Tag Archives: Sweet starter

March 27th, 2016

Spelt Easter Pinze

Category Bread, Special Occasions Tags: Eastern, Egg, Sahne, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free, Zitrone 10 Responses

Petras comment here made me thinking about baking this years Easter pinze with sweet starter. I already had a spelt variant in my mind and so I decided to combine both ideas. To keep the pinze moist, I replace the milk with some cream and reduced the amount of butter. Cream has not only a positive effect on the crumb, it is although good if you plan to let the pinze rise over night in the fridge, as the cream will not harden in the cold as butter would do. So the Easter Pinze can rise unaffected and it is easy to serve a oven fresh bread for easter breakfast.

As the dough contains a bit more fat (from the cream) I added some more egg yolk, too. This adds a nice yellow hue to crust and crumb, which is very nice especially on rainy Easter Sundays like it was this year. The pale green eggs in the background of the pictures are from my uncles hens, which belong to the so called “Easter eggers”, a variety of chicken which carries a special gen for a blue to green stained egg shell. So I get a perfect green Easter egg without staining 🙂

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March 20th, 2016

Spelt Brioche

Category Rolls Tags: Butter, Egg, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 12 Responses

Here is –as I promised – the first spelt recipe (of hopefully many more). It is a variation of my brioche recipe, but with more egg yolk and a little water roux to increase the amount of liquid in the dough. A sweet starter adds flavour and helps a good rise.

When kneading to full gluten development, you have to keep a close eye on the dough, as spelt tends to be easily over kneaded. Especially when you use a new batch of flour it is a good idea to do a window pane test in between to test how far the gluten is already developed. It depends on the spelt variety, but perfect gluten development can be less then 30 seconds away from overkneaded .

But if you keep this in mind, then you will have a perfect light and fluffy dinkel brioche for breakfast on sunday morning!

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February 21st, 2016

Leftover Bread

Category Bread Tags: Aromastück, Butter, Rye, Spelt, Sweet starter, Wheat 17 Responses

Sometimes, the best bread happens rather unplanned. Like this bread, which is a kind of a left over bread. It started when I was thinking about what to do with the remaining part of the “aromastück” I prepared when baking the “Irländer”. In the fridge was a big batch of sweet starter waiting to be fed, but it was to much to feed the whole amount, so using part of the unfed starter was needed, too. And in my flour cabinet I had nearly empty bag with rye, spelt and wheat flour. So why not combining everything to bake a bread?

The result is a classic every day bread with a soft crumb. The Aromastück adds a nice malty note and helps to keep it fresh for a long time while the unfed sweet starter adds subtle flavour notes that adds complexity to the aroma. A truly delicious bread that makes me think about new experiments with the aromastück.

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January 30th, 2016

Briegel

Category regional breads, Rolls Tags: Caraway seeds, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 28 Responses

I didn’t eat a Briegel for ages. At least it feels like that as I had the last one when we visit beautiful Swabia last summer. When I baked a lot of spelt “Seelen” – a bread very close related to Briegel – at the breat festival in Berlin two weeks ago, the memory of this briegel appeared again in my mind. And the idea of baking them by my self was fixed in my brain.

The starting point for this recipe was Lutz spelt Seelen. Instead of using yeast I went for a whole grain variant of my sweet starter. A slightly higher whole grain flour amount in the dough and a changed water roux makes the the a bit firmer, as a Briegel dough should be. The dough is good to handle despite the fact that is has a hydration of 87%. A long cold rest in the fridge helps to add a lot of flavour and subtle aroma of lactic acid which fits very well with the bread. To build the gluten network more easily, the double Hydration method is used. For forming a lot of water is needed, too. The surface of the worktop has to wet to avoid sticking and the hands has to be wet as well. Then it is easy to form the Briegel and bake them directly, without proofing.

The crumb of the Briegel is then as it should be: Opend and moist. The crust is crisp and the flavour is unbeatable, complex and deep with a week hint of lactic acid.

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January 24th, 2016

Gaufres de liège with sweet Starter (Whole Spelt variant)

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Butter, Hagelzucker, Spelt, Sweet starter, Tonkabohne, wheat free, whole grain 4 Responses

Tired, but happy I look back on the last week. Tired because I came back very late Sunday night just to leave again on early monday to morning to a mass spectrometry training in Frankfurt. Luckily there was not as much snow as forecasted and all trains were in time. Thinking on the bread festival in Berlin makes me still smiling, as it was such a good experience. I’m very happy that I met some of my Readers there!

My short stop at home I used to freeze some bread I brought with me from our baking marathon (Spelt seelen and Wheat and rye bread). So our freezer was still well filled when I came home end of week. So there was no need for baking, but some of the starters demanded some feeding. So what to do with the left overs? As I keep part of my sweet starter on whole spelt flour at the moment I decided to bake my beloved gaufres de liège in a whole grain variant. Some Tonkabean in the dough added some slight marzipan and vanilla notes to the nutty and a bit tarter flavour of the whole spelt flour, rounding the aroma very nicely.

