Grain Doe

BBB – A Swedish Cuban

2012-01-16T12:25:00.000-08:00

A new year with new resolutions. No, I don't make any New Year's resolutions, that's generally a bad idea. The shelf life of an average New Year's resolution is far too short. But I had a little thought that I should do some more baking, or at least do it in a more structured way, as in take pictures and blog about it. Of course the Bread Baking Babes routine has top priority, so I'll start right away.

January's bread is so quick and easy that you feel that you have barely started when it's finished. Two hours from start to finish, not bad! And it turned out to be surprisingly good too, although maybe not the healthiest bread on the planet. But you don't always have to be super healthy, and you can top the slices with healthy stuff. However, I can assure you that a toasted slice with raspberry-blueberry jam (aka queen's jam) is very yummy. (I bet butter and honey is heavenly but you have to draw the line somewhere.)

The Babe who brought us January's bread is my lovely SIL Ilva at Lucullian Delights (technically it's ex but what the heck). I have included the recipe here, but to get the nice looking pictures you should go to her place. Also check out how the other Babes have fared with this challenge - full list to the right!

You are welcome to join us and be a Buddy - Ilva has the complete instructions.

CUBAN BREAD

from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

1,2-1,4 litre/ 5-6 cups of bread or AP flour
2 packages dry yeast, I used 50 g fresh
1 tbsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
500 ml/ 2 cups hot water
sesame or poppy seeds (optional)

By hand or mixer (15 mins)
Place 4 cups flour in a mixing bowl and add the yeast, salt and sugar. Stir until they are well blended. Pour in the hot water and beat with 100 strong strokes, or three minutes with a mixer flat beater.
Gradually work in the remaining flour (using fingers if necessary), 1/2 cup at a time until the dough takes shape and is no longer sticky.
- I used 4,5 cups AP flour and 0,5 cup whole spelt flour.

Kneading (8 mins)
Sprinkle the work surface with flour. Work in the flour as you knead, keeping a dusting of it between the dough and the work surface. Knead for 8 minutes by hand or with a dough hook until the dough is smooth, elastic, and feels alive under your hands.

By processor (5 mins)
Attach the short plastic blade.
Place 2 cups flour in the work bowl and add the other ingredients, as above. Pulse several times to thoroughly mix. Remove the cover and add 2 more cups of flour. Replace the cover and pulse to blend.
Add the remaining flour through the feed tube, pulsing after each addition, until the dough begins to form and is carried around the bowl by the force of the blade.

- I used my Assistent for all the mixing and kneading.

Kneading (45 secs)
Turn on the machine to knead for 45 seconds.

Rising (15 mins)
Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and put in a warm (26-37°C/80-100°F) place until double in bulk, about 15 minutes.

Shaping (4 mins)

Punch down the dough, turn it out on the work surface, and cut into two pieces. Shape each into a round. Place on the baking sheet. With a sharp knife or razor, slash X on each of the loaves, brush water, and, if desired, sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.
- I used sesame seeds.

Baking (205°C/400°F, 45-50 mins)
Place the baking sheet on the middle shelf of a cold oven. Place a large pan of hot water on the shelf below, and heat the oven to 205°C/400°F. The bread of course, will continue to rise while the oven is heating.

Bake for about 50 minutes, or until the loaves are a deep golden brown. Thump on the bottom crusts to test for doneness. If they sound hard and hollow, they are baked.
- After 40 minutes my loaves were becoming very dark so I covered them with foil. After 50 minutes they were done.

BBB - Burger buns for July

2011-07-16T07:12:00.000-07:00

I have dusted off my old blog to honour July's BBB bread – burger buns! Sara of I like to cook chose this recipe for us since July is the month of barbecues and hot dogs for many people, at least in the Northern hemisphere. And what could be better than to make your own buns, the ones you buy are rarely worth their name, at least here in Sweden they seem to be baked with air and often fall apart in molecules.

