Tag Archives: Hand kneaded

June 29th, 2013

Focaccia

Foccacia

Bread Baking Day celebrates its 6. Birthday! In 2007 Zorra started this Bread Baking-Event and since then bakers from all over the world met virtually already 60 times. I participated for the first time in 2009. Since then I try to be a regular part of the event. For two times I was already  hosting BBD. Time is flying!

Each Bread Baking Day has its own theme and for this jubilee Zorra wishes “Bread with Glazing”. What kind of glazing she left to ourselves.

I had to think for some time about a recipe but at the end I decided to bake a focaccia. Focaccia is glazed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and herbs prior to baking.  The olive oil soaks the crust during baking and adds a delicious flavour to the dough. It is a great bread for the summer (even when its raining all the time)!

Dear Zorra, all the best to the Event-Birthday!

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June 20th, 2013

Spelt Baguettes

Dinkelbaguette

For me summertime is Baguette time. Or Wurzelbrot– and Ciabatta-Time. I just love to have a light bread together with a big bowl of salat for supper on hot days.

After I baked the delicious Baguettes a la Ridha Khadher I thought about trying a similar recipe with spelt. The gentle folding of the dough is perfect for the fragile gluten network of spelt dough. And so I kneaded the dough really short and then started to fold the dough repeatedly. When the gluten network was nicely developed,I put the dough in the fridge  for a long and cold fermentation.

This long and cold rise created a deep and complex flavour which I liked even more then the Kadher-Baguettes, because the spelt flavour adds another layer of complexity to the taste. It was a baguette with a lot of character. Or as my beloved partner (who’s normal praise for homemade bread is eating it rapidly but silent) said: “It is so delicious!”

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June 16th, 2013

Pizzadough (Overnight)

Pizza(3)I know, I know … there is already more than one recipe for Pizzadough on this blog. But this dough is so simple and good, I had to post this recipe as well.

It is a “What I have in the cupboard” recipe, when I was to lazy to go to the pantry to fetch another bag of wheat flour. So I used some leftover spelt flour instead. I mixed the dough and folded it for some times, and put it then in the fridge, similar to the Wurzelbrot or the baguette recipe. Very easy!

When I came home the next evening after a long workday, I started to prepare our pizza. And when I stretched the dough to a flat square I realized what a great idea it was to add some spelt. The spelt flour made the dough very easy to handle and to strech in form, while the long and cold fermentation creates a great flavour and big air bubbles in the dough during baking.

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June 13th, 2013

Spent grain rolls

Treberbrötchen

Why did I take so long until I publish this recipe? I don’t know. Sometimes, when I’m short in time, I note down the  recipe and take a photo but do not blog it. And when time pass, the recipe vanish in the blog nirvana. And that’s what happend to this spent grain rolls recipe.

But luckily Alexandra asked me for a recipe for spent grain flour. And so I pulled out the recipe and freed it from dust.

And that is so good, because the rolls are delicious. The spent grain flour adds a nice roasted malt aroma to the slightly sour taste of the yoghurt and the long fermentation creates a complex taste.

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June 8th, 2013

Wurzelbrot

Pain Paillaisse Friday afternoon I got a email from a reader, asking me for a recipe for a bread similar to Pain Paillasse. She send me the recipe she tried and which disappointed her. The recipe sounded not so bad, only the hydration was to low in my eyes. To archive a open crumb with a hydration from just 56 % is impossible. And so I tried to bake a bread using a modified version of this recipe.  I decided to use 19% more water, a varied dough preperation and a prolonged cold fermentation. Directly after reading the email I went in the kitchen and mixed the dough – the bread was baked about 24 hours later at this evening. And with these modifications I got a bread worth its name. A rustic looking, crisp crust, a slightly moist and open crumb and a mild aromatic taste due to the long fermentation. It is a perfect bread for the upcoming summer. Mix it one day and bake it the next day directly out of the fridge, no proofing required. And after baking enjoy it with a salad or bring it to a barbeque!

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June 2nd, 2013

Young Boar Crust

Frischlingskruste 1

I planed to call this bread “May crust”, hoping to lure the sun from behind the rain clouds we had all May long.  But then my boyfriends Mum came in our kitchen while the bread was cooling and exclaimed: “Your loaves look like young boars!” And from that moment on, we called them “Young Boar Crust”.

