Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bread. Show all posts

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Recipe: Pretzel Buns

As soon as the latest issue of LandLust Magazine hits the shelves in Germany, my dad sends me a copy here to the US. I love this magazine - reading it and looking at the pictures is like a mini escape to Germany. 
So, when this latest issue had recipes for pretzels and pretzel buns, I knew I had to try making them immediately. As long as I can remember, I have loved pretzels. Growing up in Germany, they were a regular part of my life. And while we can find them here now once in a while, they aren't quite the same.
 So, by popular request on Facebook, I translated the recipe and adapted it to American ingredients.


Pretzel Buns
(makes about 16 buns)

Ingredients: 

500g All-Purpose Flour
2 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
40g softened butter

For the brine:
50g baking soda

Possible toppings:
coarse salt,
seeds (sesame, poppy, pumpkin, sunflower),
or a little grated cheese

1. Dissolve yeast and sugar in 320ml lukewarm water.
2. Using the dough hook on the mixer, work the flour, salt and softened butter into the yeast water. Knead the soft dough for at least five minutes (I had to add a little more flour to keep the dough from sticking).
3. Form the dough into a ball, put into a large bowl, cover and allow to rise for either 2 hours at room temperature or over night in the refrigerator. (I allowed it to rise over night and made the buns for breakfast.)
4. After the dough has risen, divide it into 16 equal parts, form each one of them into a small ball, cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
5. Preheat the oven to 465 degrees F (240 C).
5. Meanwhile bring 1.5 liters of water to a simmer. Add the baking soda carefully as it will foam quite a bit initially.
6. Add three or four of the dough buns at a time to the simmering water for about 45 seconds, turning them once.
7. Remove from the water, allow excess water to drip off and put on a parchment-lined baking sheet. (I used a Silpat baking mat, which worked great.) With a sharp knife, cut a cross into the top of each bun and sprinkle with your topping of choice. Allow to rest for 15 minutes.
8. Bake for 15 minutes or until nicely browned and your kitchen smells like a German bakery.
9. Try not to devour all of them. By yourself. In one sitting.

Enjoy!! Easy and delicious! And if you make the dough the night before, you can have fresh buns for breakfast. Also, they freeze really well.

A note: This recipe is easiest if you have an electronic kitchen scale that also measures in grams. For the liquids, 1 ml is equal to 1 gram, so you can weigh them on the scale as well.

Tomorrow, I'll have a bunch of art for you! In the meantime, have a beautiful Thursday!


Silke

Sunday, December 6, 2015

From the Kitchen

As many of you know, I love creating in the kitchen! Not necessarily my own recipes, but creating delicious food from a variety of good ingredients. And my first love has always been and still is baking. My mother was an excellent cook, but she didn't like baking and so I got to do all the baking, much of which I learned from my grandmother and my aunt Inge.

If you like baking bread of if you want to start baking your own bread, but don't have the hours to watch the dough rise repeatedly, these two bread baking books are for you! I use them all the time - and when they say "five minutes a day," it's quite true! The loaf I made here is their European country bread, which I altered a little by increasing the amounts of rye and whole flours. It is soooo good! Each recipe makes enough dough for several loaves. You keep the dough in the fridge and bake the bread as you need it during the week. Fantastic!!
This next cookbook I got at the library. I got a very cheap copy at one point for my kindle (it was one of the almost free bargains one day), but I wanted to check out a hardcopy to get a better feel for it. It's all about preserving - canning, pickling, curing or smoking. Very interesting and it has a few really good recipes I want to try.
Now here's a new cookbook that is quite amazing. It reminds me of the way my mother and grandmother often cooked while I was growing up - farm to table. I read the entire book and want to make almost every recipe in it! Here I tried the mussels cooked in hard apple cider with leeks and apples. They were amazing!!
Ok, these next two pictures are also recipes from this last book. But I need to give you a little background story first. When I was growing up my dad was always into healthy living (and he still is). We kids were not always convinced, especially when we all "got to" drink cider vinegar with honey for a while. Of course, now I know how good all of these weird things really are! The cider vinegar, the grainy bread, nuts and seeds, whole grain everything, etc.

