Tag Archives: Sourdough

April 19th, 2014

Attendorner Ostersemmel

Category Bread, regional breads, Special Occasions Tags: Caraway seeds, Eastern, Rye, Sourdough 9 Responses

It is tradition in Attendorn, a small city in the Sauerland, that the pastor will issue a bless on the “Ostersemmel” (which means Easter bread) on Holy Saturday. It is a big event, that takes place in front of the church where the citizens of the Attendorn will hold their bread into the air. The Bread is forked on both ends, a shape that should depict the Christian symbol of a fish.

It is a bread made with rye, wheat and caraway seeds. My interpretation of the Ostersemmel is made with 30% Rye and Sourdough, and the recipe yields to breads. With a round cookie cutter I make an inprint for the eye, like I saw it in some pictures.

It is a perfect bread for caraway lovers like me, very aromatic with a soft crumb and a shiny crust.

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March 22nd, 2014

How to dry and reactivate your sweet starter

Category Bread baking theory, Starter and Preferments Tags: How to do, Sourdough, Sweet starter 11 Responses

Having a active sourdough like the sweet starter is a good thing. But there is always the risk of loosing. It could starve while you are on a longer vacation or because you have no time for bread baking. Or (worst case scenario) some mould could start to grow on your precious sourdough. And that’s when a backup can be handy.

When I grow my sweet starter in December, I decided to test two different methods for storing sourdough: Freezing and drying. And after three months I tested which method provides a faster success when I reactivating. I mixed both the frozen and the dried starter with fresh flour and water and left them on the counter. After 20 hours the dried starter was clearly back to life as I could judge from the increase of volume. A feeding with flour and water showed that it could already triple its volume after 4 hours on 30°C, like it would before freezing.

The frozen starter was barely alive after the same time, only some tiny bubbles suggest that it was not completely dead. But that does not surprise me so much, because during the freezing process the water in the cells of the microorganisms starts to form crystals, which damage the cells. During drying on the other hand the cells form spores to survive the unpleasant situation and spring back to life as soon as it comes in contact with water and flour.

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February 28th, 2014

Sandwich Bread with Sourdough and Sweet Starter

Category Bread Tags: Poppy seeds, Sourdough, Sweet starter, Toast 13 Responses

Sometimes I love a good sandwich bread. And then there are long phases it does not appeal me at all. But when I feel a hunger for sandwich bread I tend to bake it as soon as possible. That what happend last weekend.

And so when I saw the beautiful braided sandwhich bread with poppy seeds at Sara bakar I knew how the bread should look like. But I decided to use my own recipe with a combination of sourdough and sweet starter. This combination sounds strange in the beginning, but this combination results in a very mild bread with a slight yoghurt flavour. The sweet starter helps to let the bread rise in a relative short time as well!

The bread has a beautiful soft crumb and a nutty poppy seed crust and tasted so good that it vanished very fast!

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February 22nd, 2014

Pain Pavé

Category Bread, hand kneaded, Overnight Tags: Hand kneaded, Rye, Sourdough, Über-Nacht 21 Responses

During our last vacation in france I fell in love with the flat, rustic looking Pain Pavé. Pavé means cobblestone and refers to the flat, rectangular shape of the breads. Most of the time they are cut crosswise or with a rhombical pattern.

My version of the Pavé is made with rye sourdough and a long, cold fermentation in the fridge. That helps, together with the folds of the dough, to develope an open crumb and a deep, complex flavour.

It is a bread which goes very well with a flavourful winter soup or very simple with only some goat brie!

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January 30th, 2014

Oberberger Ärpelbrot

Category Bread, Overnight Tags: Potatoes, Rye, Sourdough, Über-Nacht 56 Responses

In the dialect of the region where I live – the Oberbergische Land – potatoes are called “Ärdäppel” which means earth apple. In a shorter variant it is drawn together to “Ärpel”. And putting some potatoes in a bread dough (which makes it to a Ärpelbrot – Potato bread) was a good idea to all times. In former times this helps to save precious flour (especially in regions where grains do not grow so well like here in the Oberbergische Land), and nowadays we like the effect which potatoes have on the bread, keeping it moist and making the crumb soft and tender.

