June 13th, 2009

Ricotta

To make my own Ricotta is one of the things I have for a long time on my toDo list. I read a lot about it in diffrent blogs and it sounds not to complicated. The only complicated thing was to choose a recipe, because there are so many diffrent varients:  Claudia of Fool for Food used buttermilk, like Lauren of I’ll eat You,  Nick & Sara of IMAfoodblog used whey from their mozzarella production and the Hedonistin (Low Budget Cooking) grapefruit juice.

I also found variants using vinegar, citron juice or magnesium sulfate. For my first trial I choosed citron juice, but the Ricotta this recipe yielded hat a sour taste and it structure was similar to cottage cheese.

So I resarched a little bit more and found the comment von Ostwestwind (Küchenlatein) on Low Budget Cooking, that when using an acid like citron juice or vinegar you precipitate casein instead of globuline and albumine of the whey like in real ricotta. Continue reading

June 8th, 2009

BBD#21: Pizzadough with Poolish

My pizza dough was fermenting in the kitchen, when I thought: lets check the theme for BBD#21! And then I could not belive my eyes: Zorra choosed for the second anniversary of Bread Baking Day the theme Pizza-Party ! Cool, I never had my post for BBD ready so early in the month! 😀

We have pizza ver regular since we have our small pizza oven Alfredo. He is a hot-blooded fellow and can heat up to 450°C (thats 842°F !) so he can compete with a real pizzeria oven. I found him while reading in a forum and fell in love with him immidiatly. Before we own the pizzaoven, I had to heat the bread baking stone for one hour before I could bake two pizzas! My ecological consience scold me every time because of the waste of energy. Alfrdo needs about 10 min to heat up and every Pizza needs just 4 min untill it is done. When I think about preparing dough in advance it is even possible to get a pizza when we came home lately from univeristy without order it somewhere. Continue reading

June 7th, 2009

Croissants with Pâte fermentée

For me, there is just one way to eat a croissant: Lukewarm with some nutella. But when I buy croissants in the bakery, they are cold. Of course I can place them shortly in the oven, but that is not the same. But there is a solution: Bake croissants by myself.

The last time I bake croissants I was not satisfied, because the croissants were not so fluffy like they should be. So it was time to try another recipe.

I decided to try a recipe that use pâte fermentée. It needs a lot of time, but most of the time is fermenting time in the fridge, so it does not matter to me.

To get fresh baked croissants on sunday morning, I started thursday night the pâte fermentée, friday night I prepared the dough, sunday i did the roll-in of the butter and formed the croissants. On Sunday morning I just take out the baking tray and placed the croissants in the oven. After all, it was not much work on each day, it just needed a lot of time!

But the outcome was perfekt: fluffy, layered, buttery taste … thats how croissants have to be!

Croissants mit Pâte fermentée

yields 12 Croissants

Pâte fermentée:

  • 125 g flour (Type 550)
  • 85g water
  • 1g yeast
  • 2 g salt

Dough:

  • whole Pâte fermentée
  • 500g flour (Type 550)
  • 145g milk
  • 165g water
  • 25g butter
  • 15g yeast
  • 10g salt
  • 80g sugar

Roll-in:

  • 225g butter

Mix all ingredients for the pâte fermentée and ferment it for 1 hour at room temperature. Then put the dough into the fridge for  at least 12 hours.

For the dough mix alle incredients aside the sugar and kneat them with the kitchen machine for 6 min at low speed.

Now ad the sugar in small portions and knead one minute before adding the next portion. Adding the sugar later helps to build up the gluten!

Put the dough into the fridge untill next morning.

Take out the cold butter and place it between two plastic foils. Then hit the butter with the rolling pin untill a plate has formed and the butter is softend.

Roll the dough to a square with an edge length of 30 cm x 45 cm and put the butterplate in the middle. Fold the doug over the butter and roll again.  Fold the dough in thirds (like a letter) and cool in the fridge for at least 45 min (better 1 hour).

Repeat the rolling, folding and cooling Steps for another two times.