Among other things, my mom made our own yogurt for quite a while, which I always liked way better than the store bought kind.  So again, as I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I am coming full circle now making my very own yogurt. I decided to buy a starter culture for a yogurt that ferments at room temperature. Once this batch is done, I can use a little bit of it to start the next batch.
And then there's kefir! I remember my mom and dad getting a milk kefir culture from some friends of theirs and making and drinking kefir for a good long time. We kids thought it was disgusting. It looked like cauliflower to me and the taste was not something I liked at all back then. The culture I got here is for water kefir, which I've never tried. Both the yogurt and the kefir need a couple of days to be ready, so when they are, I will update on how the experiment is going...
And lastly ... a new love: oatmeal from steel cut oats! How amazing. How creamy. How delicious. How warming. And how had I never tried this before?! It's definitely a staple in my pantry now, especially during the colder winter months!

Here's wishing you a week filled with good food!

With lots of love,

Silke

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Good Bread and What a Difference a Day can make

Those of you following my blog for a while know that I'm a nut for good bread! I love it! Probably more than any other food. And I like to bake my own and do so every week. This was a fun recipe with very little hands-on time. It's a 100% whole wheat variation on the original No-Knead Bread.
You mix the dough together with a spatula and then just let it sit at room temperature and rise for 12 to 15 hours. After that you stretch and fold the dough a few times and then let it rise for another 1 1/2 hours on a tea towel.
You heat a lidded cast-iron pan in the oven to 450 degrees and dump the dough into the hot pan, close it with the lid and bake it first with the lid on and then off.
And, voilà, a beautiful crunchy loaf of whole wheat bread. You can find the detailed recipe here.  Next time I'll try a variation with rye flour and soaked grains.
Now to the other news. I caught a really tenacious and bad cold virus just around Thanksgiving and it has hung on until now, getting better at times and then returning. The latest variation was a really sore throat which I've had for over a week. And no energy. I've been resting and taking good care of myself and finally today I feel better. I think I got more done today than I have in the past two weeks! I'm glad and I feel for anyone who has gotten sick with this virus or the flu this winter.

I wish you perfect health and a great day!!

Silke

Sunday, August 12, 2012

My New Favorite Bread Baking Book

We've had the cook book for months and I just hadn't taken the time to try anything from it. But with my latest bread baking phase, I gave it a go ... and made three types of bread. Thank goodness we have a freezer!
Swedish Limpa Bread (yum!!!)
The premise behind this book is that you spend very little time (no kneading) on making enough dough to last you for fresh bread for the week. You keep the dough in the fridge and then take however much you need, quickly form the loaf, let it rise and then bake it.
Pumpkin Oatmeal Bread (before baking)
It truly does not take any time at all, except being home while the dough rises and the bread bakes.
Most amazing Rye Bread!
I am totally hooked and Daniel is set with lots of good bread while I visit my family in Germany!
Last week, I also made a delicious pot of soup to go with the rye bread. :) It's Andrew Weil's Brown Rice and Asparagus Soup. (Click here for the recipe.) The recipe calls for the soup to be pureed before you add the asparagus. I opted to leave it as is - I liked the texture without pureeing it.
And with this I leave you for a while. I'll be getting ready for my trip today and tomorrow and am leaving on Tuesday. Tomorrow, we are taking the gray kitty who adopted us to the vet for a once over, after which he gets to come live with us. We are so excited!

I may or may not post while I am away. But no matter what, I'll be thinking of all of you and checking in whenever I can!

In the meantime, I wish you wonderful days filled with good food, friends, perfect health, beauty, art, sunshine and inspiration!

Silke

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Back to Center

Thank you all who left comments on my last post with such great suggestions on how I could regain my inspiration. The one I heard most clearly was: don't force it. Just have fun with it all! That's when I realized that I simply don't feel like painting at the moment. I might again this afternoon or tomorrow or in a month, but right now, I don't. 
And then I thought about what always brings me back to center. Always! Even as a teenager. And that is baking. It doesn't really matter what. Baking puts me right back into my happy place.  It's the process that calms me, that orders my thoughts, that allows me to be in the moment.
And nothing more so than bread. Not the quick bread I usually make (see here for recipe), but the slower method.
It's the measuring, mixing, kneading, waiting while it rises, kneading again, forming the loaves, waiting again for another rising, and again while it bakes that is so soothing to me. I can't really describe it. It gives me the feeling that all is well with me and world around me.
The resulting loaves of delicious, fluffy, crunchy bread are just a happy side effect of the process I love so much. The bread I made here uses 7-grain-cereal and is wonderful! Click here for the recipe. It's well worth making!
This morning I had a slice of it toasted with some honey. Heavenly!!