I baked the buns and prepared two very nice sandwiches, one with home made fava bean spread, beef burger, lettuce, shallots and rocket, and the other one with brie cheese, milanese salami, lettuce, leek and rocket (yes I love rocket), arranged and took some pictures and the gulped them down since I was very hungry. Only to find later that my camera was set to raw format and my Photoshop Elements version doesn't support raw, and I couldn't find my Photoshop CD (just installed a new computer).

So all I can show you is a couple of plain buns. But my BBB friends of course have much nicer pics to show you, so head over to them straight away – links to the right! Thank you Sara, for this challenge!

The recipe is here. I reduced the amount of sugar, used spelt and wheat, and used fresh yeast because that's what we get in Sweden.

BBB – Brunkans Långa

2010-09-16T03:37:00.001-07:00

So, the turn had come to me to choose a bread for the month! It just had to be something with sourdough, and I wanted to use a Swedish recipe, after all, there are quite a number of fabulous bakers in this country.

Brunkan is a nick name for Brunkebergs bageri (the bakery of Brunkeberg, situated in Stockholm), and ”långa” means ”the long one”. When they bake this bread at the Brunkeberg bakery, it is more than two feet long – hence the name. This loaf gets a wonderful crust and a crumb with a deep flavour from the sourdough and the muscovado sugar.

The owner of this bakery is Heléne Johansson, an IT consultant who decided she needed a career change and thus started her own bakery in 2002. This proved to be very successful, and she has now started a second bakery and also taken on catering as a business. A true bread babe!

This bread is from the book ”Bröd” (Bread) that Heléne published last year and which contains the most popular breads in her line.

Graham flour* sourdough:
Day 1, morning:
Mix 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour
with 120 g/120 ml/0,5 cups water.
Cover with cling film and leave at room temp.

Day 1, evening:
Add 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and
60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix, cover with cling film and leave at room temp.

Day 2, morning:
Add 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and
60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix. By now, the sourdough should be a little active (bubbly). If not, add a teaspoon of honey, some freshly grated apple or a teaspoon of natural yoghurt. Leave at room temp.

Day 3, morning:
Feed the sourdough with 60g/100 ml/0,42 cups graham flour and 60 g/60 ml/0,25 cups water.
Mix, cover with cling film and put in fridge.

Day 4
By now, the sourdough should be ready to use. If you don’t want to use it right away, you can keep in the fridge if you feed it as above a couple of times/week.

*Graham flour can’t be found everywhere. If you want to recreate an exact substitute, here’s what to do, according to Wikipedia:

Graham flour is not available in all countries. A fully correct substitute for it would be a mix of white flour, wheat bran, and wheat germ in the ratio found in whole wheat. Wheat comprises approximately 83% endosperm, 14.5% bran, and 2.5% germ by mass. For sifted all-purpose white flour, wheat bran, and wheat germ having densities of 125, 50, and 80 grams/cup, respectively, one cup of graham flour is approximately equivalent to 84 g (~2/3 cup) white flour, 15 g (slightly less than 1/3 cup) wheat bran, and 2.5 g (1.5 teaspoons) wheat germ.

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Brunkans långa
The long (tall?) loaf of Brunkebergs bageri
2 large loaves
Ingredients
600 g/600 ml/2,5 cups water
1125 g/2,48 lb high-protein wheat flour
375 g/13,2 oz graham sourdough (see above)
20 g/0,7 oz fresh yeast
150 g/5,3 oz dark muscovado sugar
25 g/0,88 oz honey
30 g/1 oz sea salt

Day 1
Mix all ingredients except the salt. Work the dough in a stand mixer for 10 minutes or by hand for 20. Add the salt. Knead the dough for 5 minutes more. Put the dough in a oiled, plastic box and put the lid on. Leave the dough for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes: fold one side of the dough against the centre of the dough, then fold the other end inwards, finally turn the whole dough so that the bottom side is facing down. Put the plastic box with the dough in the fridge and let it rise over night.

Day 2
Set the oven temp to 250 C/480 F. Leave the baking stone in if you use one.

