Tag Archives: Kürbis

October 16th, 2016

Kürbisstuten

KürbisstutenIn this year Indian summer lasted long. But now the days are getting shorter and air is chilly when I leave the house in the morning. And when I drive through the range of the hills I can see the first sun rays turning the misty valleys below into golden lakes. It is autumn, finally.

And so a recipe, which I got from a reader some weeks ago, fits into this beginning autumn very well. It is a recipe for pumpkin “Stuten”. Literally the term “Stuten” means “Mare” and my reader was very puzzled about it when she moved to Oldenburg many years ago and the bakeries were advertising “It is Pumpkin-Stuten time again”. But in Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein the term means “sweet bread” as well as “horse”. And this pumpkin bread was a steady companion for my reader in the following years.

And when I asked for local recipes she sent a recipe from her kids kindergarten. I modified it strongly (ok, I tore it down and rebuild it from the fragments), so it contains now much less yeast but a preferment and some more liquid, too. And I kneaded the dough much longer as well. All of this together makes the bread irresistibly soft and aromatic. A great bread for autumn!

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December 7th, 2015

Pumpkin Ice cream

Kürbiseis (1)My second contribution for the pumpkin buffet was a pumpkin ice cream. I used the recipe for  gorgeous Marzipan ice cream which I served last Christmas as blue print. And like  this ice cream the pumpkin ice cream is very creamy and keeps this creaminess even in the fridge. It is the Invert syrup, which makes it is soft. To balance the sweetness of the pumkin, I added a little bit of buttermilk. The mixture of spices is similar to pumpkin pie spice, but with some tonka bean to add a touch of special.  The ice cream fits well into the Christmas time with its flavour of cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. Its bright yellow brings a bit of sunshine into the dark, grey days!

 

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December 5th, 2015

Pumpkin Fritters

Kürbisbällchen (1)

I have to warn you: the next posts will be sweet ones! It is partly due to the Christmas time and partly due to sweet things I made for two Ph.d. defence parties in the institute. And I will start with one of those recipes. It was part of the pumpkin buffet we whipped up for one of my former colleagues who is a pumpkin lover. This year, writing and defending her thesis kept her away from enjoying the pumpkin season and so we decided to cook everything with pumpkin for her. We had baked pumpkin, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie and a savory pumpkin tart and I made pumpkin ice cream and  baked Pumpkin chocolate cake and pumpkin fritters for her.

The pumpkin fritters are very much my own style as I worked with yeast instead of baking powder. A bit of sourdough gives them a deeper flavour, but this is optional. Turned either in powdered sugar or cinnamon and sugar they taste best when still warm. But even the next day they are still a treat!

 

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November 15th, 2014

Pumpkin seed bread with roasted Pumpkin

Kürbisbrot (3)

The nice sales girl in my parents favourite bakery gave them some slices of bread to test, mentioning that she like it very much but strangely the other costumers did not buy it. My parents tested it and agreed that it is very delicious. At the end, they bought the last loaf.

When they told me about it my brain started to work immediately and soon I had a plan for the next baking day. The basis for the recipe is my favourite wheat and rye bread to which I added roasted pumpkin and pumpkin seeds. For the form of the loaves I tried to mimic a pumpkin, too.

The bread had a good oven spring and smelled divine when I pulled it from the oven. It was hard for me to wait until the bread cooled but my patient was rewarded. The bread had a crisp crust and a regular soft crumb speckeled with orange pumpkin and green seeds.

It is a great bread and for sure not the last time I baked it.

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October 16th, 2014

Pumpkin rolls

Kürbisbrötchen

It’s again this time of the year: Zorra asks all of us to bake a bread for world bread day. Since I have a blog of my own I follow her call and post a delicious recipe on 16. of october, This year I found inspiration for the recipe in the big, plumb pumpkins we harvested in the garden of the parents from my love.

When I use homemade pumpkin puree the water content always vary and this make it difficult to repeat the recipe. And so I took my old but beloved juice centrifuge  and juiced 600g pumpkin. I got nearly 340g juice. I used it to make a poolish in the morning and kneaded a dough with more juice and the poolish in the evening. I formed the rolls before I went to bed and let the rolls proof in the fridge. At the next morning I only had to bake the rolls.

