Tag Archives: Sweet starter

November 8th, 2015

ABC-Burger

ABC-BurgerFinally I found it: my perfect vegetarian Burger patty. It is a Aubergine, Beetroot and Champignon mushroom patty which is hold together by chickpeas, rolled oat and buckwheat flour. And this means the patty is not only vegetarian, it is vegan. And it is easily made gluten free by exchanging the rolled oats with rolled millet. An important point for a good binding is to use soaked, uncooked chickpeas and not canned one!

For the mixture of vegetables I tested already different compositions. Already my last try contained mushrooms and beet, and the idea to use aubergine was spontaneously but good. The aubergine adds a good texture to the patty while mushrooms and beet add a deep, earthy flavour which goes well with the hint of smokiness due to the pimenton de la vera. And finally I’m happy with the consistency as well as they have a juicyness without being soft. The patty stays well together while eating and is not mashed like the previous versions.

Together with homemade burger buns (see below or here (vegan) or here), some lettuce, caramelized onion and sauce it is a fantastic burger!

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October 10th, 2015

Porridge Bread

Hafergrütz-Brot (3)This is a leftover – recipe which I created while looking through my storage: I had a open bottle lingering in the kitchen after baking the Swan King Bread. The sweet starter needed urgently a feeding and in the pantry I found another box of steel cut oat, a souvenir from our last trip to the East Frisian coast.

I decided to soak the steel cut oat in hot water instead of boiling it so it keeps a certain bite. And the generous portion of roasted sesame together with oats and emmer gives the bread a very delicous nutty flavour, while the malt beer adds a subtle sweetness. The right bread for the first cold and rainy days in autumn.

 

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September 19th, 2015

Cornucopia with Apple Nut Filling

Cornucopia (11) Cornucopia, the horn of plenty, is a symbol of abundance and nourishment in the classical myths and is often associated with autumn. And when I prepared my little pastries I look on the nuts and apples and that little cornucopia would be the right way to celebrate autumn plenty.

It is apple and  no other fruit that means autumn to me. And I can’t stop praising the heirloom apples which are often much more aromatic then the new breeds. And for baking cake there is no better apple then my favourite Jakob Lebel. It is a tree which gives a plenty of fruits and which is often found in old gardens and orchards. In the beginning of last century the meeting of german pomiculture society named it as one of tree apple variety they advised to grow because it is so fruitful, aromatic and robust. Continue reading

August 23rd, 2015

Buttertoast

Buttertoast (1)I do both rather seldom: Baking soft sandwich bread and baking during the week. Normally my bread baking day is at the weekend and so I need special circumstances to take the flour from the cupboard during a working week. But an tooth emergency leaded to a small oral surgery and subsequently to chewing problems. After three days of soups and purees I was longing for a really soft bread which is easy to chew.

The sweet starter is always great in such situations. Coming home from work I went straight to the kitchen and started the starter. Two hours later its volume already doubled and so I could already knead the dough. The dough contained some yeast (as I wanted to bake before going to bed) and a good portion of butter and a pinch of enzyme active malt. Both helps to make the crump tender. The good amount of butter as well as some sugar also leads to a good browning when toasted. But although untoasted the bread has good, slightly buttery flavour.

 

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August 16th, 2015

Wheat and Rye Bread 80/20

Weizenmischbrot 80 20 (1)

I’m tempted to call this bread a fast bread. It “just” takes 8.5 hours from mixing the sourdoughs to pulling the baked loaves from the oven. So if you (like me) decided at 8 am to bake bread you can serve the already cooled loaf for supper. This is possible because of the short time needed for ripening of the sweet starter and of the “Berliner Kurzsauer”.

The Berliner Kurzsauer is a rye sourdough and was invented by Pelshenke and Schulz in 1942. It is kept at high temperature (ideally 35°C) which promotes the activity of homofermenting lactobacteria (homofermeters are that kind of lactobacteria which produce only lactic acid). It yields a aromatic, mild tasting sourdough. The only backdraw is the fact, that the yeasts in this sourdough will not develop well and so I combined it with a strong sweet starter and a bit of commercial yeast.

