March 30th, 2012
Category Archives: Special Occasions
January 23rd, 2012
Schokoladen-Gugelhupf
It is done! Not my Ph.D. Thesis – I am still working on that – but the Paper to my side project is published. When I am thinking that this was “only” my side project, its amazing how often it played the chief part in the last two years . After some rejections is finally accepted and now I can use all of my energy to finish my main project. When everything works as planned I will end the experimental part of my thesis end of this month and will start writing. That is the plan I have at monent … we will see what will happen. Life in lab is never easy to plan…
January 1st, 2012
New year pretzel with Sourdough
And now we have 2012. I hope your new years eve was nice as the one we had!
We tried already our new year pretzel for a late breakfast, so there are no pictures of the pretzel as a whole.
This year I decided to bake it with a mild sourdough, water roux and less sugar. I kept the sourdough overnight at 25°C which gave it a delicious smell like yoghurt and slightly sour taste, which makes it perfect for a sweet dough.
The dough itself is very soft. Experience with handling soft dough is required, so for beginners I would suggest to prepare the dough with 50-60g less water. That would make handling much easier.
I kneaded the dough very long, so the gluten network was well developed and the bread could rise highly. Using Egg white keeps the crumb bright and white. I think its fit to the fresh new years morning and I used some frozen egg white from christmas baking.
The pretzel has a nice complex taste, a little bit of youghurt and has this slightly sweetness, that fits so well to both sweet jam and salty cheese.
December 25th, 2011
Saffron Stars
I was very sad when Martin from Pain de Martin posted this summer that he would stop blogging. I liked Martins Ideas very much and his recipes often inspired me to my own recipes.
And so I was very happy when I saw some days ago that he started his new blog Lite mer bröd. When I read the new entries I found directly one I wanted to try: long fermented saffron buns with an orange filling.
I decided to try a variation of this recipe for breakfast on Christmas. So I skipped the filling and reduced the sugar amount. For kneading I do it like I do all sweet dough: I knead the dough until medium gluten development without sugar and butter. Then I add the sugar gradually and at the end the butter. That yields a dough with a good developed gluten network because sugar and butter cannot interfere with it.
June 8th, 2011
Wedding cake for my little Sister
Category Special Occasions Tags: Chocolate, raspberry, Vanilla, Wedding, White Chocolate 7 Responses
My little sister married end of april. And to my great joy she asked me if I would bake the wedding cake.
After talking a little bit with her and my (then still future) brother in law we decided that I bake a three tired wedding cake consisting of a raspberry white chocolate torte (28 cm diameter), a Sachertorte (24 cm diameter) and a lactoste free vanilla cream torte (18 cm diameter).
I calculated that I would need two days to make the cake: one for baking the raspberry white chocolate torte and the vanilla cream torte and one for decoration. Our Mum baked the Sachertorte after the recipe of Oma Bucholtz (fund at Schnuppschüss) 10 days before the wedding because this cake needs a long rest before serving.
June 8th, 2011
Rollfondant
For the Rollfondant for the wedding cake I used the recipe I found in “advanced bread and pastry” from Michael Suas. Its can be made using a kitchen machine – something I like very much because it saves me from kneading a sticky sugar dough with my hands.
April 26th, 2011
Little Easter nests
I did not only bake something for Breakfast at Good Friday, I also wanted to have something nice for our Easter Breakfast, of course. And so I decided to bake little nest of sweet yeasted dough this year. In the past I filled them with a hard boilde egg before baking, but the natural dyes seem to loose their colour when baking in the oven. ‘That’s why I make the nest a little bit bigger, and place the egg in the middle of the nest after baking.
The dough is made with sour cream, which adds a nice taste to the bread and makes the crumb fluffy. To make the baking day more relaxed I decided to let the dough rise in the fridge, the cold and long fermentation together with the Pâte fermentée adds a complex taste to the bread.
I liked the taste of this little easter nests very much and I am sure that soon I will try this dough for sweet buns, too. Continue reading
April 22nd, 2011
Pani di cena
This week Petra baked a delicious looking Sicilian Easter buns: Pani di cena. It is a bread that is traditionally baked on Good Friday and which is often glazed with icing and topped with sugar sprinkels. I fell in love with this buns directly and decided to serve them for breakfast on Good Friday.
I changed the recipe a little bit depending on my personal habits – I used the pulp of a vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract and because of the high amount of sugar and butter I decided to add them at the end of kneading, so they couldn’t interfere with the gluten development. After forming the buns I placed them in the fridge, but they didn’t rise so much here because the butter in the dough get stiff in the cold.
The next morning I preheat the oven to 30°C and let the buns rise there for 1 hour, in this time they doubled their volume!
During baking the smell of the buns was seductively: a scent of butter and vanilla filled the kitchen. And tasting them after they cooled down proofed that their scent did not promise to much. A very rich sweet bread, that reminds me of brioche, incredible soft, buttery and luxurious. Continue reading
April 20th, 2011
Ideas for Eastern
At the moment I’m still busy in the lab but eastern already knock on the door and so I take a look in the archive to see what I bake in the last years. Until I tell you what I will bake for this year I share the sweet easter bunnies and the delicious Colombinas from the last two years with you.
December 25th, 2010
Christmas tree rolls
Category Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Christmas, only with yeast, Poppy seeds, Sesame, whole grain, Yoghurt No Responses
For raclett with the family on christmas eve I volunteered to bring some bread. I decided fastly, that I want to bake Sacaduros. But then I feel that I would like to bring something with whole wheat, too. Simple rolls are to boring for Christmas I thought but then I remember something I saw last year on Cindystar: beautiful Christmas tree rolls.
They are not so difficult to make: Rolls in the shape of stars in different sizes are pilled on each other and fixed with a wooden skewer.
Because I do not own big cookie cutters in form of a star I used Bertinets Methode to form Stars. The holes in the middle of this star I filled with small dough balls.
These little Christmas trees are a nice Eye catcher for the Christmas table Continue reading