Category Archives: Bread

April 21st, 2012

Swabian Potato Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   11 Responses

Schwäbisches KartoffelbrotLutz baked a swabian Potato Bread last year, a little bit later there was a modified version on  Grain de Sel, which Petra baked, too. I realized the recipe then and decided to bake my own version of this bread.

I increase the sourdough and preferment amount as well as the amount of potatoes but decrease the yeast amount. After I had such a good experience with old bread (aka bread crumbs) in preferment I decided to add the bread crumbs to the preferment.  Instead of oil or lard I preferred Butter.

The bread is very delicious with a soft cumb and a thick, crispy crust. It is very aromatic because of the two preferments, and the higher amount of bread crumbs adds a nice nut-like flavour to the dough.

This is a new favourite!

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April 15th, 2012

Baguette with “old bread”, 3/4 Sponge and cold Autolysis

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: , , ,   14 Responses

BaguetteAfter the delicious Wheatbread with old bread I wanted to try another recipe with old bread preferment as well. Lutz’ Altbrotstangen make whishing for some baguettes of my own and so I started to rethink a recipe I created about 2 years ago.

The Baguette with 3/4 Sponge and cold Autolysis had a great taste but I did not like how they look then. So I decided to change some parameters of the recipe, adding an old bread preferment and some gluten.  The dough I got with the changed recipe was soft but not sticky and easy to handle.

When I shashed the baguettes I was already hopeful that this time the baguettes would look as perfect as the baguette I was dreaming of. And when I drew them out of the oven I was stunned because they were so beautiful. The most beautiful baguettes I ever bake.

And their taste is great, too. The two preferments add a complex flavour to the bread and the old bread adds nutty nuances to the taste. A delicious bread, which I will bake often for sure.

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April 14th, 2012

Wheat Bread with “old Bread”

Category Bread, Overnight  Tags: , ,   14 Responses

Weizenbrot mit altem BrotWhen you bake your own bread, you normally have to deal with leftover bread, too. When the bread become stale, I normally place it on top of the kitchen radiator and let them dry out completely. When they are dry, I put them in a food container and keep them for further use, like bribing our guinea pig (not a healthy treat, I know) or crushing them to bread crumbs. The bread crumbs I use regulary for cooking and baking. I like to put them into  the filling of  sweet pastries. Or I add them into a bread dough, replacing a part of the flour with the bread crumbs.

Lutz like to put old bread into preferments. I like this idea and vary his kind of preferment, so that its made out of bread crumbs completely. Together with some sourdough and a slow and long proof in the fridge, it adds a lot of flavour to the bread. Very delicious!

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April 8th, 2012

Easter pinze with sourdough

Category Bread, Special Occasions  Tags: , , ,   5 Responses

Osterpinze(2)

Since some years I always thinking during Eastern, that it  would be nice to bake an Easter Pinze. Until now, I never did it, but this year it seems to be the perfect time. After a quick search in the internet showed me that there are two different recipe variation. One is made with anise wine, the other one with grated lemon or orange peel. I would never allow anise seeds into my kitchen, not to mention to bake with them… So it was an easy decison.

As basis for my recipe I started with Petras Recipe, but added a sourdough and a milk roux and changed the rest of the recipe accordingly.

When I take the bread out of the oven, it smells already very good, after fresh lemons. And its taste is great, too. Lemon with the tiny bit of tanginess from the sourdough make the bread taste like the fresh air in spring.

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March 31st, 2012

Seed bread with Amaranth and Polenta

Category Bread  Tags: , , , , , , ,   6 Responses

Saatenbrot mit Polenta und Amaranth

It’s time for another bread recipe after I posted so much sweet stuff in the last week. This Seed-Bread contains besides roasted poppy seeds, sesame and flaxseeds also amaranth seeds and polenta, which gave a nice aromatic taste to the bread. Amaranth is a good source for essential amino acids which are missing in wheat and corn and contains a lot of iron, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and manganese. Its a very healthy “pseudo grain” and I try to involve it more often in our cooking.

The dough is prepared similar to the recipe of the sourdough bread with roasted oats. The gluten network is developed with folding the dough. No need for a food processor for preparing this bread.