 

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August 2nd, 2015

Spelt Rolls with Sweet Starter

Dinkelbrötchen (2)

Some weeks ago a reader asked me if it is possible to bake pure spelt rolls with sourdough. The reason for this question is a histamine intolerance and so I thought directly of using my sweet starter, as the sweet starter fits well in the “shortly riped” scheme. I feeded a part of my starter four times with spelt flour which reduces the wheat in the starter to 0,26%. If you want a pure spelt starter, you can start a starter from a spelt sourdough and some spelt flour as well.

To avoid a dry crumb (what can happen with spelt so easily) I added once again a hot soaker. Some egg yolk and fat makes the crumb more fluffy and the malt helps to deepen the flavour. But using egg yolk and malt is not necessary, if you can’t eat one or the other. Just replace the egg yolk with water. The crumb will be a little bit more dense but the rolls will be still fine. And if you are looking for wheat free recipes, there is a new tag for you: wheat free  🙂

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July 24th, 2015

Rose Bud Rolls

RosenbrötchenI hope that you did not start to think that there is no bread baked in our hose anymore. But the hot weather and the start into a new job make me bake less. So we emptied the bread drawer in our freezer (very good, more room for new bread) and I baked “old” favourite recipes like lye rolls or a Sunday braid. Going back to old favourites is sometimes very good, too.

But now the freezer is empty, the temperature is back to tolerable and so I baked rolls for breakfast last Sunday. Nowadays I add some egg yolk into the dough for rolls most of the time, as the lecithin helps to make the crumb tender. The dough is good for rising at cold temperature over night as well, but then you have to take care of degasing it carefully the next morning. Otherwise the crumb of the dough will be to open, and for a breakfast roll I prefer rolls with a even crumb. Big holes and honey goes not well together.

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June 28th, 2015

Chubz

Chubz (2)Do you know this? You take a photograph, and another one, and another one. And nothing looks good. This Arabian flatbread, Chubz, is one of this cases. It is so … flat. After ten minutes of unsatisfying pictures my beloved one turn nervous and declared that bread and falafel would be better in our stomach then on a picture. And he was right, of course. So I put away the camera and we sat down to eat.

Chubz is a stable in the Arabian cuisine. In Germany you will find it falafel stalls where the chickpea balls are wrapped together into the bread. They are traditional baked in clay ovens, where they are place on the oven wall. They are simple breads made with flour, water, oil, salt and yeast. My variant of the flatbread uses wild yeasts from two kinds of sourdough what makes it very aromatic. They are baked at highest temperature in the oven (300°C) and there they need only 90 seconds until they puff up and got golden brown speckles on the surface.

The next day I give the picture another try and after a night of sleep my creative brain was working better.  I put the rolled leftover breads in a glass to gain some height which gave me a more appealing picture.

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May 14th, 2015

Rosinenschnecken

Rosinenschnecke

Since laminating the dough for the Tebirkes was so easy, I  wanted to test this method and make some Danish raisin rolls (Rosinenschnecken in German) for a lazy sunday afternoon. The only problem was the fact, that raisin rolls contain R-A-I-S-I-N-S and my love don’t like them at all. And so I needed a filling which would be fine and moist even without raisins. After some musing I decided to go for a Creme Frangipane, which is a mixture of pastry creme and a almond mixture.

The dough for the danish contains some cream, which makes the crumb soft, and a big piece of sweet starter for a good flavour and a good rise. For laminating I used again the method of dividing the dough into pieces and rolling them into four rectangles. Then I placed thin cut butter pieces on them and stacked them. The dough stack was then rolled again and followed by two single folds and a half fold.

The Danish pastry turned out as well as I hoped for: A moist filling, lots of buttery layers and a aromatic crumb. And – at least for me – full of raisins 🙂

 

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April 15th, 2015

Bienenstich Muffin

Bienenstich (1)“Bienenstich” is a traditional german cake and its name literally means “bee sting”. For me it is a classical cake to serve on Sundays together with some coffee. When my parents visited us last sunday, I decided to make some muffin sized little Bienstich. Their dough is a “sibling” of my actual favourite braid, but in contrast to the original recipe it contains more cream and no butter. For a relaxed baking I let them proof overnight in a muffinpan in the fridge. And due to the fact that my kitchen machine kneads much better when using 500g flour,  I doubled the amount of dough and made a little braid for breakfast with the second half.

The only little disadvantage is the height of the muffin which makes it challenging to eat it. The easiest way is to split it in two halves. Then it is very easy to enjoy this delicious cake!

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