May 12th, 2013

Streuselkuchen

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , ,   36 Responses

Streuselkuchen

Streuselkuchen is a simple cake.

But it is although an art to bake the perfect Streuselkuchen. The yeast dough should be not dry, but rise fluffy and light. The streusel has to be crisp but not hart. A favourite cake of mine which awakes great expectations in me. And often disappoints them.

But finally I found my perfect comination of dough and streusel. The dough recipe is a slightly modified variation of the swiss butter braid which contains a little bit more sugar. And for the streusel I decided to add a pinch of baking powder. An experiment with a very good result.

When I cut the cake into slices I could already see that the dough has risen to a soft and tender crumb with thick crisp streusel as contrast. A thin band of apricot jam conect both layers in a fruity way.

That is my perfect Streuselkuchen!

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May 9th, 2013

Curd Mousse

Category Dessert  Tags: , , ,   2 Responses

Quarkmousse

I liked to use second part of my oven roasted rhubarb in a delicious way, too. And when I saw the Curd-Mousse, that Micha made, I was instantly in love. Micha found the recipe on Verenas Blog Schlammdackel, and Verena found it at Living at home. In the original recipe, the Mousse was made with sea buckthorn berries, but Micha used strawberries instead. I like strawberries as well but the fact that I’m allergic against them made it necessary to change the recipe.

To cut a long story short: I made the Mousse with oven roasted rhubarb instead of buchthorn berries or strawberries. And that tasted great, too.

I think this Mousse is a great basic for a lot of different fruits. I can not wait to try it with some fresh blueberries, or raspberries, or…

 

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May 6th, 2013

Three Grains Bread

Category Bread, hand kneaded, Overnight  Tags: , , , , , ,   20 Responses

Dreikornling

I like a hearty whole grain bread. Like this one. It is a really mild one, perfect for persons who do not like sour breads. It is a bread without sourdough but with a very long and cold fermentation, which is only shortly disturbed every now and then when the dough is stretched and  folded. Even the loaves proofs in the fridge, too.

Due to slow fermentation the bread developes a incredible taste. The sweetness of the freshly milled flour is clearly recognizable, combined with the nutty undertones of whole grains and the complex notes due to the fermentation. The long rest let the flour absorb more water then normally and so I could add more water to the dough. This makes the crumb moist.

It is a bread, which in its simple way of preparing is perfect for beginners who are still a little bit scarred of sourdough. It requires not much more then a good deal of patient, because you need two days until you can pull it out from the oven. But then your patient will be rewarded…

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May 5th, 2013

Tote Hosen-Brot

Category Bread    7 Responses

Toten Hosen Brot

I do my best to make Birthday wishes come true. Even if the motive for the bread is a strange one for me.

But when my boyfriends sister wished for a bread with the symbol of her favourite punk band “Tote-Hosen”, then I will bake a bread with a skull.

As basis I used my new favourite recipe for the wheat rye bread No 2. I’m still thrilled about the phantastic oven spring and the great taste which is due to the two preferments I use. And the handling of the dough is great, as well. You can do as much “nonsense” as you like with it, roses or skulls or whatever you like. I love this recipe … Continue reading →

May 4th, 2013

Oven roasted Rhubarb

Category Dessert  Tags: ,   12 Responses

Rhabarber-Kompott

Opinions are divided over Rhubarb. Some dislike this sour vegetable very much, other – like me – love it. I love to drink Rhubarb Schorle in the summer or eat rhubarb in cakes, with pancakes or – really simple – as compote.

The oven roasted rhubarb I made two times last year: one time as a filling for cream puffs and one time for Rhubarb Napoleons. Both times I was completely stunned by the taste of the compote.

During roasting in the oven, the rhubarb develops a deep caramel flavour which is nicely underlined by the vanilla flavour while the tart taste is well balanced with sugar.

This time I served it only with some whipped cream, a simple but perfect dessert for spring!

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May 3rd, 2013

Kartöffelchen

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , , ,   11 Responses

Kartöffelchen

The television broadcast “Markt” featured a interesting report about potatoes, including a potato tasting. The tasting take place in the Restaurant of a colleagues spouse, and she and one of my other colleagues were part of the tasting, too. So watching TV last Monday was mandatory. The result of it did not suprise me so much: the imported potatoes from Egypt and Cyprus looked very good, but tasted – as my colleague Birgit stated – like putty while the local potatoes, grown in the Rhineland, was very flavourful.  I made this experience by my own, too and always try to buy potatoes from a local farmer.

To honour the potato I decided to bake some potato rolls. But my “Kartöffelchen” (little potatoes) should not only be called “little potatoes” they should look like a potato, too. And so they have a dark brown crust and a fluffy yellow crumb. But the soft dough is not so easy to form. If you would like to have a simpler shape, I would suggest to cut the dough  into squares like described Yoghurt Sesame Rolls.

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April 24th, 2013

Champions Bread

Category Bread, Bread Baking Day  Tags: , , , , , , ,   31 Responses

Weltmeisterbrot

Cinzia from Cindystar asked us to bake Bread with seeds and flakes for Bread Baking Day. When my mum asked me for a recipe for “Weltmeister-Brot” (Champions Bread) I knew directly that this would be perfect for this theme.

It is not clear, why this bread is called champions bread. Some Bakers from the german island Sylt claim that they invented it, while others connect it with the swabian soccer player Klinsmann, who is a baker by trade. I can only tell you, that I ate both champions bread and rolls first as a child in the 90th during our family holiday in East Frisia.

I saw the champions bread either baked in a tin or formed as a batard, but I like the batard more. But the recipe would work in a tin, too.

I like the bread very much, with its light and soft crumb and a thick, crunchy crust covered with a lot of seeds. That’s a bread I like!

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April 17th, 2013

Wheat Rye Bread No 2

Category Bread, Bread baking theory  Tags: , , ,   69 Responses

Weizenmischbrot

Three Month ago I baked a bread decorated with a rose for Bread Baking Day. My Mum was very much in love with the decoration and asked me if I could bake such a bread for her birthday breakfast with her colleagues. And of course is her wish my command! And so I baked another decorated bread last weekend, with a beating heart – baking something as a present makes me always nervous.

I changed some points of the process. Last time I realised that I don’t need to knead more flour in the dough to make it firmer for the decoration, so I skipped this step. And yes, with the softer dough it is still possible to form beautiful flowers and leaves. This time I felt more confident and decided to take pictures of the process for a little “how to”.

I changed the recipe of the dough a little bit, too (and yes, even my own recipes are not safe from being changed). I added some more rye flour and sourdough and a little bit of butter which makes the crumb softer. The bread is tasted even more delicious as its precurser, and so the name “Wheat and Rye bread No 2” is a little bit misleading, because for me it is the Number one!

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April 8th, 2013

Swiss Butter Braid

Category Bread  Tags: , , , ,   43 Responses

Schweizer Butterzopf

Jutta likes braided breads very much, just like me. And when she blogged her 12-stranded Braid I knew immediately that I had to bake such a braid, too. I bake already some braids in the last years, braids made with one Strand, two, three, four, six  or even with eight strands. So it was time to increase the difficulty level!

I watched the Videos Jutta linked and realized that it was not as difficult as I feared. The braiding needs just a lot of concentration.

And so I braided bread on Sunday morning, doing three smaller braids at once. After I finished the first, braiding the remaining two was not so hard to do. Making 36 small strands for three braids was much more annoying.

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