Pour out the dough on a floured table top and divide it lengthwise with a sharp knife. Put the dough halves on a sheet covered with parchment paper and place another parchment paper or a towel on top. I dusted them with some flour at this point. When the oven is ready, put in the sheet or shove the parchment paper with the loaves onto the baking stone. Put a small tin with 3-4 ice cubes at the bottom of the oven. (The water releases slowly which is supposed to be better.) Lower the oven temp. to
175 C/350 F immediately after you have put in the loaves.
After 20 minutes, open the oven door and let out excess steam.

Bake for 35 minutes or until the loaves have reached an inner temp of 98 C/208 F.

Let cool on wire.

Now, I would love to see your takes on this bread! If you do, please post it on your blog and email the link and photo to me no later than September 29th, and you will get the Buddy badge and be included in the Buddy roundup.

You can find my email address up in the right corner of this page.

And last but not least, please visit the other Babes and learn how they dealt with this bread! Links to all Babes in the right margin.

Happy baking!

This recipe has been YeastSpotted! Thanks, Susan!

BBB – Sweet Portuguese Bread – Massa Sovada

2010-08-16T13:52:00.001-07:00

This month, Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups steered the Bread Baking Babes to the Iberian peninsula to make Sweet Portuguese Bread. And she was well prepared. She wanted to recreate a traditional Portuguese bread for a Portuguese neighbour of hers, and tried out a couple recipes before she (and her neighbour) was satisfied. Read more about their quest for the perfect Massa at Tanna’s place!

A new concept, at least it was new to me, was introduced in this month’s recipe – osmotolerant yeast. In short, it’s yeast that behaves particularly well in sweet doughs. In Sweden, we almost always use fresh yeast (practically the only yeast in our stores) and one of the two available types is for sweet doughs. So. I guess it’s osmotolerant. Now I have a neat word for it that I will use as often as I can. Read more about osmotolerant yeast at Susan’s (yes, she is a Babe! Yo!) Wild Yeast and in excerpts from various Google books.

Another unusual thing about this bread was that the sponge was made up with potato water. Very easy if you are boiling potatoes for dinner anyway, you just save the water. At least if you remember to do that. I didn’t, and I wasn’t the only one … but cold potatoes are nice to have in the fridge so just cook some more.

And the there was the shaping! I actually bought a broom stick to be able to shape this bread.

Not that it helped, because after baking they looked like big, round buns:

But the taste wasn’t compromised. Not at all! This was great bread, fun to make, and yum to eat. Thanks Tanna for this challenge!

Now go visit Tanna at of My Kitchen in Half Cups for the full story and recipe. The move on to the other Babes to behold their Portuguese wonders. List is on the right!

The Babes are sprouting and growing!

2010-07-17T03:08:00.001-07:00

This month we got a somewhat different task on our hands –Lynn of Cookie Baker Lynn decided that since the Babes are mighty and invincible, we could bake without flour. And, some of us actually did! I don’t count myself to this lucky Babe troop, although I tried twice.

The general idea was to sprout wheat berries and then mix them in a food processor together with yeast, salt and honey to make a dough. Which actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all!

I actually found organic berries, not only wheat but also farro and spelt. In the first try I used both wheat and farro, and they sprouted quite quickly – the wheat was a bit ahead of the farro. But the result – I’m not sure how to describe it other than – interesting.

It looks a bit like a gold bar (ingot?) and was as hard to slice.

The next try involved wheat berries only, more yeast and water, less salt and honey. That should have done the trick! But no. I don’t know what happened with the gluten, but it wasn’t there for the loaf. Which more or less fell apart. Below is a fake picture of a sandwich that consists of crumbles that have been shoved together to form a slice of bread. I can’t believe that I’m actually showing these photos (but the “sandwich” was in fact very good!).

But instead of going on about my failures, I would like to thank Lynn for bringing this wicked challenge along! It was so different and so much fun, and I actually learned a lot.

Besides the revolutionary, hippie-esque recipe – more things happened this month! We have new Babes in the classroom, and what Babes! They will bring along knowledge, experience, and new ideas. And they were introduced with this diabolic recipe … but they tackled it very bravely!

