Tag Archives: Sourdough

September 23rd, 2012

Marzipan-Braid

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: almond paste, Almonds, lactose free, Sourdough 6 Responses

When I bake cake to celebrate with my colleagues (e.g. at my birthday) it is some kind of tradition to include a nut filled braid. But sometimes I need to break out of the routine and so I decided to bring a marzipan braid this year, too.

I make a dough with sourdough, which kept the braid fresh for 2 days (well, the small left over of it at least). But if anyone don’t like sourdough in a sweet pastry, the 1.5 amount of dough from the nut filled braid would go nicely with the filling, too.

The filling contains beside marzipan grounded almonds, some bread crumbs and egg white. The mixture is lovely, the taste of marzipan is dominant without overpowering the aroma from the dough.

It is a recipe for Marzipan lovers – and you can find a lot of some among my colleagues. And so everyone was very happy with this new recipe!

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September 15th, 2012

Honey Spelt Bread

Category Bread, hand kneaded, Overnight Tags: Hand kneaded, Honey, Sourdough, Spelt, wheat free 38 Responses

Some German Bloggers already baked Martins Honungssyrad råg with variations. He played with the recipe, too. For me, the recipe was not so tempting because once again I try to avoid rye to reduce my skin irritations.

But the recipe kept spining in my head. When I can not use rye, what’s about spelt, I asked myself. The combination of spelt and honey is something I like very much. And my sourdough starter was so lively after the last warm summerdays. And so I decided to bake a sourdough bread with honey and spelt.

It has nothing in common with Martins recipe anymore despite the fact that it contains sourdough and honey.

The bread dough is easy to handle, but you need a little bit of time management: The sourdough is prepared in the morning, the dough is kneed in the afternoon and the bread is formed in the evening. It proofs then overnight in the fridge and 24 hours later you pull a delicious smelling out of the oven.

The slight sweetness of honey fits perfect to the mild aroma of the spelt while the sourdough adds a subtle tartness.

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September 1st, 2012

Burger buns

Category Rolls Tags: lactose free, Sesame, Sourdough 11 Responses

A happy bubbling sourdough greeted me in my summer warm kitchen when I came home from work two weeks ago. In the morning I had refreshed the sourdough because I promised to bring sourdough for a colleague.

When I was standing in the kitchen, thinking about what to cook for dinner, I looked at the sourdough and rembered that we had frozen some burger patties for the boyfriend when we made burgers the last time. And in the fridge I had tofu, perfect for my vegetarian burgers. And here was the sourdough, ready to bake some burger buns.

Until the boyfriend came home from work one hour later, the dough for the buns was already rising. And two hours later we sat in the kitchen and enjoyed our burgers.

I’m very happy with this recipe. The buns had a very thin crust, a terrific soft crumb and such a nice complex taste due to the sourdough! Continue reading →

July 29th, 2012

Petit Pain de Beaucaire

Category Bread Baking Day, Rolls Tags: Altes Brot, Bread Baking Day, Sourdough 10 Responses

I baked already a lot of french breads: Brioche, Brioche Tropézienne, Baguette in all Variations, Pain d’Epi, Pain de Mie, Croissants and au chocolate, Pain Bordelaise únd Pain aux Levain aux grains mélangés e noisettes. Did I forget something? Ah, yes, there was also the Pain de Beaucaire. A great bread, which method for forming the loaves fascinated me already three years ago. It was time to dust off the recipe and bake it again. This time I used an old-bread-preferment and reduce the size of the bread to produce rolls instead. This idea I got from Lutz, who unintentionally baked the Pain de Beaucaire as rolls, an idea I liked already when I read his blog entry two years ago.

And like the last time, forming the bread was an easy thing to do, and seeing the great ovenspring in the oven let me already hope for the best. When I pull the rolls out of the oven their crust sang already its crackling song while cooling down, promising me an airy crumb under the crisp crust. An really, when I cut one of the rolls, I was very happy with the crumb I see, open but not to open, perfect for breakfast.

I’m happy, that Cinzia from Cindystarblog choose the theme French Bread for Bread Baking Day!

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July 24th, 2012

Chocolate bread

Category Bread Tags: Chocolate, Kako, Sourdough, Water roux 8 Responses

This bread deserves a chorous of praise. Already during baking it filled the house with a seductive chocolate fragrance. And then the first bite of the freshly baked bread … it was everything a chocolate bread can be: fluffy and soft, chocolately, not to sweet, heavenly!

And when you warm a slice of bread a little bit in the toast oven and then add a thin layer of Nutella this slice of bread is a chocolate dream which comes true!

And that makes it worth all the effort you have to put in making this bread. It is – I’m sorry to say this – not a bread for beginners. The dough is very soft and so it is not so easy to handle, but who dare the adventure will be rewarded with a gorgeous bread.

Important for soft crumb is to knead the dough to full gluten development like for the very soft and fluffy sandwich bread or the pumpkin sandwich bread. This strengthen the gluten network and allows the bread to rise highly. It helps to develope an even crumb, too, an effect which is enhanced by flattening and rolling the dough twice during forming the bread.