After the last resting periode, roll the dough to an 40 cm x 45 cm rectangle

Cut the dough into 2 stripes of 20 cm x 45 cm and each strip into 6 triangle. Roll them up from the  small side.

Place them on a baking tray, cover it with clingfilm and place it in the fridge untill next morning.

Heat the oven to 225°C and place the tray directly out of the fridge in the oven. Bake for 15 min.

June 1st, 2009

Vanillacream Torte

This week it was my Dads birthday, but while the birthday was in the week, so we meet at the weekend for coffee and cake. I promise to bring a cake and after thinking a little bit, I decided to make a Vanillacream-Torte. The making was easy and luckily I took a picture because the summerhot car was not a good for the torte. The chocolade dekor on the top melted and the sides became soft. 🙁 Arriving at my parents place I storm inside without greeting and place the torte in the fridge. This rescued the rest of the torte. Luckily the taste was not harmed 🙂 and I have a picture to proof that once the torte looks nice 😉 Continue reading

May 27th, 2009

Bagel

When I get my new copy of Bertinets “Crust” I discovered immediately the recipe for Bagels. It was one of the first recipes I had to try.

Since this time I baked bagels often, because we both like them very much and they are fast and easy to make. But in the last weeks I baked so much new recipes, that I neglected this recipe a little bit. So my boyfrind asked me this weekend, if I could make bagels again. Of course I could!

The dough is a very stiff one, so that the machine had to work very hard, but the good thing is, that you can work with the dough without sticking.

Another nice thing about bagels is, that you can refridgerate the formed bagels over night, at the next morning you just has to boil and to bake them, so you get fresh bagels for breakfeast without alot of work. Continue reading

May 25th, 2009

BBD#20: 4 grains bread with mixed seeds

The theme for Bread Baking Day No. 20 is “Multigrain Breads”. That is a perfect theme for me because I love the gain of flavor that the diffrent typs of grain give to the bread.

My first plan was to bake a bread containing a mixture of diffrent kinds of rice. I have a very nice mixture containing wild rice, red rice from camargue and unpolished rice. But while this mixture is delicious as a part of a meal, it get lost in the bread. Both the red rice and the unpolished rice could not stand up against the wholemeal wheat dough, neither in taste nor look. Only the wild rice gave nice dark spots in the bread. So I end up with quite normal tasting wholegrain bread, that did not live up to its promise. But luckily I had a Plan B: 4-grain-Bread containing wheat, spelt, corn (as polenta) and cooked oat, and my favorite mixture of seeds: Pumpkin seed, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and sesame. I baked this bread before and know, that it taste delicious. Continue reading

May 22nd, 2009

Titanwurz-Update

 

Yesterday, my parents went to the botanical garden to have a look at the titan arum. At the evening, they send me an email with this picture and the question, what we did to this poor plant. 😉

Nothing, Dad. I am afraid that this is the circle of life.

 

Continue reading

May 21st, 2009

Challah

I am fear, that I am infected with the “baking braided Bread Fever”. After baking Eggbread two weeks ago, I had to try the next braided bread from “Advanced Bread and Pastry”. The Challah is a traditional jewish holiday bread, and my recipe is, as I learned now, not correct, because ist contains dairy products. But nevertheless it is a delicious bread.

The recipe is similar to the recipe for eggbread, yielding a bread with a nice pillowlike crumb.

This time I do a six-strand after this instructions. Continue reading

May 14th, 2009

Leek rolls

The last two days were very busy, so I came home so late, that I was to tired to cook. Yeasterday I stayed in lab untill 10 pm, and all I eat for dinner were some cookies, one Hanuta and some indian salty snacks. Not a balanced diet! 🙁

But today I left on time at 5 pm. Having a look in the fridge I saw that the leek really need to be used! But both of us did not like to the Idea of quiche, so I had a look at Chefkoch.de and found a recipe for leek-rolls. The dough is not so nice, using to much yeast and butter instead of olive oil, so I decided to use my favorite pizza dough. But the filling sounds very delicous, containing sour cream, cheese and leek. Continue reading