Wine bottling and bread making!

Miserable weather outside. But Thursday mornings could be worse.

Wil made bread with our sourdough this morning with 80%rye and 20% wheat flour. And now he is bottling our crabapple wine, while I'm lazy, erm, getting ready for work...

...And Delicious Crusty Bread

First crusty pork roast with caraway, now crusty bread with caraway... 

I seamlessly follow my last post here.

I have to admit, even though I cook and bake a lot, I have never baked bread before. I always wanted to, though. Maybe I was scared and thought it's really complicated or I just never found the right occasion.

But last weekend was the right time, and I can assure you, it won't be my last. Baking bread is really simple and so so satisfying once you pull that beautiful thing out of the oven.

I decided to go for a crusty sourdough bread with rye and wheat flour. It's my favorite bread, cause it is crusty outside and all soft inside.

For the sourdough I used Seitenbacher's "Natur Sauerteig" which you probably may not be able to get if you don't live in Germany. But you can make sourdough starter yourself really easily. It just takes a few days time to develop the starter. But you pretty much mix flour with water and let it sit... you can find a recipe and instructions for it here and/or here!

The sourdough I used. I did it cause I was simply too impatient to wait another few days. And this one here is real sourdough with all natural ingredients. Not one of these extracts or fake "just like"products.

Ingredients:

300g wheat flour (ideally self-raising flour, in Germany Type 550)

200g whole wheat flour

500g rye flour

150g sourdough

2 pckgs à 10g dry yeast

650 ml warm water

1tsp sugar

3 tsp salt

1-2 tsp ground caraway

Directions:

1. In a bowl mix rye, wheat and whole wheat flour.

2. Using a standmixer on low, mix sourdough, yeast, sugar and salt and ground caraway with the warm (not hot!) water in a second (big) bowl.

3. Slowly add the flour mix and start kneading the liquid with the flour until it is an even dough. Don't add all the flour at once.

4. With dough it is important to knead it really well and long. Once everything is mixed I kneaded it for probably another 6-10 minutes. Of course you can use your hands for kneading also! It's just more work.

5. Form the dough to a ball and place it back in the bowl. Sprinkle some flour over it and cover the bowl with a wet  towel (not soaking wet, just damp...). at a warm place let dough rest and rise for 2 hours.

6. Once the dough has doubled in size, knead it well. Then brush it with warm water, and using a knife, cut in the surface diamond-shaped if you like (makes it look more dramatic!).

7. Sprinkle with flour and let it rest and rise another 30 minutes.

8. Place the dough in the middle of the cold oven. You can do it without a pan, just place it in the middle of the oven on a sheet of baking paper. But there are also some fancy loaf pans you are welcome to use. I decided to use a springform tin. I greased the sides with some oil and put a round-cut piece of baking paper on the bottom.

9. Don't forget to place a small oven proof bowl filled with water at the bottom of the oven. The evaportaing water will keep the dough moist!

10. Turn the heat up to 250°C and bake the loaf for 20 minutes.

11. After that turn the temperature down to 200°C and bake for another 35 minutes.

12. Remove the loaf from the oven and let it cool down a little bit.

Done!

That's my 'proud' face. I look completely insane, I know...

The bread tastes best when fresh and still warm...

Notes: 

Of course you can add all kinds of things to the dough or experiment with different flours and amounts. You could for example add flax, sunflower or pumpkin seeds or dried herbs or use all rye flour instead of a mix. altering the flour amounts may have an impact on the dough, though,and it may get dryer...

Coffee banana muffins with dark chocolate chunks

I made these coffee banana muffins with dark chocolate chunks a while ago,
but didn't have the time to write about them, yet.

If you happen to have over riped bananas at home that you don't feel like eating anymore,
don't throw them away!
You can make great banana bread with those.

I decided to turn the banana bread I usually make into muffins and brought them over to our friends Anna and Beau who were having some friends from Edmonton staying at their house.

Because our friend Anna is allergic to nuts and Wil isn't such a big fan of walnuts I replaced the walnuts with dark chocolate chunks. 

No matter if you decide to make the banana bread or muffins, the recipe stays the same. Only the baking time is different.

What you need:

3 ripe bananas

200g dark chocolate chunks or 100g chopped walnuts

3 Tbsp strong coffee (warm not hot!)

110 g margarine

190g brown sugar

1/2 package of vanilla sugar

2 large eggs

300g all purpose flour

2Tbsp baking powder

1 dash of salt

Preheat the oven to 170ºC.

Remove the skin, then mash the bananas with a fork until mushy.

In a large bowl mix margarine, eggs, coffee, sugar and vanilla sugar with the mashed bananas and with a handmixer whisk everything until smooth.

Mix flour, salt and baking powder.

Slowly add the flour mix to the other ingredients and whisk everything well for about 2 minutes.

Mix in the dark chocolate chunks/chopped walnut.

Pour the batter into either a greased muffin or cake tin. The batter will rise in the oven. Therefore each muffin form only needs to be filled half way.

Bake the muffins for approx. 20 minutes.

