May 26th, 2018

Ein-Korn

Category Rolls Tags: Einkorn, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, Sesame 32 Responses

When I look over my roll recipe I published during the last few years, I see a clear tendence: overnight doughs. And my Ein-Korn-Rolls are no exception from this rule.

They are spelt rolls with 30% whole grain einkorn flour and about 16% seeds. This mixture give a deep nutty flavour and some bite. If you like, you can even roast the seeds, but I didn’t as I want to prevent the seed flavour to overpower the einkorn flavour.

The rest of the recipe follows a well working schema: some egg yolk and butter for a tender crumb and some psyllium hulls to increase the water binding capacity. And that brings a delicious roll. So delicious, that my dearest praised them at breakfast enthusaticaly. And that happens with my – from good bread quality spoiled – spouse rather seldomly 😀

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May 20th, 2018

Crusty Rye Rolls

Category Rolls Tags: Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 20 Responses

Sometimes Inspiration is knocking on our doors surprisingly. My sources of inspiration can be various: from something I saw on TV, something I got told, a picture from the web to a question of reader everything is possible. And sometimes reader questions result in the very best ideas.

And this is the origin of the idea for this rolls, too. A reader asked for crusty rolls with a lot of rye. And my mind started to turn on this idea directly. As pure rye rolls lack the volume and crispy crust of rolls with rye and wheat flour, I decided to bake rolls with 50% rye flour.

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May 12th, 2018

Flatbread

Category Bread Tags: flatbread, nigella, olive oil 44 Responses

We had a delicious dinner this week, made of Falafel, lukewarm zucchini salad from Ottolenghis Plenty and Flatbread.

The dough for the bread I had already mixed around lunch time. It contained only a wee bit of yeast and some sourdough and was left on the counter for fermenting over roughly 6 hours.

After this time, the very soft dough was beautiful bubbly and I preshaped it as gentle as possible to keep the dough bubbles. While the preshaped dough rested I heated the oven as hot as possible. Baking was then only a question of minutes and we snacked the first loaf already while cooking the rest of the meal – it was just so good.

The bread is just as a flatbread should be: wild open crump under a thin crisp. And I’m asking myself why I bake flatbreads so seldom…

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May 6th, 2018

Einback

Category regional breads, Rolls Tags: Butter, Egg, Pâte fermentée, regional, Water roux 43 Responses

The Einback (sometimes called Zeilenweck or Micken, too) is a slightly sweet milk roll with fluffy crumb and soft crust. They got their special form form placing the rolls so near to each other they touch during baking.

I had them on my list of regional breads already for some time. I was fascinated by the fact, that they are only a interstage product of the Zwieback production. But the fluffy rolls gained more and more popularity on their own and at some point “Einback” became a synonym for “fluffy milk roll”.

When I bake the rolls, I decided to try them as Einback as well as Zwieback and I like both very much. The Einback is soft and fluffy and flavourful due to preferment and water roux, the zwieback is crunchy and sligthly sweet. I can’t decided which variant I like most…

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April 27th, 2018

Crisp Spelt Crescents

Category Rolls Tags: Sourdough, Spelt, wheat free 18 Responses

These Crescents are a spontaneous recipe. I planed to bake some kind of rolls and so I prepared more sourdough than I needed for the Sprouted Spelt Bread the night before. But what to bake – I had no clue then.

Most of the time, I sit down and write down the draft of a recipe before I head to the kitchen. This makes not only baking more easy but helps me to finetune the recipe for publishing, too. The decisions for this rolls, anyway, where made in the kitchen by following my instincts. While proofing, I type down the recipe as fast as I could to prevent me forgetting some detail. And I’m glad I did so as I love the new rolls very much.