It is a great bread for all meals, and with the curved slashes it is a beautiful eye catcher as well.

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December 27th, 2013

Country bread with sweet starter

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day Tags: BBD, Sourdough, Spelt, Sweet starter 40 Responses

I love to bake Pandoro, but in the busy Christmas time I do not always find the time to prepare the time consuming Sweet Starter. But this year I had enough time for it during the holidays. A Sweet Starter is an extremly active sourdough which is prepared by feeding a sourdough every four hours and keeping it on 30°C. This shifts the sourdough to the yeasty side and creates a sweet tasting sourdough with only hints of yoghurt flavour. And it makes the starter very strong, and so my starter was finally able to double its size in two hours. Such an active starter is a very nice thing and so I decided to increase the amount during feeding until I could use a part of it to start a preferment for a bread. I mixed the preferment in the morning and after four hours the sourdough more then tripled it size and was ready to use. And so I mixed a dough, fermeted it for three hours and then I proofed the shaped loaves overnight in the fridge.

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November 17th, 2013

Angeschobenes Weizenmischbrot

Category Bread Tags: Backrahmen, Blog-Birthday, Lieblingsbrot, Pâte fermentée, Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 13 Responses

I wished that everyone bake his/her favourite bread for my 5. Blog-Birthday. But as Zorra and Melanie >I had to face the fact that I already blogged about my favourite bread! And to bake it once again seemed a little bit borring to me. And so I decided to do something I was think about for already quite some time: I doubled the amount and baked the bread in the wooden baking frame, similar to the Pumpkin Potatoe Bread I baked for World Bread Day.

Due the isolating capacity of the thick wooden frame and other breads, the loaves develop no crust on its sides, while bottom and top get a thick, aromatic and crisp crust due to the long baking time. The crumb is very soft and light with only small holes, so that the honey will stay on my breakfast bread, too. A perfect every day bread that taste good with sweet spreads and hearty cheese. And due to the different kind of baking it taste really a little bit different to the “normal” bread, the flavour has somehow more depth.

So this is my part for my Blog Event. Whoever wants to submit a bread can do so until 30th November! Readers without blog can participate, too! All informations about the Blogevent you can find here. Continue reading →

October 16th, 2013

Pumkin Potato Bread baked in a baking frame

Category Bread, World Bread Day Tags: Backrahmen, Kürbis, Sourdough 15 Responses

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 2nd, 2013

Brewer Bread with Whey

Category Bread Tags: Kleie, Molke, Rye, Sourdough, Spelt, Treber, Wheat 2 Responses

There was no bread left in our freezer, the drawer was completly empty, all the bread was eaten! So it rtime to stock it up again! But what should I bake? Looking around in the kitchen I rembered my spent grain flour and decided to bake a brewer bread once again.

It is always amazing how dark the dough turns when I add the spent grain flour. But when you consider that it has a fibre content of 50%, it is not so suprising! To soak the spent grain flour properly, I scalded it together with oat bran and spelt flour in hot whey. The smell of this hot soaker was incredible, malty and flavoursome!

The soaker keeps the bread fresh for a long time, and makes a great, soft crumb. I like the bread very much, it has a deep malty flavour with a hint of nuts – it’s a new favourite!

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July 21st, 2013

Pain de Campagne

Category Bread, Overnight Tags: Rye, Sourdough, Über-Nacht, Wheat 18 Responses

During hot summer days I prefer light breads. Breads like Baguette or Pain de Campagne bring a reminiscence of french summer days in our life.

For Pain de Campagne, which is although called French country bread, you can find thousand and one recipes and forms. Everyone seems to have his/her own recipe. But most of the breads are made with levain, a wheat based sourdough, and with a small portion of whole rye or whole wheat flour. And so I added some rye flour and levain for my variation of Pain de Campagne, too. A long, cold fermentation phase helps to build a complex flavour.

The bread has a airy crumb with big holes and a dark brown, crunchy crust. A delicious bread that goes very well with some French cheese and a big bowl of salad.

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