Tag Archives: Wheat

May 31st, 2015

Bread baking for Beginners XIV: The first Sourdough Bread

Category Bread, Bread baking for beginners, hand kneaded Tags: Anfänger, Hand kneaded, Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 125 Responses

The new Sourdough is ready to bake our first sourdough bread. As a freshly raised sourdough is still a little bit weak, it makes sense to do one (or even better two) sourdough feedings at warm temperature to rise some more yeasts. After this rounds of refreshing the sourdough starter is very active and can be used to prepare the sourdough for the bread.

As the bread is made with sourdough only, some patient is need while preparing the dough. Especially baking should be considered depending on the proofing status of the loaf and not on the clock. A good method to test if the bread is already ready for baking is pressing thumb carefully into the surface of the loaf. If the dent spring back directly, it still needs to proof for some time. If the dent is filling slowly, the bread can go in the oven, if a strong oven spring is desired. If the dent will stay it is really time to bake. The bread will have still some oven spring.

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May 23rd, 2015

Bread baking for Beginners XII: Rising a sourdough

Category Bread baking for beginners, Bread baking theory, Starter and Preferments Tags: Anfänger, How to do, Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 155 Responses

The oldest method to rise a bread is using sourdough. As soon as water is mixed with flour, yeasts and lacto bacteria which can be found in the flour starts to proliferate. Soon the first bubbles can be observed which is a sign of the microorganism activity. The microfauna starts to stabilize. In Spelt and Wheat sourdough the dominating species are the same, while in rye sourdough other bacteria species are predominant. The is the reason why rye sourdough is more sour than a wheat or spelt sourdough.

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January 11th, 2015

Wholegrainy Wheat bread with sweet Starter

Category Bread Tags: Sweet starter, Wheat, whole grain 28 Responses

There are these days when I I have to realize after a look into the fridge that there is no bread anymore. Those days when there is no bubbeling sourdough waiting on the counter. This are the days when I love my darling sweet starter most. After three hours (sometimes even faster) he is ready for baking. And when I combine him with a cold proof over night, then I get a bread with a deep complex flavour.

Last weekend it was one of these days and because I was longing for a bread with a big part of whole grain flour I decided to feed the sweet starter with freshly milled whole wheat flour. I kept a close eye on him because he still very active and the minerals in the whole grain flour tends to make a sourdough ripening faster as well. And indeed after two hours the starter was ready and I could knead the dough.

After proofing the loaves in the fridge I baked them early in the morning and was very happy with the bread I pull from the oven. It has a crisp crust and a soft crumb with the great flavour of a long, cold proof. It is a good bread for cheese or honey and keeps fresh for a long time!

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December 13th, 2014

Santa Claus Bread

Category Bread, Christmas Cookies, Special Occasions Tags: Christmas, DUBB, Pâte fermentée, Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 31 Responses

My entry for the christmas party in the lab looked like that: Bread (of course homemade). That was an easy decision. It was more difficult to decide what to bake. We are a very international team and everyone should bring something special from his country. And so I decided to honour the swabian part of my family history and baked pretzels. For the second kind of bread I chose my favourite bread. With this dough you can do every “mischief” you can imagine when forming a bread. And so I decided to bake a Santa Claus bread. I saw similar breads before but I did not like the fact that they were painted with food colouring and the way how they were formed did not fit to my ideas complexly either. But I had my own ideas already…

… and the ideas worked well and the breads turned out to be the most photographed part of the buffet. And one colleague asked me to bake such a bread for christmas eve for her (what I will love to do).

About the bread itself I can just repeat what I said before: It is delicious crusty with a soft crumb and great flavour. It is my personal favourite. And that makes it a good candidate for Michas new permanrnt blogevent where she looks for “Undiscovered Blog Buster” (german: Der Unendeckte Blog Buster =DUBB)!

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October 26th, 2014

Wheat Spelt Baguette

Category hand kneaded Tags: Baguette, Hand kneaded, Poolish, Sourdough, Spelt, Wheat No Responses

This Weekend I planed to bake the Baguettes which Sara posted on her Blog. But when I mixed the poolish I ran out of white flour. It was already late evening, it was cold and raining and I did not want to leave home again to run to the supermarket. Instead I checked what was left: rye flour was no alternative, but white spelt flour and a darker wheat flour was looking very good. And because the planed recipe was now out of discussion I mixed a bigger batch sourdough with the darker wheat flour and made an autolysis dough with the spelt flour.

