We had a lot of snow last weekend, so we decided that it would be better to stay at home. I used the time to sort old recipes and while sorting I found a recipe for Kümmelkuckeln I liked very much some years ago. But I know more about bread baking now and so I decided I have to change the recipe. I reduced the yeast amount drasticly and increase the amount of milk. The rolls are delicious, soft, a little bit sweet, a little bit salty. Continue reading
Zorra post here about a bread flavoured with amaretto. What a nice idea, but I do not have amaretto in my pantry but homemade orange liquor. First I thought about baking brioche with it but then I decided to make a leaner recipe. So I make some small changes in this Challah recipe. I reduced the amount of oil a little bit and added liquor to the formula. And because I had not so much orange liquor left I added also some orange flavoured oil. The resulting bread has a fine orange taste, but its a mild flavour, so even my boyfriend like it. If I would bake it just for myself, I would prefer a stronger orange taste. Continue reading
Hemp is normaly associated with drugs. But hemp fibres was always used for making ropes and tissue and it nutritious seed were eaten, too. The seeds are packed with essential fatty acids, all eight essential amino acids, vitamin E, vitamin B, potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron. And the hemp seeds you can buy at whole food stores are as good as THC free (This is written on my package, too). So its a healthy ingredients for a healty bread.
Because I am still cleaning up my pantry, I also add sesame and flax seeds and replace a part of the flour with breadcrumbs. I use to dry single slices of bread which are getting steal and later grind them into breadcrumbs. So adding Breadcrumb into a new bread is some kind of bread recycling! 😉
The bread is delicious: It has a slight nut taste and it is so crunchy because of the seeds. Hemp seeds stay crunchy even in bread. I prefer to eat it with some butter and fleur de sel, thats is enough to underline its taste! Continue reading
Every 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.
After a week with experiments which seemed to fail one after another and long evenings spend in lab to figure out what went wrong, I was not in Christmas mood last weekend. Friday night I leave the lab happy because of one experiment worked at least, but I was so exhausted that even baking seemed to much work on this weekend.
But then I realized that if I want to have a stollen for Christmas that rested at least two weeks (four weeks would be better) I had to bake it now. I had all ingredients on hand, only a recipe was missing. Looking through my bookmarks I found that I bookmarked two different recipe for this year: Dan Lepards recipe for a extra moist Stollen and the recipe for Thüringer Stollen from Bäcker Süpke.
When Zorra asked for a theme for my post in her culinary advent calender I had to think for a long time. Christmas seems so far away in October!
At the end I decieded to post a about Podvodnik. Its a cookie recipe that use yeast to rise the cookie. A perfect recipe for my blog, because “Hefe und mehr” means “Yeast and more”!
Podvodnik is czech and means sweet liar. I found the recipe on the homepage of Radio Praha and I was fascinated from the way the dough is prepared. The dough contains no sugar and it ferments one hour in a bowl with cold water. The sweet taste comes from rolling the hot cookies in vanilla flavoured powdered sugar. That sounds strange but it tastes great: a sandy cookie with a nice taste of vanilla. A little bit like vanilla crescents, but somehow different. Delicious! Continue reading
Wenn I bake a sweet Zopf for breakfast on sunday, I use normally milk in the dough. But these weekend I needed a dairy free bread, so I had to modify my recipe. I use these Challah recipe and replace milk and butter with water and oil and increase the amount of egg while I degrease the sugar amount.
The dough was soft but very easy to work with, so making a six stranded braid was easy. Braiding a six strand gets easier every time I do it. I still have to murmur the direction to me (second one left to the far right, left to the middle …) but I am getting faster. Continue reading
This post is a special one for me, because it is post Number 100 and because I write my first post 1 year ago. How time flies!
But back to my topic: Weckmann. Sarah already asked me for a recipe here.
Weckmann comes from the words Weckchen (that are sweet rolls in rhineland) and Mann (man), so it means sweet roll man.
On 11. November, the day of Saint Martin, children goes through the streets in a latern procession, singing songs about the saint. Afterwards every child gets a weckmann.
Because weckmänner have a very fluffy and soft crumb I decided to use water roux. It is a mixture that contains of 1 part flour and 5 parts water and which is heated to 65°C. It cause the starch to gelatinization, so it binds more water, which make the bread softer and fluffier and enhanced the shelf life.
It works very fine with my weckmänner Continue reading
I like yoghurt in bread very much, as I told before. Yoghurt gives a hint of sourly taste to the bread and elongates the shelf live. So when I saw the recipe for yoghurt rolls at Bäcker Süpkes Blog I know that I had to try them.
Not only I bake the rolls: I found them in Deichrunner’s Küche,at Chili und Ciabatta and Bao/Bread. But while the other bakers bake the recipe like it was written, I have to confess two changes: I reduce the amount of yeast and replace the rye with wheat.
The rolls turned out very fine: fluffy with a nice crust and a delicious taste. The perfect roll for breakfast on Sunday. Continue reading
After our lab moved to the new bio center we are now nearly back to everyday life. Some things are not working as they should, but it gets better every day! In our coffee room we miss the new kitchen (it will be delivered later this month) but we have already tables, chairs, and a coffee machine, so we have all things which are essential for a nice break. Thats why I could bring my birthday cake (with a month delay).
The Nusszopf I bake is a very nice pastry, filled with a soft mixture of hazelnuts, caramelle, cinnamon and vanilla. The filling keeps the zopf fresh so its no problem to bake it one day in advance. Continue reading