The beautiful young boar pattern is due to cutting the bread with short regular cuts, lengthwise to the loaf. I saw pictures of a similar bread on PIPs Blog and fell in love with the pattern directly. He did not specify how the cuts were applied on the bread and so I kept trying for three weeks until I finally get the hang of it! I already baked some baguette rolls with this pattern and now this Young Boar Crust.

The Bread is made with a mixture of wheat, spelt and rye. Two different preferments and a long, cold fermentation give a very complex taste to the bread. The crumb is very soft and the crust thick and crunchy. A great bread for both sweet and salty sandwiches.

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May 26th, 2013

Baguette royal 2013

Baguette royale

The Newspaper Tagesspiegel published an article about Ridha Khadher, who’s Baguette was the only one which get 20 of 20 points in the Best Baguette of Paris award 2013. In the articel, Monsieur Khadher mentioned the ratio of water and flour (T65) he uses, and gave a rough overview about the procedure. It was enough for me to build a recipe out of that.

A intersting point was that he uses nearly ice cold water (5,6°C) and kneads his dough more then other recipes I knew. Then the dough rest for 24 hours in the fridge, which seems to be a very important point for great baguettes, because Anis Baboussa (Winner of the award in 2008)as well as Jean-Noël Julien (Winner of the award in 1995) and Jean-Pierre Cohier (Winner of the award in 2006) opt in their baguette recipes for a long and cold fermentation instead of using a poolish or levain. Continue reading

May 19th, 2013

Spelt crowns

Dinkelkrönchen I got the Idea to bake this little Spelt crowns, when Lena asked me if she could bake the Yoghurt Honey Whole Wheat Bread as rolls instead of a loaf. Of course you can do this, was my answer and I started to think that I could bake something like that, too! But I decided to change the recipe a little bit, using spelt instead of wheat and buttermilk instead of yoghurt. To improve the dough handling, I cut down the amount of liquid a little bit and decided to let the dough rise overnight. As form for the rolls I tried something I was thinking about now for some time. I used my kitchen scissors to cut small tips on top of the roll which form a little crown during the oven spring. Just take care to keep the cuts short enough otherwise very long and hart tips will form during baking, and eating a roll with sharp edges is no fun at all. The rolls turn out very well: Soft crumb, crisp crust, a complex aroma due to long fermentation and the combination of spelt and sweet honey harmonize very well. A roll for a royal breakfast…

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May 6th, 2013

Three Grains Bread

Dreikornling

I like a hearty whole grain bread. Like this one. It is a really mild one, perfect for persons who do not like sour breads. It is a bread without sourdough but with a very long and cold fermentation, which is only shortly disturbed every now and then when the dough is stretched and  folded. Even the loaves proofs in the fridge, too.

Due to slow fermentation the bread developes a incredible taste. The sweetness of the freshly milled flour is clearly recognizable, combined with the nutty undertones of whole grains and the complex notes due to the fermentation. The long rest let the flour absorb more water then normally and so I could add more water to the dough. This makes the crumb moist.

It is a bread, which in its simple way of preparing is perfect for beginners who are still a little bit scarred of sourdough. It requires not much more then a good deal of patient, because you need two days until you can pull it out from the oven. But then your patient will be rewarded…

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May 3rd, 2013

Kartöffelchen

Kartöffelchen

The television broadcast “Markt” featured a interesting report about potatoes, including a potato tasting. The tasting take place in the Restaurant of a colleagues spouse, and she and one of my other colleagues were part of the tasting, too. So watching TV last Monday was mandatory. The result of it did not suprise me so much: the imported potatoes from Egypt and Cyprus looked very good, but tasted – as my colleague Birgit stated – like putty while the local potatoes, grown in the Rhineland, was very flavourful.  I made this experience by my own, too and always try to buy potatoes from a local farmer.

To honour the potato I decided to bake some potato rolls. But my “Kartöffelchen” (little potatoes) should not only be called “little potatoes” they should look like a potato, too. And so they have a dark brown crust and a fluffy yellow crumb. But the soft dough is not so easy to form. If you would like to have a simpler shape, I would suggest to cut the dough  into squares like described Yoghurt Sesame Rolls.

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