They are:

Blog from our Kitchen – Elizabeth
Feeding My Enthusiasms – Pat
Paulchen’s Food Blog – Astrid
Wild Yeast – Susan

I am very excited about baking with these fine ladies.

But OK, move on, nothing more to see here, go find more successful sprouted breads elsewhere! E.g. the other mighty babes, including the new ones above! Tip: Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups has a lot of tips about making this bread.

BBB – Korni!

2010-06-16T10:54:00.001-07:00

This month, not only did I bake, I also managed to blog at the very day! I think that I pretty much owe this to Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups who shaped us up and created a fixed schedule for us – the same date very month! Totally brilliant!

Our host this month was Lien at Notitie van Lien and she had chosen for us to bake Korni, a bread with many seeds.

Of course I didn’t bake until the every last moment, preparing the poolish late last night and baking this morning before leaving for lunch with my kids in town. They got half a loaf each but I haven’t received any feedback yet.

The baking itself wasn’t very spectacular, making poolish one day and baking the next – pretty standard. But there were some quite interesting ingredients, soy beans, millet and a good pinch of caraway plus three different flours – that made me very curious.

As I have been working like a beaver (can you say that in English?)I didn’t have time to join in the chitchat if the other Babes, so I didn’t get that some of them were doing alterations until I already had baked. But I was pretty pleased with the result anyway! I had very little time this morning so I just added all the ingredients for the dough at once, and after while discovered that it was far too stiff – I ended up adding 1/2 cup water to get it more moist and soft.

And I forgot all about the egg washing just before baking. But I liked the bread! I’m sure it’s very healthy and makes excellent toast too!

Head over to Lien at Notitie van Lien to read the full recipe and how-to’s, and go to the other Babes (see list in right column) and check their Kornis out!

BBD #27 – Pan Latino – Chilean Empanadas

2010-03-01T14:01:00.001-08:00

It’s the first time I manage to participate in Bread Baking Day, although I have intended to do so many times. All those grand plans, all that talk and no action, that’s pretty much me, but every once in a while I surprise myself. Like today.

This month, the BBD is hosted by sweet Gretchen Noelle of Canela and Comino, who also happens to be a fellow Bread Baking Babe. The theme Gretche Noelle chose for this month was Latin, meaning bread originating from Latin America. Having very little experience from Latin food, I turned to my old buddy Google who after a while suggested something that I at least recognized – empanadas.

For most Americans, I guess that empanadas are anything but exotic, but for a European – well, at least for me – they’re a bit more unusual. I had never made them, or eaten them, or didn’t even know exactly what they were.

But the concept of filled pastries isn’t unheard of in Europe (or my kitchen) – pirogs or pierogi are common in Finland, Russia, Poland and the Baltic countries. It’s quite funny though, when I looked this up on Wikipedia I find a long article on pierogi which despite it’s length failed to mention the Finnish pirogs AND the Latin American empanadas. On the other hand, it established the similarity to dumplings and ravioli, leaving me wondering about the logic and/or lack of peer review on that article.

As a complete empanadas rookie I didn’t want to rely on just one recipe, I wanted to get some statistical evidence on what the ordinary empanada should contain. I didn’t exactly walk through the entire internet, but it seemed that there should be meat, hard-boiled eggs and olives. It also seemed that there should be raisins, but I pretended not to see that, since – well frankly, I’m not too fond of sweet things in my savoury ~~food~~ bread.

Oops, I hope that this is eligible for the BBD – the fact that it’s filled shouldn’t automatically make this a non-bread?

Rather Basic Empanadas

Makes 12

Dough:
200 ml/0,8 cups milk or water, lukewarm
20 g/0,7 oz fresh yeast
100/0,4 cup ml olive oil
1 tsp salt
700 ml/3 cups AP flour
1 egg, beaten, for brushing

Filling:
1 Tbsp oregano
1 tsp cumin
1 small red pepper, minced,
or 1 tsp ground chili pepper
3 cloves garlic
1 tomato, diced
300 g/1,1 lb ground beef
1 small, yellow onion, diced
salt
2 eggs, hard-cooked, chopped
12 seeded, black olives, chopped