The hot soaker I prepared with the polenta and the seeds adds moisture to the crumb and the bread stays fresh really long. But if you do not need two loaves of 1.2 kg each, it would be a good idea to half the recipe.

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February 15th, 2012

Sesame sun

Category Bread, hand kneaded  Tags: ,   11 Responses

SesamsonneIt’s time for a proof of life. I survived the last week but worked more than even I imagined. It was the first time in my life that I worked non stop for 15 hours and 45 minutes in the lab. But now I try to work less in the lab and write more at my thesis. The time is running now…

And so I baked once more a bread which I can proof in the fridge. Its easier to squeeze baking bread in my writing routine if I have not to spend so much time on the loaf each day.

This bread contains only one kind of seeds: Sesame. I used white sesame and some of the black sesame an Asian friend gave to me. It’s not so easy to find black sesame in German supermarkets.

The taste of black sesame seems to be similar to the white variation. I like it because it gave the bread crumb light and dark speckles. And of course I liked it because I like sesame.

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January 21st, 2012

Buttermilk Bread with rolled Oats

Category Bread, hand kneaded, Overnight  Tags: , ,   38 Responses

Haferflocken-Buttermilch-Brot Its time again for a whole grain bread her in the Blog. The last weeks I baked mostly Breads I posted before but last weekend I created a new recipe, using two of my favourite ingredients: rolled oats and buttermilk.

I proofed the breads in baskets in the fridge and they develop a lot of aroma during the proofing. I was very skeptical in the beginning, when I read that in Tartine they proof sourdough breads in the fridge. Its a methode I used for breads made with yeast before, but I was afraid, that sourdough breads would be to sour. And I really don’t like sour bread. But nothing like this happend and now its one of my favourite proofing methods! It seperate preparing dough and baking and that is the perfect method in stressful times for me.

The bread has dense crumb and is rather moist, which enhance its shelflife. It’s a delicious and filling basis for lunch break.

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January 10th, 2012

Croissant Bread

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   21 Responses

Croissant-BrotYes, this will be no post for all of us who new years resolution is  healthy wholesome eating. And I have to admit that after one slice of this bread I head to it a lot of fruits and vegetables to save my conscience. But (and here are now the excuses why I baked it anyway) it was love on first sight and I need a complex bread for relaxing because of all the stress I have in the last month before starting to write my Ph.D. thesis.

The idea for this bread had TXfarmer who baked some time ago a “Lamminated Sandwich Bread”. Her bread looks better then mine, she really knows how to bake laminated pastry. Her Croissants are a dream! The dough is a soft sandwich bread laminated with butter. After a single and a double fold the dough is cut into stripes and braided.

I did some modifications so that the recipe fits better to the weaker german flour. And this time I mixed the butter for laminating with some flour to make the handling easier. It works good for puff pastry for me and it helps here, too.

And how tastes this bread? A soft and evenly open crumb with a divine taste of butter, like a good croissant.

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January 1st, 2012

New year pretzel with Sourdough

Category Bread, Special Occasions  Tags: , ,   6 Responses

Neujahrsbretzel 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.

 

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December 23rd, 2011

Christmassy almond cloud

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day  Tags: , , , , ,   3 Responses

MandelwolkeThe last Bread Baking  Day of the year 2012 has the theme “X-mas Edition” and is hosted at Cindystar. I get the idea for a bread fitting to this theme some days ago, when I was on my way back home from work. It was already very late, I had lunch about 7 hours ago and I was hungry. So I stopped at the bakery in railway station and bought a bun called “Little cinnamon almond cloud”. That sounds good, doesn’t it? But when I take the first bite I was disappointed. The bun was not stuffed with crunchy almond pieces but with very sweet marzipan in a very sweet dough overpowering completely the faint cinnamon taste. Not what I expected when I read the beautiful name!

When I was sitting in the train I started to think about how I would do such a kind of bread. And so I used the time to develop a recipe for a sweet bread seasoned with cardamom, Cassia buds and allspice and enriched crunchy almond pieces. Its a rich bread with a lot of egg and butter and its perfect for breakfast on Christmas mornings. I achieved a cloud like look with dusting the bread thickly with powdered sugar baking.

This bread with its delicate spices and almonds resembles much more my idea of an almond cloud

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