Monthly Archives: June 2012

June 30th, 2012

Virgin Hugo

Category Drinks  Tags: , ,   5 Responses

Virgin Hugo If you would have asked me one week ago what Hugo is, I would probably answered: It is the ghost from the game Mitternachtsparty, one of my favourite board game in my childhood.

But as I learned this week Hugo is a drink, too. It contains sparkling wine, mint leaves, elderflower syrup and limes. To be honest, this would not temp me a lot. But the virgin variation, using sparkling water instead of wine was something I had to try immediately.

I found the recipe at Paules Kitchen, who got it from  Nadine of Dreierlei Liebelei. And when I did my first sip, I was directly in love with this drink. A little bit sweet, a little bit sour, with aromatic elderflowers and refreshing mint it is the perfect refreshment for warm and humid summer days.

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June 29th, 2012

Malt beer knots

Category Bread Baking Day, Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , , , ,   6 Responses

Malzbierknoten I’m not a huge beer fan. Seldomly, maybe one or twice a year, I like to have a little bit beer. That happens normally when we are in Belgium and then I prefer some beer from a small (family-) brewery like Brugse Zot. I don’t like Kölsch, a beer that is typical for the region I’m living, and the same is true for Pils, too.

That is not the best starting point to bake a Bread with Beer for the 5. Birthday of Bread Baking Day. I tried it anyway, but was not convinced of the taste of the bread I baked. And so I decided to cheat a little bit and bake some rolls made with malt beer. I used a local brand “Golden Malz” which is produced in a brewery only 9 km from where I live. It is a real piece of home.

The malt beer knots turned out great. Their taste has deep, malty nuance which fits nicely to the nutty taste of the fresh milled wheat in the rolls and the complex aromas which are created during the slow fermentation. The crumb is soft and fluffy and gets a nice light brown hue due to the malt and the crust is crunchy. A good tasting bread for sweet honey or  jam but great with cheese, too

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June 24th, 2012

Bergische Knüppel – Overnight variation

Category Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , ,   7 Responses

Bergische Knüppel ÜbernachtThe delicious Knüppel are great as Overnight variation, too.  Kornblumeasked me how to change the recipe so that the dough could ferment overnight and together we developed the overnight variation. And during thinking about it I decided that I would try them, too.

Similar to the Krustis, the dough fermeted slowly overnight and at the next morning I only had to form and bake the rolls. The short proofing (only 30 minutes) helps to get fresh rolls on the breakfast table fastly.

The long fermentation creates more complex aroma then in my first Bergische Knüppel recipe. They had again a great ovenspring, the crust was crisp and crackle during cooling down. The crumb was again niecly soft and fluffy.

I am glad I tried them as overnight roll, too!

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June 23rd, 2012

Schwarzwälder Kirschcreme

Category Dessert  Tags: , , ,   5 Responses

Schwarzwälder KirschcremeA dessert made with curd (Quark) is always  delicious and a good dessert for  a potluck barbecue. The Schwarzwälder Kirschcreme I made for a barbecue at my colleagues home is a variation of the Schwarzwälder Kirschcreme a former Ph.d. student of us loved to make for those occasions.

I refined the cream with some vanilla and mix some Gianduja chocolate with the semisweet chocolate. Before I grate the chocolate with a slicer I froze them for a while to make the grating easier and forms nice little chocolate curls then.

I layered the dessert in small glasses, but it looks great in a big bowl, too.

With a decoration of  some fresh cherries and a little bit of cream makes the dessert to a beautiful eyecatcher.

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June 16th, 2012

Bergische Knüppel

Category Rolls  Tags: , ,   6 Responses

Bergische Knüppel I was very happy with the taste of the “Berliner Knüppel” but their crust was to soft in my opinion. And so I decided to bake another variation, containing less milk but add some butter to the recipe.

I also decrease the time I gave the rolls for proofing. After I realized that their ovenspring was not as high as expected I go down to 35 min and put the rolls in the oven when still a little underproofed. Now they have the kind of ovenspring I was aiming for.

And after changing the recipe so much I decided to change the name, too. Now I call them “Bergische Knüppel” because I am living in the “Bergische Land”.

The rolls are very satisfying now: a complex aroma, crispy crust and soft crumb, that is how a roll should be.

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June 10th, 2012

Berliner Knüppel with Sauerteig

Category Rolls  Tags: ,   5 Responses

Berliner KnüppelLutz 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: , , ,   13 Responses

Heidebrot 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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June 3rd, 2012

Spelt rye swirls

Category Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , , , ,   32 Responses

Dinkel-Roggen-Spirale

I met my mother, my sister and a very good friend for breakfast and promised to supply us with some rolls.

I planed to bake fresh rolls instead of buying some, but the day before I came home late, so I decided to prepare a dough and let it rise over night. As form for the rolls I thought about makeing them as a swirl. I saw this kind of rolls at Chaosqueen, but she used a roll stemp to achive the swirl.

I do not have this kind of stamp, and so I had to think about another way to get the swirls. And so I roll the dough to strands and wind up the strands to form swirls.

The form looks very nice and their taste was very good, with hints of nuts due to the spelt and rye flour and a deep, complex flavour because of the long fermentation. The crust was crunchy and the crumb fluffy, just as a good roll should be!

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