Dissolve the yeast in the milk/water, add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Beat or knead the dough at least 5 minutes. Add water or flour as needed, the dough should be tacky but not sticky. Let rise for 1 hour or until it has doubled in size.
Fry the onion lightly in some olive oil a medium hot skillet, then add the meat a little at a time. When the meat is browned, add the tomato, garlic and the spices. Continue to fry 5–10 minutes, add a little water if it gets too dry. Add salt to taste, and maybe more spices too, the meat should be really tasty and quite hot. Finally, add the eggs and olives and remove the skillet from the heat.
Preheat the oven to 200 °C/400 °F.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll to 0,5 cm/0,25 inch thick. Use a glass or a large cookie cutter and take out 12 rounds. Add 1-3 Tbsp filling on each round. Fold each round in half and seal the edges with a fork. Brush the empanadas with the beaten egg.
Bake until golden brown, about 20–25 minutes.

Enjoy!

BBB: Curried Naan Bread

2010-01-18T07:49:00.001-08:00

Time for baking with Babes again! The BBB host of the month is Cookie Baker Lynn, and she chose for us to bake naan bread. I was thrilled, I really like it and have been thinking about making it, but never got around to it. She offered not only one, but two variations, one curried and one plain. This time, I only had time to make one of them, but I’ll absolutely try the other one as well soon.

Curried Naan
Makes 6

500 g/scant 4 cups white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra for frying
2 Tbsp mild curry powder
1/2 oz/15 g package compressed fresh yeast*
300 ml/1-1/4 cups water
100 g/generous 1/2 cup golden raisins
3 Tbsp mango chutney

* If you are using instant or dry yeast, reduce the quantities a little

Put the flour, salt, oil, curry powder, yeast, and water into a bowl and mix together for 2 minutes. Tip out onto a lightly floured counter and knead for 5 minutes, or until the dough is soft and pliable. Let rise for 30 minutes.
Line a baking sheet. Incorporate the golden raisins and chutney into the dough. Divide the dough into six pieces, then put on the baking sheet and let rest for 1 hour.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and, using a rolling pin, flatten each piece into a circle, 25,5 cm/10 inches in diameter. Put back on the sheet and let rest for 5 minutes.
Heat a skillet to medium heat and add a splash of olive oil. Shallow-fry each dough until browned on both sides, then set aside to cool slightly before serving.

Head over to Lynn’s for the “plain” recipe!

Of course, you usually eat naan TO something, preferably an Indian course, which is why I also made Beef Vindaloo.

Beef Vindaloo

Spice mix:
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
4 green cardamom capsules
1 tsp whole fenugreek
1 tsp black or brown mustard seeds
1 tsp powdered chili
0.5 tsp ground turmeric

Meat “mix”:
800 g/1,75 lb boneless beef
Butter for frying
3 yellow onions
3 garlic cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 Tbsp ground, fresh ginger
1 red pepper
1 tsp sugar
3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp concentrated meat stock
1.5 dl/5 oz water
Salt, sugar to taste

Shell the cardamom capsules. Dry roast all the whole seeds in a hot pan until the mustard seeds start popping and turn grey. Add the powered spices the last seconds, stir and move the spices to a pot.
Cut the meat into strips. Fry the strips in the pan a part at a time in butter and add the to the pot.
Dice the onions, chop the garlic and chili and fry on low heat until translucent. Move to the pot.
Add the cinnamon, ginger, sugar, red wine vinegar, meat stock and water. Bring to boil and let simmer for 1,5 hours.
If needed, add more salt and/or sugar.
Serve with basmati rice and the naan bread.

And of course, head over to the other Babes and take a look at their takes on naan – see list on the right!

BBB: Viennese Striesel

2009-12-15T00:49:00.001-08:00

Up until now, I was very worried as to the ability to bake anything at all. I just moved into a house the countryside, where everything is beautiful and calm. Calm was exactly was the stove in the house was – heating up the oven to anywhere near baking temp would take hours, in fact it never became hot enough. But luckily, I got my stove fixed just in time to bake the December BBB bread – the Viennese Striesel – presented by Katie of Thyme for cooking.

