Tag Archives: New year

January 7th, 2018

Bread Confection

Brotkonfekt-43We spent a relaxed New years eve with some dear friends and I promised to bring bread. As always, I like to bring a wide variety and so I decided for caraway seed bread, wheat and rye bread, and my favourite spelt, nut and fruit bread. As addition I liked to have small rolls, similar to the little rolls my mum sometimes bought when I was little. They were called bread confection and where turned in a mixture of cheese and different seeds.

For my own variant I decided to go for a classic roll dough with some active malt and sweet starter for flavour. And as I did not planned to spent a lot of time with weighting 32 to mini dough portions I divided the dough into four equal parts and rolled them into strands. Each strand was then cut into eight equal sized parts and each piece then turned in the cheese mixture. That went very well and easy.

The resulting rolls turned out even better then I hoped. They gained a good volume due to the malt and a bit of egg yolk as lecithin source while the sweet starter gave them a good flavour. Just as a good roll should be!

Continue reading

January 1st, 2018

New Years Pretzel 2018

Neujahrsbrezel[4]Some traditions are important. For me having a new years pretzel for the first breakfast of the year. And so there are more than one recipe for new years pretzels on the blog. That I like to use sourdough or sweet starter for that I realized when a reader asked me what recipe she could use for a “only yeast” pretzel.

I took the hint and my 2018 pretzel is made with yeast and poolish as  yeasted preferment. The poolish together with the bit of spelt flour makes the dough extensible and so its easy to roll the dough into strands. For the flavour, I added sour cream and some honey to the dough.

And while I was baking my pretzel a question came to my mind: Do you have special breads or pastry you need to celebrate the first day of the year?

Continue reading

January 1st, 2015

Little Pigs (Glücksschweinchen)

Glücksschweinchen (2) The pig as lucky charm is very common in Germany on new years eve and new years morning.  They are called “Glücksschweinchen” which literally means “Lucky pig”. Often they are made with marzipan and used to decorate the table. For the first day of 2015 I baked in a muffin tin some little pigs made of sweet yeast dough.

I can not remember where I got the idea. A quick search in the internet just provided the side from the Doktor from Bielefeld but I’m quite sure that it was not this side… But wherever I got the idea in first place it is a very sweet one for sure!

I used the dough from my my new favourite braid (with some minimal modifications) because after some time in the fridge the dough is so easy to handle. And when you let the pigs rise long enough before placing the nose, eyes and ears on it they will not loose their face! And so you will have a delicious and sweet looking treat for breakfast, which hopefully brings good luck for whole 2015 for us!

Continue reading

January 1st, 2014

New years pretzel 2014

NeujahrsbretzelI hope, you all had a good start into the new year!

We spent our new year’s eve very quite with hot tea instead of sparkling wine because I had to fetch a bad cold – but that’s a kind of unforgettable new year’s eve, too 😉

But (and that should proof once again that I’m crazy) I decided to ignore the fever for a while because I can not start a new year without a homebaked new year’s pretzel! And so I take out a leftover sweet starter I kept in the fridge for 5 days. The Starter didn’t mind the time spend in the cold and tripled in size after feeding in only three hours! I then mixed the dough and trusted the sweet starter once again to be enough for a proper rise. The longer time it need to for rising and proofing was perfect for me so I could sleep in between 😉 If you want to speed up the recipe, at a little bit of yeast. Or make half of the recipe of the swiss butter braid instead, which yields a great bread, too.

The pretzel is very delicous, with a soft crust and a fluffy crumb, just the prefect way to welcome 2014!

Continue reading

January 1st, 2012

New year pretzel with Sourdough

Neujahrsbretzel And now we have 2012. I hope your new years eve was nice as the one we had!

We tried already our new year pretzel for a late breakfast, so there are no pictures of the pretzel as a whole.

This year I decided to bake it with a mild sourdough, water roux and less sugar. I kept the sourdough overnight at 25°C which gave it a delicious smell like yoghurt and slightly sour taste, which makes it perfect for a sweet dough.

The dough itself is very soft. Experience with handling soft dough is required, so for beginners I would suggest to prepare the dough with 50-60g less water. That would make handling much easier.

I kneaded the dough very long, so the gluten network was well developed and the bread could rise highly. Using Egg white keeps the crumb bright and white. I think its fit to the fresh new years morning and I used some frozen egg white from christmas baking.

The pretzel has a nice complex taste, a little bit of youghurt and has this slightly sweetness, that fits so well to both sweet jam and salty cheese.

 

Continue reading

January 6th, 2010

New Year’s Pretzel

DSC_1265Every year I bake a New year’s pretzel at 31. December which we eat on new year’s morning. This year we came back late in the night of 30. December, so I was to tired to prepare a pâte fermentée for this recipe. So I decided to create a recipe similar to the weckmann recipe using water roux. Water roux makes the bread soft and fluffy and enhances shelf life.

Continue reading