I enjoyed them very much together with a cup of black tea. They were a perfect treat for a relaxing weekend!

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January 15th, 2016

Bergisch Beer Bread

Category Bread Tags: Beer, Sourdough, Spelt, Sweet starter 22 Responses

Sometimes days go in another direction then my bread baking plan was scheduled. Like last weekend when my mum called to invite me for a spontaneous lunch. So I placed my dough in the fridge after kneading. When we came home it was already late afternoon and when I calculate how long it would take to proof and bake the bread I realize it would be already past my bed time. So I decided to form the loaves and proof them over night in the fridge. With a mild sourdough, this works very well without getting a to sour bread.

And indeed, the bread has only a very faint sour hint underlining the malty notes of the dark beer and a very complex flavour due to the long, cold rise. The crumb is fluffy and soft, the crust crisp, a perfect every day bread. And if you wonder why it is called “Bergisch” Beer Bread: The Bread is named after the region I live in, the Bergische Land.

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January 9th, 2016

Pandoro – A Picture Story

Category Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Christmas, Egg, Sweet starter No Responses

The quite days between christmas and new years eve I like to spent with baking time consuming “cake”-breads. My favourite one is the golden Pandoro, who is a laborious with its preferments, but every time I’m so excited how high it rise and what flavour it develops.

This year I baked once again my pure Sourdough variant, which gains it strangth and complex aroma through the sweet starter. It needs more then 24 hours until it is done, but when the tender crumbs nearly melts in my mouth I always think: This feels like eating a cloud.

When I was baking the pandoro this year there was a question about the sweet starter: Does it really rise during fermentation? I looked at my starter who had trippled its volume in 2 hours and decided to snap a photo to show how it should look. And as I was taking photos I decided to follow the whole fermenting and proofing process with the camera. When the pandoro was baked and sat in the kitchen to cool, I checked the pictures on the computer and was very happy with my result. The pictures showed so well how the preferment dobuled, nearly trippled and how the Pandoro gained a nearly the a four times bigger volume during proofing and baking.

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January 1st, 2016

Spelt New Years Pretzel

Category Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Egg, Orange, Sahne, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free 18 Responses

Relaxed and in good company was our start into 2016. I hope, you landed good in the new year as well!

For a late breakfast we always have the traditional new year pretzel and for this one I did something I planed to do already for some time. I transformed the favourite sunday braid recipe to spelt flour. To increase the water binding capacity, I added a water roux and for a stronger starter, I build the dough similar to a pandoro with a first and a second dough. This enhance flavour and makes the yeasts stronger as they already have the change to adapt to the higher sugar content.

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December 24th, 2015

Pompe à l’huile

Category Bread, Christmas Cookies, Special Occasions Tags: Christmas, Olivenöl, Orange, Orangenblütenwasser, Sweet starter 3 Responses

The Pompe à l’huile is a traditional french Pastry which is part of the “Les treize desserts”, the thirteen desserts served on Christmas. It is a very rich, sweet Bread and flavoured with orange blossom water and Orange peel. It’s crumb reminds on a rich brioche but it is not prepared with butter but with olive oil. Since I made the Schiacciata di Pasqua for Easter I knew that olive oil in a sweet bread is not a strange but a very delicious idea.

The recipes which I found in the net where all made with a lot of yeast. As this is something I don’t like so much, I decided to use some of my sweet starter as preferment, as I was feeding it anyway to make it strong for the Pandoro I plan to bake. The sweet starter is so mild, that even with this long fermentation it just gives a complex flavour to the bread, but with no sour tones. It harmonize very well with the orange flavour and the subtle spiciness of the olive oil.

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November 29th, 2015

Christstollen with sweet Starter

Category Christmas Cookies, hand kneaded Tags: Almonds, Candid lemon peel, Candid Orange peel, Cardamom, Christmas, Christstollen, Cinnamon, Hand kneaded, Macis, Raisins, Sweet starter, Vanilla 13 Responses

Last year I saw a Christstollen with Sourdough which “Ofenkante” published on his blog. This stirred my brain and I started to think about Stollen made with sweet starter. But as I was already done with Stollen baking at this time point, I stored the idea in the back of my mind. After one year of thinking about it I decided to bake directly two stollen for this Christmas: a traditional and a experimental one.

In the experimental stollen with sweet starter I kept the same ratio of ingredients then in my traditional one (never change a winning team) but build the the sweet starter over several steps to get a enough strength for rising. It is always amazing to see how strong the sweet starter gets when fed three times in a row! But as the feeding is time consuming, this recipe needs a day until it is done.

After four weeks of ripening I brought the stollen from the cold attic back to the warm kitchen and sliced it. The crumb was perfect, firm but moist and the different flavours had fused to a harmonic consonance. Compared to the traditional stollen there are subtle differences in flavour nuances, but it is hard to pin them down. After all, both of them taste terrific and I can not name a favourite.

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