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April 20th, 2018

Sprouted Spelt Bread

Category Bread Tags: Sourdough, Spelt, sprouts, wheat free 21 Responses

It was nearly 10 years ago when I stumbled over a sprouted grain bread. Susan from Wild Yeast baked it for Bread Baking Day with the theme “Bread with Sprouts”. A long, long time ago… I can still remember…

But it needed a second encounter to make me thinking about it. This second time I tasted a bread from sprouted spelt on a bread market a year ago. And this time I was hooked. But as sprouting is time consuming I took some time to start this project. But the Easter holidays were perfect for a new adventure!

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April 13th, 2018

Spelt Sandwich Bread with Emmer

Category Bread Tags: Emmer, only with yeast, Poolish, Spelt, wheat free 28 Responses

Before Easter we had some young visitors. And as I doubted that a hearty whole grain bread would be their most favourite bread I baked a soft sandwich bread instead. But – and aunts can be a little mean – I still added 30 % whole grain flour to make the bread hearty and healthy enough for me to enjoy.

This bread is another step towards the whole grain spelt and emmer sandwich bread I work on already for some month. As the combination of emmer and whole grain tends to destabilize the gluten network I added everything to strengthen it: Egg as lecithin source, rose hip powered as vitamin c source and some physillium hulls to bind more water.

And the bread turned out just like a sandwich bread should be: fluffy with shreddable crumb and a crust that was crisp fresh from the oven but turns softer while cooling. And our seven and five year old guests enjoyed the bread very much. It vanished so quickly that my love complained that he got nearly nothing of this fluffy bread. But, as the first grader happily explained, this is because the bread is perfect to be eaten with tooth gaps. And then she took the last slice…

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April 5th, 2018

Emmer-Fruit-Nut

Category Bread Tags: Apricot, Emmer, Fruit, Nuts, only with yeast, Raisins, Walnut 14 Responses

The most exiting part of my “Time for Bread” baking courses is the part when the participants and I develop together a new bread formula. It is so exiting because we bake it together, too and the result is as new for me as for my participants. And the breads in each course vary from each other. This time there was a bread with a heritage grain, nuts and fruits. To give the emmer whole grain flour enough time to soak we put it completely in the poolish. The nuts and fruit mixture soaks overnight as well so they do not withdraw the water from the dough.

I liked the resulting bread very much. The Emmer has a nutty flavour which underlines very nicely the aroma of the walnuts. Raisins and apricots add a fruit sweetness which is still subtle and goes well together with goat cheese.

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April 3rd, 2018

Easter Dove Rolls

Category Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Eastern, Egg, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée 3 Responses

And here is a last glance of of what I baked this year for Easter. The little Dove I baked twice. Once with my sisters kids, once alone. In the first version I rolled the dough strand equally thick what resulted in doves with a very plumb body and with a tiny head. For the kids it didn’t matter, they made sure they vanished while still warm from the oven. But I was hooked and so I baked them a second time, this time with a slightly modified formed strand. And this time the birds looked like birds. And to find the pictures next year, too, I have here the “how to” for you. The dough recipe is the same like the tsoureki just without the spices.

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April 1st, 2018

Tsoureki

Category Bread, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Eastern, Egg, Mahlep, Mastix, Pâte fermentée, Zopf 9 Responses

When we drove through snow- rain to meet with the family on Easter Sunday, I mused if todays Easter weather was colder then on Christmas Eve or not. But good weather or not we had a broad mixture of rolls and a greek easter braid with us.

The idea of baking tsoureki I had in mind since a readers question last year. And so I did some research and found the braid in many different forms and different ratios of ingredients. But two ingredients were a stable: Mastix and Mahlep.

Mastix is the resin of the pistachios tree, while mahlep are cherry pits form Prunus mahaleb. While grinding the spices to powder I realized that mahlep has an similar aroma than tonka beans: almond like and very delicious. As always, the flavours of a spiced bread are depending more on the spices then on the aroma of the preferment. But using a preferment is useful anyway, as it helps to strengthens the gluten network as well as improves the shelf life.

We enjoyed this greek Easter Bread with its fluffy crumb and almond like flavours very much.

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