Category Archives: Bread

November 15th, 2014

Pumpkin seed bread with roasted Pumpkin

Category Bread  Tags: , , , , ,   2 Responses

Kürbisbrot (3)

The nice sales girl in my parents favourite bakery gave them some slices of bread to test, mentioning that she like it very much but strangely the other costumers did not buy it. My parents tested it and agreed that it is very delicious. At the end, they bought the last loaf.

When they told me about it my brain started to work immediately and soon I had a plan for the next baking day. The basis for the recipe is my favourite wheat and rye bread to which I added roasted pumpkin and pumpkin seeds. For the form of the loaves I tried to mimic a pumpkin, too.

The bread had a good oven spring and smelled divine when I pulled it from the oven. It was hard for me to wait until the bread cooled but my patient was rewarded. The bread had a crisp crust and a regular soft crumb speckeled with orange pumpkin and green seeds.

It is a great bread and for sure not the last time I baked it.

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November 1st, 2014

Seeded Crisps

Category Crisps and Co  Tags: , , , , , ,   15 Responses

Saaten-Knusperchen

I admired already for some time the gorgeous looking seeded crisps which I saw on different blogs. They sound like a Mixture of biscotti, zwieback and cracker, with a hugh amount of seeds. That was very tempting but every recipe I found used baking powder or soda as rising agent. I don’t like the taste of baking powder so much and so I decided to make a recipe of my own, using yeast instead of baking powder. I take my inspirations from different seeded crisps and  zwieback recipes.

With yoghurt and butter make a tender crumb, honey and malt add a subtle sweetness and the nutty taste comes from a mixture of hazelnuts, sun flower seeds, sesame, pumpkinseeds and buckwheat. After baking the loaf has to cool completly, best over night. Then it is sliced and baked for another 30 min. This makes the bread crisp and adds a nice flavour of toasted nuts.

The Seeded Crisps are perfect on their own but although great to go with wine and cheese!

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October 19th, 2014

Quinoa Baguette

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: , ,   7 Responses

Quinoa-Stange (2) The pseudo grain quinoa is a fast side dish I like to make instead of rice. The flat seeds stems from the Andens and are packed with protein and minerals and they are delicious! So I was directly hooked when I saw a bread made with a relative high percentage of quinoa because they contain no gluten. Sadly I can not remeber anymore, where I saw the bread. But I could not get the thought of quinoa bread out of brain and so I decided today spontaneously quinoa baguettes.

I used 30% of home milled quinoa and was surprised how well the dough behaved. It needed a little bit more water then I expected but after some folds it developed a good gluten network. The flavour of quinoa was well recognizable when I knead the dough and while baking the whole kitchen was filled with the aromatic nutty smell. I was really exited when I cut the bread after cooling down. The crumb is not as open as a baguette but moist and flavourful. The nutty taste harmonizes perfectly with some goat cheese and honey mustard!

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September 14th, 2014

Potatoe Bread (not only for Beginners)

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: , , , , , ,   28 Responses

Kartoffelbrot für Anfänger

Vanessa asked for beginner frindly recipes and so reminded me that it s about time to post such another beginner recipe . And so I started to create a recipe which can baked without a lot equipment. And that I could use up the potato flakes which I had in the cupboard since christmas is a bonus point!

Potato flakes are great for beginner breads because they can bind a lot of water so the bread will be moist without struggling with sticky dough. You can either order them online or use organic instant mashed potatoes which contains mainly potato flakes plus salt and some spices (I used the one from Alnatura).

For some extra flavour I added a Pâte Fermentée and a stale bread soaker made from toasted stale bread. This adds a lot of roasting flavour to the bread.

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September 6th, 2014

Aromatic Three Grain Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , , , ,   One Response

Aromatisches Dreikornbrot (1)

On our way back home from the summer holidays we were greeted with a terrible thunderstorm as soon as we passed the border of North Rhine-Westphalia. We shortly whished to turn the car and drive back to the sunny Plön. But when we finally reached home I was happy to have my oven back. And it was like it would whisper: “Bake a bread!” And so I refreshed my sourdough and the next morning I looked through my baking cupboard to see what I could bake.

I found some Emmer, Rye and of course Wheat flour and so I decided to bake a three grain bread.  To enhance the nutty flavour of the Emmer I made a paste from roasted sesame and poppy seeds. I did not add a big amount, only a little bit so it would not stand out but melt with the aroma of the grains.

A this makes a great bread, aromatic with a open crumb and a crisp crust. A perfect start into autumn.

