is broken. When I turn it on today to bake our lunch it smells like burned plastic and when the temperature reached 180°the oven turned off. I know this problem because the same thing happens two years ago (at 13.May 2008 says my notice on the bill) when the oven was just one and a half year old. I am so angry and frustrated! Tomorrow I have to call the service and asked how expensive it would be to repair the oven.

Luckily I have enough bread in the freezer and the stove is still working so I can cook at least.

May 9th, 2010

Pizza dough with sourdough and poolish…

Collage … or the pizza dough who wanted to be a bread.

I just planed to bake a simple pizza. But after JT’s delicious rustic bread I though that I should try another pizza dough variation with Sourdough and Poolish. And after kneading I could already feel how good the result would be. The gluten structure was very nice and the dough rose very good. After folding the dough the first time I knew this dough has to become a bread.

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