Monthly Archives: February 2015

February 27th, 2015

Bread baking for beginners II: Simple bread

Category Bread, Bread baking for beginners, hand kneaded, Overnight  Tags: , , ,   79 Responses

 

Einfaches Brot (4)I got a lot of positive feedback to my idea of making a small virtual bread baking course. I’m very happy about it and will start to post more beginner recipes on the blog in the next weeks. And if you have questions, ideas or wishes: Please tell me! I will do my best to include it.

The bread we will bake today is a simple one, and similar to the recipe last week it is a “no kneading” bread. The dough rises overnight in the fridge and we can concentrate on forming the loaf. For a plus on flavour I added some rolled oates.

The bread is baked seam side up. The seam is created when forming the bread and is the weak point where the crust can expand during the oven spring (the rising of the bread in the oven). This is important because it ensures that the bread can rise to its maximum and helps to create a bread with a good volume, good crumb and good look, too.

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February 21st, 2015

Silserkranz

Category Bread Baking Day, Rolls  Tags: , ,   4 Responses

SilserkranzI nearly missed that Zorras Bread Baking Day waked from its hibernation and that there is indeed a theme for February! But luckily I stumbled over Announcement of Ina-Christin who is its hostess in this month. And because she loves pretzels as much as I do she wishes us to to bring pretzel variations. This makes it easy to come up with a recipe for her.

I baked a Silserkanz, a Swiss speciality of six pretzel rolls forming a crown. The dough is nearly the same as in my pretzel roll recipe, I just used some milk instead of water. And I believe that this change make the crumb even a little bit more fluffy then the old variant.

For a spontaneous baking the Silserkranz turned out well. The next time I would just cut the rolls a little bit deeper to avoid the uncontrolled cracks that formed in some of the rolls. But this is just a minor drawback and only disturb my inner perfectionist.  The rolls are delicious and a eye catcher on every table!

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February 14th, 2015

Bread Baking for Beginners I: Sour Cream Rolls

Category Bread baking for beginners, hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , , ,   114 Responses

Schmand-Kanten (2)

For quit some time I have an idea in my mind. I would like to start a small series of blog post with recipes and explanations for bread baking beginners where the single posts build on each other, explaining all the basics need. I would start with rather fast and simple recipes without kneading or forming and end with more complex recipes with a preferment.

What do you think? Would this be interesting for you?

For the beginning I come up directly with a recipe. It is a recipe for rolls made with some sour cream. They are delicious with a crisp crust and a soft crumb and perfect for breakfast on lazy weekends.

For me, baking these rolls is a good start to begin with bread baking. There is no kneading or shaping involved, only some time is needed because the dough rise overnight in the fridge. But we are sleeping during this time anyway so it does not matter so much. This long cold rise has some advantage. The gluten (that are the proteins that keeps wheat based dough together) can develop without kneading, the rolls develop a deeper flavour because of fermenting by-products  which the yeast releases into the dough and the next morning we only need another 45 min between preparing the rolls and pulling them from the oven.

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February 12th, 2015

Berliner Ballen with Sweet Starter

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , , ,   4 Responses

Berliner Ballen

I told you already in the last years, that I do not like carnival so much. What I like is baking and eating “Berliner Ballen”, the yam filled german doughnut which is served traditionally during the carnival days. And so I created a new recipe with a lot egg yolks for a very soft crumb and sweet starter for a good flavour and oven spring.

While frying the Berliner I learned a lesson I – in theory – already knew: A glass lid is not as effective in shielding the heat in the pot as a black enameled metal lid. For the first batch I used the glass lid so I was able to observe the doughnuts while frying. But the oven spring was not as good as it should be. So for the next batch I took the metall lid that belongs to my frying pot. And now the oven spring was perfect. The Berliner got the white “collar” – a part of the dough which is lifted out of the hot fat due to the oven spring and which is a sign for a well made Berliner Ballen.

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February 6th, 2015

Wiener Patzerlgugelhupf

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,   6 Responses

Patzerlgugelhupf (2)

The Patzerlgugelhupf is a speciality from vienna. “Patzerl” means “a little bit” and the cake is called like this because of his different fillings: a little bit nut, a little bit quark, a little bit plum butter, a little bit poppy seeds. A cake which is perfect for people who can not make up their mind and a cake which is perfect to use up left overs. I saw a picture of such a cake in the net some time ago and fell into love with it. And so I had to bake him. And because I always love to use the sweet starter as preferment for pastry, I used him here as well. But for those who do not call this kind of sourdough their own: You can replace him easily with a biga! Continue reading →

February 2nd, 2015

Baked Apple Cake

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , ,   3 Responses

Bratapfelkuchen (1) It was snowing in the morning when I got up and it kept snowing. That is more snow then precasted  and we have a nice winter chaos out there. The main problem (like every year) are trucks without winter tyre. The traffic jam on our highway is at the moment about 20 km and I’m nearly happy that I’m on sick leave due to a fevery bronchitis and can stay home.

And so I use the time to show you the baked apple cake I made some weeks ago. The tiny little apples were part of my christmas decoration and slowly they have to be eaten. And because they where great as baked apple before I was inspired to bake a bake apple cake. It was a spontaneous idea. And just when I put the cake in the oven my parents called if we want to take a walk in the woods together in the afternoon. Maybe they smelled already the delicious cake?

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