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August 29th, 2014

Farmers Bread with Old Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   3 Responses

Bauernbrot

We always have small leftovers of bread in our kitchen. I collect them on a small tray which I place on a heater. I let the bread dry completely and when a bigger amount has accumulated I can grind them to bread crumbs. I start with sorting the bread: Bread with whole grain flour for dark bread crumbs and white bread for white bread crumbs. Then I grind the bread (e.g with a food prozessor) to fine crumbs. The white crumbs I use mainly for cooking and the dark crumbs will add flavour to a new bread.

I like it best when the crumbs are added to a preferment, like I did with this famers bread. This bread has a deep, complex flavour and is made with old bread perfermet plus a mild sourdough which I rise in to steps. Its rustic character is enhanced by grounded caraway seeds and rye flour. The Crust is dark and aromatic, and the crust is elastic and soft, perfect for a hearty “Brotzeit”.

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August 17th, 2014

Double Bake

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   15 Responses

DoppelbackI love breads with a soft crumb and a crisp crust. And there are two possibilities to archive a thick, crunchy crust: You can either bake the bread with falling heat or you use the trick of “double baking”. For double baking you let the bread cool down after the first round of baking and then put it back into the oven. This yields a very aromatic, crisp crust.

For this wheat and spelt bread I used both methods. First I baked the loaves with falling heat, then I let them cool down over night. The next morning I put them back into the oven for about 15 min.  That created a bread with a perfectly crisp crust!

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July 5th, 2014

Sunday braid with sweet starter

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   92 Responses

 

Sonntagszopf (2)

I like to eat some “Zopf” (or Challah or  some other kind of soft braided bread), especially for breakfast on sunday. In the last year I often baked Schwiss  Butterbraid. I like it very much but for the most people who grow up in Germany this kind of bread has to be sweet while the swiss version is not sweet. And for those with a sweet tooth I baked this sunday braid. It is so delicious, that I baked it for the goodbye breakfast of a colleague again. And each time I bake it I’m thrilled because of its buttery, sweet flavour and the soft crumb.

A big portion of cream makes the crumb incredible soft and fluffy. And the advantage of cream instead of butter is that the dough (or the shaped bread) rise well in the fridge. With higher butter amounts I made the experience that the butter hardens in the cold and so hinder the dough to rise proberly. And for forming the dough ít is necessary to keep it in the fridge for at least one hour. But then braiding will be easy.

For a good flavour and good oven spring I included my sweet starter in the recipe. If you don’t have one, you can use instead some Lievito madre or a Biga, which rise overnight in the fridge.

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June 27th, 2014

Light Spelt Bread

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: , , , ,   43 Responses

Helles Dinkelbrot (3)

With the new oven I had to bake a bread immediately. I didn’t have a pure spelt bread for some time and so I decided that spelt bread should be the first bread baked in the new oven! With some sourdough and poolish for a good, complex flavour and a hot soaker to keep it moist.

But really existing was the moment when I placed the bread in the oven. I turned the oven to “Hydrobake”, which is the oven programm that traps the steam inside and throw some ice cubes inside to create some more steam. And then I sat in front of the oven and watch the bread rise the same way like other people would watch a thriller. The oven spring was indeed nicer then in my old oven. But the most impressing thing is the great colour and shine of the crumb which shows the importance of steam for a the maillard reaction.

I’m really happy with the new oven. And I’m happy with the bread as well. It tastes great, has a nice open crumb and a very crisp crust! It tastes so good, that I had no change to freeze one loaf because we it so fastly!

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June 7th, 2014

Hot Walnut Ring with Koharsan Wheat

Category Bread, hand kneaded, Overnight  Tags: , , , , ,   5 Responses

Feurige Walnuss-RingeThe last time I phoned my sister, she told me about a “Baguette” she ate in a cooking class some days ago. She liked the combination of hot pepper, walnuts and whole spelt flour, but the bread had a very thigh and doughy crumb. So I wrote down the recipe and promised to build a better recipe. For that I had to change nearly the whole recipe.

I take out the egg from the formula (no egg is needed in a baguette), but add a good deal more water but much less yeast. I reduced the amount of walnuts only a little bit for a better balance between bread and nut and added some chopped sweet red pepper for the good look. The amount of hot pepper should be adjusted by the personal taste, the amount of Habenero I used brings the recipe definitely to the hot side. If you want a milder version I would decrease the hot pepper and use more sweet pepper instead.

I kneaded the dough as I would knead a baguette dough and in the end I was rewarded with a soft but not sticky dough. It was easy to form some rings out of it. And after a propper fermenting and proofing time (something the original recipe omit) I was rewarded with a great aromatic bread. The Khorasan wheat, which I used instead of Spelt, gives a sweet nutty flavour to the dough which goes very well with walnuts and hot pepper. And the crumb is nicely open, especially when you consider the high amount of whole grain flour. A perfect bread to bring to a BBQ or to eat as a side with a summer salad!

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