Since my throat is swelling and my inner temperature definitely seems to be on the way up, I’ll just give you a picture and the link to Katie’s site with the recipe. But I really suggest trying. And my tip is, do try to find mace – that really made a difference and added an interesting note to the taste buds!

Btw, I used 17 g fresh yeast, because my house isn’t quite as cool as Ilva’s.

BBB Russian Black Bread – Buddy Roundup

2009-09-19T10:15:00.001-07:00

Somewhere between I baked this bread and blogged about it and until now, something important must have happened – why? Because I totally have missed doing the roundup! I should have done it almost two weeks ago. I know, there shouldn’t be any excuses, but I kind of got carried away. With what? I’ll tell you later.

In the meantime, a couple of latecomers caught up, so in fact it may not have been too bad that I waited (bad excuse, I know).

I really liked this bread myself, but as it was kind of, well, special, I realized that it might not be a hit with everyone. That turned out to true among the Babes. So I expected the Buddy response to be similar, but of the Buddies who reported in, almost all said that they liked it, which was a nice surprise! Or does it mean that the Buddies are very kind and polite in general?

First Buddy out was Karin of Karin's Kitchen. She didn't like it at all! But the loaves looked very nice:

Madam Chow boosted her rye with starter Boris and some extra gluten, and look at her beauties:

Marjoke of Company in my Kitchen actually used Swedish rye, now that’s what I call dedicated!

Judy of Judy's Gross Eats revived her rye starter who did a very good job in the hot weather. Look at these gorgeous loaves:

Caitlin of Engineer Baker addressed a problem that I believe that many of us foodies are struggling with: the difficulty – always, or from time to time – to just eat normally and to have a relaxed relationship to food.

Elle of Feeding my Enthusiasms and her bench scraper had a workout with this sticky dough, and the result of her efforts was amazing:

Andreas of Delta Kitchen enjoyed the combination of caraway and fennel, and his loaves looked great:

Anne Marie of Rosemary & Garlic suggested an alternate usage of this bread – keep it on hand to chase off any burglars. In the meantime, good with cheese too.

Natalia of gatti fili e farina pulled out her loaves of the oven close to midnight, and look at the crust:

Rita aka Soepkipje baked this bread not only once, but several times, and her mother said that this was the best bread that Rita had ever made. Despite the Dutch Rye, good job!

Alisa of Jane of many trades tested out her organic grape starter, and it looks that it was doing a great job:

Nidhi of Charche Chauke Ke thought she was late, but that’s nothing compared to what I am … thanks for your contribution, and great job!

And finally we have Astrid of Paulchen’s Food Blog who probably thought that she’d be on the safe side and not be included in the roundup, but how wrong she was. This is one happy bread loaf:

That was it! A million thanks to all of you for baking with us this month, and sorry again for the long delay! The reason why I was late? I tell you another day …

BBB – Russian Black Bread

2009-08-24T02:25:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure how I came up with the idea of making black bread when it was my turn to host the month’s Bread Baking Babes session, but I’m happy that I did – this is a strange bread indeed, but good, you should really try it!

First I have to say that I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten “genuine” Russian black bread. According to my husband and some other sources, the real thing can be used to drive nails into wood. It was not my wish to take it to that extreme, and most of the recipes I have looked at seem to be of the same opinion.

When I searched the internet for recipes I found quite a few of which some claimed to have its origin in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Finland and Åland Islands as well as Russia. Many of the recipes included coffee and/or old bread or bread crumbs, all of them included rye but not necessarily rye alone. One recipe (Ruth Hensperger’s) even included chocolate.

It was this last recipe that caught my attention, and I soon had ordered the book The Bread Bible which featured the bread. Thanks to Tanna of My Kitchen in Half Cups I didn’t have to wait for the book to be delivered, she scanned the recipe and sent it along with a couple of others. Which meant I that I was forced to CHOOSE and make DECISIONS. I don’t know about you, but I always get the feeling that I end up with the inferior choices, so I had to test bake.

