Tag Archives: Butter

December 29th, 2013

Pandoro (pure Sourdough)

Category Bread, Cake & Pastry, Christmas Cookies Tags: Butter, Egg, Sweet starter, Vanilla 28 Responses

Since I tasted Pandoro many years ago I’m madly in love with this cake/bread. I love the light crumb, the flaky crust and its taste of vanilla and butter.

Until now I baked two different recipes: The Pandoro from the sisters simili which I found on Chili und Ciabatta and the recipe from the SFBI, which Susan published on Wild Yeast. The Pandoro of the Simili-Sisters is a yeast based one, with the butter laminated into the dough, while the SFBI-Recipe uses both sourdough and yeast and the butter is kneaded into the dough.

This year I dared to create my own recipe, with laminated butter for a crumb that can divided into long strands. It is risen with the pure power of a sweet starter. Continue reading →

December 15th, 2013

Mohnkipferl

Category Christmas Cookies Tags: Butter, Chocolate, Poppy seeds 7 Responses

And here I am with another modification of my standard recipes. I saw a picture of Mohnkipferl (poppy seeds crescents) somewhere in the depth of the world wide web some weeks ago, but did not save the site nor the recipe (my fault, I know). And so I had to be creative…

I replaced the almonds in my vanilla crescent recipe with ground poppy seeds. I ground the poppy seeds with the mini chopper accessory of my hand held blender, but an electric coffee mill or a food processor should do the job, too.

The poppy seed experiment worked out perfectly, the kipferl a perfectly mellow and are a perfect contrast to my normal vanilla crescents!

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November 9th, 2013

Baumstriezel

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Cake, Karamell, only with yeast, Zucker 21 Responses

Some recipes are so time consuming that they were only made for big events. The Baumstriezel is one of these recipes, something my Transylvanian ancestors would have bake for weddings and christenings. And maybe for a 5th Blog birthday as well?

A traditional Baumstriezel is baked over red hot coal wrapped around a big piece of wood, rotating the cake until the sugar starts to caramelize. Even nowadays it is made rather seldom and so I’m always exited when I could get a piece.

So it seemed the perfect recipe to celebrate the fifth birthday of “Hefe und mehr”. But how to make such a cake without open fire in the kitchen (when setting the kitchen on fire was no opportunity)? I decided wrap the dough around a wooden rolling pin and to use the overhead grilling function of my oven for baking. That means that I had to stay in front of my oven all the time during baking. Every minute I turned the rolling pin a little bit until the sugar caramelized at all sides.

It was quite time consuming but it worked out perfectly. And so I could enjoy some sweet Baumstriezel to honour my Blog Birthday (with ongoing Blogevent).

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October 13th, 2013

Kanelbullar

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Butter, Cardamom, Cinnamon, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée 21 Responses

Now we are really in the middle of autumn. It is this kind of autumn that makes you searching for your scarf and cap. This kind of autumn that puts soups and stews on top of your “to cook” list. And this kind of autumn which makes you cuddle up on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea. And if this cup of tea comes with kanelbullar, the Swedish cinnamon roll, then everything is good once again.

Would I tend to use exaggerated titles, I would call this cinnamon rolls “the world bests”. But do not and so I will only state: They are the best I bake until now. They have such a soft and fluffy crumb with a strong cinamon flavour, they won me over directly.

For cutting the rolls I used the trick with the dental floss: A dental floss is placed below the log shaped dough and the ends are crossed over the top of it. Pulling the sling together will cut the rolls in a perfectly manner!

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April 8th, 2013

Swiss Butter Braid

Category Bread Tags: Butter, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Spelt, Zopf 43 Responses

Jutta likes braided breads very much, just like me. And when she blogged her 12-stranded Braid I knew immediately that I had to bake such a braid, too. I bake already some braids in the last years, braids made with one Strand, two, three, four, six or even with eight strands. So it was time to increase the difficulty level!

I watched the Videos Jutta linked and realized that it was not as difficult as I feared. The braiding needs just a lot of concentration.

And so I braided bread on Sunday morning, doing three smaller braids at once. After I finished the first, braiding the remaining two was not so hard to do. Making 36 small strands for three braids was much more annoying.