And with that I wish you a most wonderful start to your weekend!

Silke

Saturday, January 28, 2012

What clears my mind...

Yesterday, I was going to go to the print studio, but somehow I wasn't clear how to proceed with this new project. So I decided to bake and cook - for some reason that organizes my mind while feeding the senses (and the belly).
Do you see the chewed off corner? Our first dog, Moe (a great dane/dalmation mix) ate everything when he was a puppy, including books. Back then it annoyed us, but now we both feel wistful when cooking from this book.
A sweet reminder of a truly great dog!
 
I cooked for the weekend and for company tonight. I made James McNair's Puerto Rican Rice and Chicken, which is one of my favorite recipes and best when made a day ahead. Total comfort food with complex flavors and a little bit of a kick! When I have a little more time, I'll share the recipe with you.
I also made a batch of my favorite biscotti and will share this recipe with you soon. It's super easy and delicious!!
This are the corners I cut off when cutting the biscotti. Those don't bake twice. They are for eating immediately - and that's exactly what happened...
For dinner last night (veggie soup), I tried a new recipe for whole wheat no knead breadsticks that I found here. I wanted to find a breadstick recipe that doesn't use white flour and this is a keeper. It calls for 3 to 3 1/2 cups of flower, but I don't think I used more than 2 3/4 cups. The dough was soft and baked up perfectly.
Easy to make and incredibly delicious, especially to a bread lover like me... Before baking, I brushed them with egg white and sprinkled them with sea salt. Yum!! (I won't even tell you how many I ate...)
And I made another batch of Caponata, an Italian eggplant appetizer. I'll have to share that recipe with you as well! It's easy to make and so very good!! That, too, is for tonight. It benefits from sitting for a day and having the flavors come together.
All this cooking brought me clarity on how to proceed with my next print. This girl is dark and mysterious and flowers and the bubble wrap stamps didn't seem to fit her. Then, it became clear. On one of the background plates I will paint bare tree branches that surround her. And the other background plate will have different patterns.
For those patterns, I made a couple of different stamps by gluing beans and lentils onto cardboard with molding paste. I also have a natural sponge with an interesting pattern and rubber bands around a brayer. All of these I will apply to the copper with sugar solution to create stencils that will then be etched. Each plate will then be printed again in a different color.

She'll be different from the first print, but in my mind, she's already just as beautiful!

Here's to good food, creative fun, and all of you!!

Monday, May 24, 2010

The Perfect German Bread!

Some time ago, my good friend Verena shared this super fast spelt bread recipe with me and I've now made it so often, that I thought I'd share the link with you all. Click here for the recipe in German and here for the recipe in English. It's wonderful! Thank you, Verena!!
It requires no rising time and is perfectly moist with a very crunchy crust every time. But it is like the breads I grew up with - very dense! Plus, it contains flax seeds, pumpkin seeds (for some reason, the English version does not include pumpkin seeds), sunflower seeds and sesame seeds - yum!!
Enjoy!!

P.S. The British recipe calls for linseed, which here in the US are usually called flaxseed, and carried by most grocery stores. As to the temperature, I bake mine at about 390 F.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

What's A Girl to Do?

Yesterday we had our carpets cleaned, which means I was banned from our living room, bed room and my studio (!!!) for the day. So what's a girl to do but spend some serious time in the kitchen...
and bake some delicious cornmeal/rye/whole wheat bread and...
eat quite a bit of it! Most of you already know my love affair with bread. This wasn't as crusty as I like my breads to be, but it still tasted great! And the smell while it was baking...double yum!

Thank you all for your generous and encouraging comments. Today, being allowed back in my studio, I'm going to try a couple of your suggestions on the back of this tag and show you all the result. I think it's great how art is so truly subjective. All I know is that sometimes a piece just doesn't feel finished to me and this is one of those examples. I'm glad most of you liked it anyway!!