December 3rd, 2017

Chocolate Panettone

Category Cake & Pastry, Christmas Cookies, Special Occasions  Tags: , , , , ,   25 Responses

Schokoladen-Panettone-43My plans for the first of advent were somehow different, but as I caught a mean cold I have to spent the day on the sofa instead of baking something delicious for Christmas. The only good thing is that I had enough time to browse through the unpublished recipes. I rediscovered the chocolate panettone I bake last Christmas but never published the recipe.

And so I used the time to publish it now, nearly a year later. It is a delicious twist on the classic recipe which combines the flavours of chocolate and citrus fruits. And just like the “normal” panettone this chocolate version is baked with sweet starter only which adds a delicious deepness to its flavour.

And with this last year’s delicious treat in my mind I begin to dream about what to bake for Christmas this year….

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December 1st, 2017

Christmas Treats–A recipe overview

Category This and That  Tags:   4 Responses

Weihnachtsmannbrot (25)[4]I love baking treats for Christmas and my collection of recipe is growing every year. In my recipe index there is even a own  category for Christmas Cookies and goodies. As I have to work on this first advent weekend and will not find so much time to bake ,I have here a little overview of all the delicious things for the holidays so you can start baking at least 🙂 :

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November 25th, 2017

Kamut Rolls

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   16 Responses

Kamut-Kanten-23The flour bag with white kamut flour contained still 400g flour which had to be used. And that was the beginning of this delicious rolls. They contain some sweet starter made of spelt which I used directly from the fridge. Using a ripe starter adds a lot of flavour to a bread and is an easy way to use up leftover starter. And the complex aroma notes of the starter harmonize very well with the deep nutty flavour of the Kamut flour.

Kamut is not very complicated to use. It needs just a bit of care while kneading as it tends even more to get over kneaded then spelt. And so I kneaded it only a short time and developed the gluten network with strech and fold circles during fermenting. And you can feel how the dough build up strength while folding. Kamut is really the easiest of the ancient grains!

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November 19th, 2017

Kamut Packet

Category Bread  Tags: , , ,   7 Responses

Kamut-Packerl3

After a lot of recipe development for my last course I have a lot of little flour leftovers from various ancient grains. There was for example the packet of white Kamut flour which I bought before I decided that the ancient grain workshop would be a whole grain workshop, too. And so I decided to use the last bread baking day in the museum to cut down some leftovers and baked pure kamut bread.

The bread contains about 40% whole grain flour which is mainly added to the poolish. That allows the flour to take up a lot of water. Especially Kamut is able to soak up a lot of water – at least all the batches I worked with in the last month. Anyway it is a good Idea to start with less water and add the water while kneading – just in case. The mild flaovur of the poolish fits very well to the nutty aroma of the Kamut.

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November 12th, 2017

It’s time for Stollen baking…

Category This and That  Tags:   17 Responses

stollen2[3]

I don’t have to check the calendar to know we are in the middle of November. A short glance in my blog statistic shows me that from day to day the click number for my Stollen recipe rise strongly. And I knew that you – just like me – started to plan baking stollen now.  And while I’m since years happily baking my favourite moist Christstollen I posted some recipe variants in the last years, too. To give you a guide to recipes and tips is here a overview where you can find it: Continue reading →

November 9th, 2017

Berchtesgadener Stuck for the Blog-Anniversary

Category regional breads, Rolls  Tags: , , , , , ,   28 Responses

Berchtesgadener-Stuck-36Like each year at this day in November I want to add a “can you believe this” when I write down the age of this blog. With now nine years the blog feels sometime like a mammoth in a modern time. And just like Micha I sometimes miss the gone days when the blog world was small and young and mainly add-free. I miss the times when every blog had its own blog roll. Past then I could spent hours surfing through the favourite blogs from other bloggers, finding new favourites while I travel through the sites. Nowadays my journeys are often interrupted as many blogs does not share their favourites anymore. Why I can’t understand but I moan about the lost connections and interactions. And I’m more then happy when I find a blog that stands out from the mass and which has a blogroll of its own. Then I will add it to may blogroll, for which I still care a lot. I keep an eye on it so it contains only active blogs (inactive but good blogs can be found have their own special blogroll). You can the blogroll on the left side when you scroll down a bit. Continue reading →

November 3rd, 2017

Basler Brot

Category Bread  Tags: , ,   No Responses

Basler-Brot-36Sometimes I have the feeling that baking bread follows as many fashions as you can observe in cloth. The trend flour of the last years was the French ones. Nowadays it seems that Swiss Ruchmehl is the new “in” flour. (Ruchmehl is a light wheat flour that contains more bran than normal white flour.)  But this is not my kind of philosophy. I like to buy my flour in our local mill in which Wheat from the Rhineland and Spelt from The Bergischen Land is milled into very good flour. Just like Arndt Erbel I prefer to bake with the things that grow in my nighbourhood. And I firmly belief that every baker has to school his or her feeling for the dough for produce a great bread. Of course a great bread needs to have a great ingredients, too. But these can be found in your home region, too.

My rule is an easy one. I buy local flour. And when I in a new region, I buy the local flour there, too. This makes traveling much more exiting. And of course I bought some kilo Ruchmehl when we visited Basel – I like playing with new flour as much as everyone else does.

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October 28th, 2017

Quark-Braid

Category Bread, Overnight  Tags: , , , , , ,   34 Responses

Quarkzopf-33Some time ago I showed this braids already while they cooled down on sunday morning. I promised to post the recipe, if they turned out nicely – and they did! So here it is. It is mainly a “use leftovers” recipe as it contains a bit of left over quark and some sweet starter after refreshing. The Quark adds a nice moistness to the dough and enhances shelf live. But the special turn in this recipe is the tiny bit of rye flour I added. As I learned last year from the Onjeschwedde is a small dose of rye good to enhance the crumb structure to extra soft and pillowy.

Another point I love at weekends too is the fact that the recipe is great for proofing overníght in the fridge. So the next morning the only thing I had to do is placing the baking tray in the oven. Perfect for relaxed sundays!

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October 23rd, 2017

Plum cake with separate baked streusel

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , , , , ,   15 Responses

Zwetschgenkuchen3You can scold me for coming up with this recipe now, add the end of plum season. But the cake is too good to vanish for another year in the draft folder and I had to wait to try this idea for to long time. Problem was the freeze during spring that left us nearly no good plums. And so I had to wait for the late plums until baking this cake.

The special twist I longed to try was baking the streusel separately. This helps do avoid soaked streusel and adds a nice crunch to the cake.  The cake itself and the streusel recipe as well are old friends you know already. But combined they make a great team. Save the recipe for next year in case you get no plums any more!

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October 16th, 2017

Backes Bread

Category Bread, World Bread Day  Tags: , , ,   17 Responses

Backes-Brot-23October means that its time again for World Bread Day. And as I baked bread in the wood fired community oven of our local history museum,  I have a real “Backes Bread”. The Word “Backes” means community bread baking house in our dialect. And baking bread in such a “Backes” means sharing a great feeling of society. There are not so many other things that creates a sense of community then some loaves of bread made and shared with one another.

And so this bread is a bread meant for sharing. It is baked by placing two small loaves in one proofing basket. The ingredients of the bread is a bit inspired by leftovers: mashed potatoes, some quark and a bit of whole emmer flour. The Quark and Potatoes make the crumb moist while the emmer adds a deep nutty flavour.

The breads left the oven with a real dark crust – something that can happen by this more archaic way of baking. And it fits somehow very well with the bread, it adds a slight smoky flavour – and that goes extremely well with a bread from a wood fired oven.

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