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December 23rd, 2012

Round braided Rolls

Category Overnight, Rolls Tags: Butter, Buttermilch, Egg, only with yeast 16 Responses

Does this happen to you, too? You bake something, write down the recipe and then you did not post it. And after some time you even forget about it. That happend to me with this round braided rolls, which I baked the first time somewhere in the summer. They taste good but I was not satisfied with the picture. And so I forget this rolls completely.

Unitll Micha posted her beautiful Flechtwerk. Then I suddenly remembered that once I took detailed pictures of the braiding. But with the picture of the final roll I was still not satisfied. And so I baked them once again for a breakfast with my sister and my niece. The dough was easy to handle and after I once understand how to braid round bread, they take not so much time to braid.

They look very elegant due to the braided form – perfect for a holiday breakfast. Vanilla give them a rich taste with some complex aroma which they developed during their long proofing. Their crust is soft, as desired when baking sweet bread, and their crumb is fluffy.

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April 2nd, 2012

Puff pastry

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Blätterteig, Butter 9 Responses

In the past I was afraid of making homemade puff pastry – until I did it by myself for the first time. Then I realized that it’s not half as complicated as I thought it would be. Nowadays I like to make puff pastry by myself, because it taste much better then the bought one.

What I did with this batch of puff pastry I will tell you in the next posts!

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March 1st, 2012

Sahne-Brioche

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls Tags: Butter, Hand kneaded, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Über-Nacht, Water roux 27 Responses

Brioche, that is a featherlike Breakfast pastry. The recipes vary, from rich to very rich with more than 50% Butter and Egg in relation to the flour. That tastes good, but it’s really rich. So I hesitated to bake them, but then I thought about a leaner variation. My Brioche contains 2 Eggs for 500g flour and about 20% Fat from Butter and cream. I heated the cream with some flour for a Water Roux (or more correctly Cream Roux) so I could add a higher amount of liquid to the dough. The amount of yeast is very low so I could leave the dough to proof overnight on the counter.

I do not own Briocheforms, so I bake them in a Muffin pan. I do some as typical Brioche a tête and some as bubble top like in this recipe from Dorrie Greenspan I found on Bon Appétit. To prevent the brioche from sticking to the pan I placed each Brioche on a baking paper squares and transferred them with the paper into the pans.

Due to long kneading and water roux the crumb is soft and regular and can be tore into long fibres. The taste is complex, buttery and creamy – perfect for a sunday morning breakfast.

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January 10th, 2012

Croissant Bread

Category Bread Tags: Butter, Sourdough, Water roux 21 Responses

Yes, this will be no post for all of us who new years resolution is healthy wholesome eating. And I have to admit that after one slice of this bread I head to it a lot of fruits and vegetables to save my conscience. But (and here are now the excuses why I baked it anyway) it was love on first sight and I need a complex bread for relaxing because of all the stress I have in the last month before starting to write my Ph.D. thesis.

The idea for this bread had TXfarmer who baked some time ago a “Lamminated Sandwich Bread”. Her bread looks better then mine, she really knows how to bake laminated pastry. Her Croissants are a dream! The dough is a soft sandwich bread laminated with butter. After a single and a double fold the dough is cut into stripes and braided.

I did some modifications so that the recipe fits better to the weaker german flour. And this time I mixed the butter for laminating with some flour to make the handling easier. It works good for puff pastry for me and it helps here, too.

And how tastes this bread? A soft and evenly open crumb with a divine taste of butter, like a good croissant.

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September 4th, 2011

Sonntagsstuten

Category Bread Tags: Butter, Pâte fermentée, Vanilla 23 Responses

In this Region of Germany we call sweet Bread baked in a loaf pan “Stuten”. There are different kinds of Stuten, some are prepared with raisins, other are plain and seldom you can get one made with almonds. I like the one with raisins – Rosinenstuten – very much, but because some person of this household don’t like them I decided to bake a plain one when I were longing for a soft sweet bread last weekend. I used Pâte fermentée as a preferment like in the other Braids und Challah–Rezepten because it adds a nice flavour and give strength to the gluten network. And like in the soft Sandwich bread or the Butternut-Squash Bread recipes a strong gluten network is a key for a fluffy bread with a regular. The bread has a very rich taste because of vanilla and lots of butter added to the dough. Just the kind of bread I like for Sunday morning breakfast.

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