January is nearly gone and the deadline for Bread Baking Day is near. Jenni from The gingered whisk would like to have a bread fashion show this month. And this is not an easy topic for me. I struggled hard this month to find a good idea how to decorated my bread. Because most of the time I choose soberly some straight slashes when I bake bread. I was near to give up and wait for the next BBD!
But the weather this weekend changed from snow to rain then to rain and snow to freezing rain and back again and forced me to stay indoors. A good time to snuggle myself in a blanket and do some surfing in the web in search for inspiration. Finally my creativity was awakened and a plan was formed.
As basic for the decoration – and we want a good basic, of course – I decided to make a light wheat bread with some additional rye, sourdough and Pâte fermentée for a more complex taste.
During Christmastime I always have a wide variety of baking ingredients in my storage cupboard. And so every January I have to face the fact that I have a lot of leftovers which have to be used in the next time. A good example is the Marzipan I had left from baking 
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.
). The description of a nutella-ish taste was so mouthwatering that I had to bake such rolls at the same weekend.
I 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.