The rolls got a dark golden crust and a soft yellow crumb. They have a strong, delicious pumpkin flavour – as good as rolls with pumpkin puree – and the preferment and the long, cold proof for a complex flavour. And the the remaining pumpkin marc from juicing can be cooked in a pumpkin soup. And to the pumpkin soup you can of course serve this rolls…

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November 4th, 2013

Pumpkin Cinnamon Swirl Bread

Kürbis-Zimtwirbel-Brot

I have a weakness for cinnamon. It does not matter in which way cinnamon is included ínto a yeast dough – kanelfläta, cinnamon waffles or cinnamon rolls – I love them all!

And so I was hooked when I saw a Pumpkin Cinnamon Swirl Bread for the first time. I kept thinking about a recipe for some time. At the beginning I planned to use the dough of my Pumpkin Sandwich Bread but  then decided that this dough would be to soft. And so I came up with a new recipe at the end, with Pâte Fermentée and butternut pumpkin puree and a swirl made of sugar, cinnamon and a little bit flour. The flour in the filling helps to keep the layers of the swirl together. With the same thought in my mind I decided to brushed the dough with water instead of molten butter to stick the filling to the dough.

The bread turned out as great as I hopede: a soft, fluffy crumb, a soft crust and the great taste of cinnamon and pumpkin – I love it!

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October 16th, 2013

Pumkin Potato Bread baked in a baking frame

Kürbis-Kartoffelbrot

Some time ago my boyfriend built me a beautiful wooden baking frame. The frame is now well burned in, oiled and ready to use. And so I baked last weekend a potato pumpkin bread.

I found a sliced halve of a big butternut pumpkin from last year while I sorted the freezer. To make room for something new, I decided to use it in a bread. I baked the pumpkin side by side with some potatoes in the oven. To bake vegetables in the oven enhances the flavours. The already good flavour of the butternut gets even more intense. And this intense flavour can now be tasted in the bread, too, along with the complex flavour of the sourdough.

A great bread – or better said four – for World Bread Day 2013!

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August 19th, 2011

Extremely soft Butternut Squash Sandwich Bread

Kürbis-SandwichbrotI have the feeling that autumn is already knocking timidly on my door. I knew that it is still august, in theory it is still midsummer, but after all the rainy days in the past weeks and with the fact that the days already started to get shorter I feel a little bit like autumn. Don’t understand me wrong, I cherish the change of season. It is like George de Santayana says:  “To be interested in the changing seasons is . . . a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” And I love the change from summer to autumn – maybe because I was born in this special atmosphere between theses seasons in September 29 years ago.

When my mom asked me if I would like to take the second half of a butternut squash I had directly the idea of putting the squash in a bread dough. I like butternut squash very much, it sweet and creamy taste and the stunning colour makes it to one of my favourite winter squash.

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October 10th, 2010

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Kürbis-ZimtschneckeOther Blogs are already in the middle of the pumpkin weeks but in our kitchen apples are still the main actors. That is maybe due to the reason that pumpkin is not the favourite vegetable from all of us. Especially when I mention pumpkin soup I have to deal with a strong resistance.

But that was no reason for me not to try every pumpkin the pumpkin seller offers me at the harvest festival in our open-air museum. His favorite blue muscat pumpkin could not win me over but the “Australian Butternut” was my kind of squash. The green colour of its skin made me curios because it differed so much to the yellowish butternuts I know. And the flesh under the green skin was deep orange, nutty and slightly sweet. That was my kind of pumpkin without question.

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October 6th, 2009

Pumpkin Bread

KürbisbrotAutumn means to me: red leaves, apple scent and orange pumpkins. So what is a better bread for autumn then a pumpkin bread?

The basis for this bread was a recipe for simple bread with poolish, I just replace the water with pumpkin puree. My pumpkin puree contains some water, so I get a soft dough and did not need do add some water.

The bread turned out nice, with a nice orange crumb and a slight taste of pumpkin. But the next time I would add some pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil to enhance the flavor. Continue reading