The banana bread will need approx. 50 minutes in the oven.

Let everything cool down for a bit, then serve!

Hefezopf (braided sweet yeast bun)

Baking with yeast has always been like Russian roulette for me.
Sometimes the dough turned out perfectly soft and fluffy, but more often it was tougher than concrete.

Luckily the April issue of German food magazine Essen&Trinken has a special on how to make the perfect Hefezopf and therefore how to work the evil yeast dough.

The Hefezopf recipe is fantastic.
Besides the ingredients all you need is a stand mixer or a well trained biceps and stamina.

Ingredients:

250 ml warm milk

20g fresh yeast

75g sugar

1 large egg

1.5 tsp salt

500g bread flour  (NO all-purpose flour!)

75g soft butter

coarse sugar

flour for the worktop

Crumble the yeast into a bowl and mix with sugar and some of the warm milk until smooth.

Whisk the egg. Put aside 3 Tbsp of the egg-mix and set cool.

Add the rest of the egg and milk such as salt and flour to the yeast,sugar, milk-mix and knead it with the dough hooks attached to the stand mixer (hopefully) on lowest speed for approx. 3 minutes. 

Increase the speed and knead for another 5 minutes. 

Cube the butter.Thoroughly knead butter cubes into the dough. 

On highest speed knead another 5 minutes.

Cover the bowl with a damp towel and in a warm place let it rise for about an hour.

On a lightly floured worktop knead the dough with your hands and divide it into 3 equally sized pieces.

Cover them up and let them sit for 10 minutes. 

Roll them out into three strings of approx. 40cm of length, very loosely braid them and put the now "Hefezopf" on a baking paper covered baking sheet. 

Again cover the whole thing and let it sit and raise for another 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (Gas 3).

With a brush apply the remaining egg-mix on the Zopf, sprinkle it with the coarse sugar and bake it for 25 minutes. Check after 15minutes. You might want to cover the Zopf with tinfoil to prevent it from getting too dark.  

Best when served warm on a sunny afternoon!

PS: Here are a few tips and tricks on how your yeast dough turns out perfectly (also found in Essen&Trinken magazine).

1. Only use warm milk. Hot milk kills the yeast bacteria. Using cold milk will only extend the time for the dough to rise.

2. You have to be patient. If the dough hasn't doubled its size after one hour, let it sit a bit longer  (I waited for two hours) 

3. Use bread flour. It contains more gluten than all-purpose flour and by retaining gas it helps the dough to rise.

4. Use fresh yeast.

5. Knead excessively and passionate!

Beer and Honey marinated Pork roast stuffed with figs, olives, almonds and pine nuts

What you need:
900g pork back, de-boned
1 bottle of beer
1-1,5 Tbsp honey
3 Tbsp olive oil
1onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
90g bread cubes
4 dried figs, chopped
8 green olives, pitted and chopped
25g flaked almonds, roasted
25g pine nuts, roasted
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 egg yolk
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C
Mix beer and honey in a bowl.
Place pork back in the bowl so that the meat is covered with the beer honey mix.
Marinate for 4 hours.
Heat up two Tbsp of olive oil in a pot and cook onions and garlic in it until soft.
Mix onions and garlic with bread cubes, figs, olives almonds, pine nuts, parsley, lime juice and egg yolk.
Use your hands for that!
Season with salt and pepper.

Spread half of the stuffing on flat inside part of the pork back.
Roll up the pork back starting with the thick part.
Use butcher´s string to wrap the pork roll.
Pour one Tbsp of olive oil in a roasting tray.
Place the meat in it and pour a bit (100ml) of the beer-honey mix over it.
Cook for 60 minutes.
Take the other half of the stuffing and form little balls/dumplings.
Place the balls/dumplings next to the pork roast in the tray and cook or another 15 minutes.
Take the roast out of the oven and let it rest for ten minutes.
Slice the pork roast and serve it with the balls/dumplings and the beer-honey sauce from the tray.

My pork roast turned out to be a bit too dry.
Unfortunately pork tempts to do that...
This is what you can do to prevent the meat from drying out:

1. Take meat with enough fat. Fat makes meat tender. So don't shy away from fatty meat.You want your roast to taste good, right? Some fat (we are not talking about thick layers or chunks of fat, just some "fat leftovers"!) will help making the meat soft and juicy.
2. Marinate!The longer the better!
3. use a roasting tray with a lid. In Germany we have something called "Römertopf", a clay pot that you soak in water for ten minutes before using it. The water evaporates in the closed pot keeping the meat moist.
4. slow-cook! 200°C is too hot in my opinion.Take your time and cook it slow using 80-120°C. That takes longer (probably 3 to 4 hours). But it's for the best, believe me!And it will prevent you from having dried out meat, like I had (I should have known better...). Also if you slow-cook you can use less fatty meat! whoa.

Sexy Local Bakery

Right next to my house is a small mall.
And in that mall there is a bakery.
I never bought anything there.
But every time I pass this place I'm fascinated by their "Bread and Bun-Art".

I really have no words for this.
But I guess it's best to let the art speak for itself anyway...