The next morning I kneaded the dough by hand and let it rise for the hours at room temperature with some folds in between. Then we left home to buy and plant some apple trees with my spouses parents. When we came home late afternoon I heated the oven and formed the dough to baguettes. When I pulled the loaves from the oven they smelled divined. So we ate one while still warm. And it tasted as good as it smelled. Crunchy crust, middle open crumb and a deep, complex flavour due to the two preferments and the cold fermentation. A unplanned bread which turned into a favourite!

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May 10th, 2014

Olive Fougasse

Category Bread Tags: Pâte fermentée, Rye, Sourdough, Wheat 8 Responses

There are still recipes missing from my big batch baking day before easter. But I haven’t forgot about them! So here comes the next one: Olive Fougasse. The dough of this fougasse is in principle identical with my favourite bread, in which I kneaded some kalamata olives. For a really good flavour it is important to use real black olive, who could ripe and develop their full flavour, and not the one, which are dyed! It makes so much a different! A Fougasse is the perfect party bread in my opinion. It taste great, looks great and you can easily break it in pieces and share it with your friends. And with some olives added it is a great side for barbeque (at least for olive lovers like me).

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April 28th, 2014

Aggertaler

Category Bread Tags: Hand kneaded, Sourdough, Spelt, Wheat 4 Responses

Each morning when I take the train to cologne, I look through the window to see the beauty of our little river agger and its valley (Aggertal). An attentive Observer can see Great Crested Grebe dancing their mating dance, discover a doe with its fawn, different kinds of geese and sometime even a hare. And I love to see small waft of mist over the water, enlighten by the rising sun. And sometimes I wish I could ask the train driver to stop so I could enjoy a view a little longer.

And so this bread is a little homage to my home valley, with my very active sourdough starter, flour from the local mill and water which is (of course) from a side river of the agger. It catches the essence of home between its crispy crust and airy crumb!

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April 12th, 2014

Birthday Bread

Category Bread Tags: Brot couture, Deko, Malz, Rye, Spelt, Wheat No Responses

I baked a decorated loaf once again, this time as part of a present for my boyfriends grandmother (as I told before there is a birthday each week in April). But instead of using my normal recipe and shape I decided to go for something new. And so used another recipe and shaped the bread with a small loaf in the middle, surrounded by a poppy seed covered braid and with a little rose on the seam where the ends of the braid meets.

And because I can not cut into a present, I doubled the recipe and baked a “normal” loaf as well. I cut it when it was just cooled and I was in love with its fine crumb and crunchy crust in a moment. A very delicious bread!

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March 9th, 2014

Country loaf

Category Bread Tags: only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, Rye, Spelt, Über-Nacht, Wheat 44 Responses

Somedays ago I got a mail from a reader, asking me to help her to transform a recipe so she could proof the loaves in the fridge overnight. The main point to keep in mind when you plan to proof a bread in the fridge is that the amount of fresh yeast should be below 1%. The other ingredients can stay the same. And so the recipe was transformed quickly. But my creative juice were just flowing and so I sent her another variation which use a preferment as well. And I liked the recipe so much that I decided to bake it myself, too.

And the bread turned out very well, too: A good ovenspring and a mild aromatic taste due to preferment and the long, cold proof. I’m really happy that Alexandra asked for a recipe!

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February 16th, 2014

Weekend Rolls

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls Tags: Hand kneaded, Spelt, Sweet starter, Über-Nacht, Wheat 22 Responses

After all the sweet posts something hearty is needed here on the Blog!

At the moment I bake a lot of bread using my sweet starter because I’m still in love with my not sour sourdough. I hope it is not getting boring for you. But the sweet starter allows me even to make dough which can rise in the fridge for 24 hours or longer without degrading the gluten or getting to sour. I used a cold fermented dough already for this baguettes. My weekend rolls work the same way, the dough rise in the cold for 12 to 36 hours and whenever I need rolls on the weekend I take some dough out and bake them freshly. The recipe will yield 10 Rolls, but the recipe can easily be doubled. A perfect recipe for a lazy weekend!

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