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July 8th, 2012

Vinschgerln

Category Bread Tags: Caraway seeds, Fenchel, Koriandersaat, Rye, Schabzingerklee, Sourdough 18 Responses

I needed a small present for one of my colleagues. I know that he and his wife like to spend their vacations in South Tyrol and that they fell in love there with Vinschgerln – a rye flatbread, flavoured with caraway seeds, fennel seeds, coriander and “Schabziger-Klee” (Trigonella caerulea ). And I knew also that they tried to bake this bread but their recipe did not work proberly for them.

And so I decided to bake some Vinschgerln for them and give them the recipe, too. I made a little recipe research in the internet and found quite a lot recipes. But some contained not enough water, other recipes had to much yeast and some had a mixture of spices that seemed not original to me. Wikipedia described Vinschgerln as a Bread containing about 70% whole rye flour, and named al the spices needed, and so I decided to build my own recipe.

The bread I bake with this recipe is delious – packed with flavour of rye, spices and and sourdough.

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June 10th, 2012

Berliner Knüppel with Sauerteig

Category Rolls Tags: Rolls, Sourdough 5 Responses

Lutz baked “Berliner Knüppel” this week after a recipe from an old cook book. In the first Variation with no preferment he used a relatively high amount of yeast – to high in my opinion – and Lutz described that he could taste the yeast in the baked rolls. I do not like it when the yeast taste is dominating the bread and so I decided to bake Berliner Knüppel with sourdough. In the same time Lutz created a Knüppel-Recipe with Poolish.

The dough of the Knüppel is firm and to form them properly, it is important to roll them strong enough otherwise the rolls will unfold themself in the oven.

The flavour of the rolls is very nice and the crumb is soft and fluffy like it should be, but the the crust is to soft in my opinion. The next time I will try to replace the milk with water and add some butter in the dough to keep the crumb soft.

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June 4th, 2012

Heath bread

Category Bread Tags: Buckwheat, only with yeast, Rye, Sourdough 13 Responses

This bread is baked memory at a beautiful vacation in the Lüneburger heath two years ago.

In this region, like in other moor and heath regions with meagre farmland, growing grains is difficult. For centuries, buckwheat was grown instead of wheat or rye in this regions, until growing potatoes became popular during the regency of “old Fritz”. In Germany, buckwheat is sometimes called “Heidekorn” what means heath grain, referring to the fact that its mainly grown in heath regions.

Buckwheat is not a real grain, it belongs to the family of Polygonaceae and is related to sorrel and rhubarb. Buckwheat contains not gluten and can added to bread only in small amounts.

When I found some leftover buckwheat flour which I bought during our vacation, I decided to use it an a bread dough.

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May 18th, 2012

Sweet potato and Chickpea Bread

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day Tags: Kichererbsen, Sourdough, Süßkartoffel 12 Responses

Since Christmas I did not precipitate at Bread Baking Day. The last month were filled with all the things that happen, when you finish your Ph.d. thesis: long days in lab for the last experiments, then writing (and rewriting) the thesis and at least learning for the Disputation. But luckily everything is done now and I can concentrate on things I love: Baking Bread.

BBD is hosted from Sarah From Snuggs Kitchen in this month and has the theme “Bread with vegetable”. And when I thought what to do with some sweet potato leftovers, I decided to put it in a bread. And the chickpea flour (chickpeas are vegetables, too) I neglected for a to long time would be a nice addition, too. And so I went to work in my kitchen, making bread with sweet potatoes and chickpea flour.

I had to reduced the amount of water which I added to the dough because the chickpea flour makes the dough very soft. But then handling the dough was possible and I placed the loaves in some proofing baskets and let them proof overnight in the fridge.

While I baked the loaves the next morning, the fragrance of chickpea filled the kitchen. And when I take the loaves out of the oven, they started to “sing” immediatly. The crackle of their crust already promised a crispy crust with a soft crumb. And the colour of the crust was stunning, too: A dark brown with deep orange slashes, with accents of white flour. A bread for all senses.

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April 27th, 2012

Pain Bordelaise

Category Bread Tags: Rye, Sourdough 30 Responses

Here is another recipe for a bread that made already its ways through some blogs until I finally bake it. It started at Sourdough the angry baker, then Daniela from vegetarian gustos si sanatos baked it and at least Zorra from 1x umrühren bitte was very pleased with the recipe. Each of the breads appeared at Yeastspotting, too. The Name remembered me vaguely of something, and finally it came to my mine that I bookmarked this recipe in 2010 when Jeremy from Stir the pots posted the recipe.

I stick nearly complete to the recipe (I just skip the 10g of whole wheat flour – to lazy to mill this amount of wheat), and use Jeremeys instruction for kneading, which is rather short and developed the gluten network with stretching and folding the dough.

The recipe is really great: An easy-to-handle dough, great oven spring, open crumb, crispy crust and a delicious taste.

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