Which I’m glad that I did, it’s not often that I bake similar things very close in time, but when I do, I always seem to learn something.

So first I baked Ruth Hensperger’s Black Bread from The Bread Bible. Lots of ingredients, including chocolate and instant espresso powder, but quite a quick bake, using only commercial yeast it was ready in an afternoon. Everybody liked it, it had a lot of taste and sweetness, but after a while I found it a little ingratiating, too eager to please so to speak, and it lacked that depth that bread made with sourdough and/or long fermentation time has.

The next bread I tried was Black Bread from Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. With no chocolate in sight, no spices and no sweetener, but ordinary ground coffee, old bread, and sourdough, this bread was quite the opposite to Hensperger’s – rough and almost acrid.

To make a long story short, I finally made a combination of the two recipes and was quite pleased with the result. It has the spices and some of the sweetness, but also a little bite and a sour note.

Black Bread – intermediate style

SOURDOUGH

Medium rye flour	300 g (10,6 oz)
Water	350 ml (1,5 cup)
Active sourdough culture*	2 Tbsp

SOAKER

Old bread**, toasted	100 g/3,5 oz
Coffee, ground	15 g/0,5 oz
Vegetable, neutral oil	25 g/0,9 oz
Molasses	60 ml/1/4 cup
Caraway seeds	2 tsp
Fennel seeds	1 tsp
Minced schallots	1 Tbsp
Water, hot	400 ml/1 2/3 cup

FINAL DOUGH

Medium rye flour	300 g/10,6 oz
High gluten bread flour	400 g/14,1 oz
Salt	20 g/0,7 oz (appr. 1 Tbsp)
Yeast
Fresh:	15 g/0,5 oz
Instant dry:	1,5 tsp (0,17 oz)
Soaker	All of the above
Sourdough	All of the above

* If you don’t have any active starter at hand, I think you can cheat by using a small amount (say 5 g fresh or 0,5 tsp instant dry yeast) instead.

** I used rye sourdough bread, but I guess any old unsweetened bread will do, or any old bread in general.

Sourdough

Mix the ingredients to the sourdough, cover the container with plastic and leave for 12–14 hours at room temperature.

Soaker

Toast the old bread in a toaster or in the oven. The bread should be browned, but absolutely not blackened. Dice the bread or just tear it in pieces and put it in a bowl. Add the rest of the soaker ingredients except the water. Heat the water to near boiling and pour over the soaker ingredients. Cover and leave for the same duration as the sourdough.

Final dough

Mix the two flours in a separate bowl.

If using fresh yeast: Take a small amount of the soaker liquid and dissolve the yeast in it.

Add the yeast mixture OR the instant dry yeast, soaker, sourdough and salt to a mixing bowl.

Add half of the flour mixture and work the dough by hand or in machine. Continue to add about 100 ml or ½ cup of the flour mixture at a time and work until the flour is completely absorbed before you add the next round. The dough shall be firm but still quite sticky. You might not use all the flour, or you might need to add more flour, all depending on the flour used.

Place the dough in an oiled container, cover with plastic and leave for 2–3 hours or until doubled in size.

Shaping and proofing

Drizzle some rye flour on the table top and place the dough on top. If the dough is very sticky, pour just enough rye flour on top of it to make it possible to handle.

Divide the dough in two and shape the parts into oblong loaves. (I placed them on parchment paper to make it possible to just slide the loaves into the oven.) Stretch the surface using both hands to get a tight loaf. Use more rye if the dough is too sticky to handle.

Cover with a tea towel and leave for 60 minutes. Don’t over-proof! (Fire up the oven after 30 minutes to have it ready.)

Baking

Place an empty metal container in the bottom of the oven. Put in your baking stone or an empty baking sheet. Heat the oven to 225 °C/435 °F.

Put 3–4 ice cubes in the metal container.

Move the loaves to the hot stone or sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

Open the oven door to vent out some moist. At the same time, lower the temp. to 200 °C/400 °F. Bake another 30-40 minutes or until they sound hollow when tapped underneath, or when the inner temperature has reached appr. 97 °C/207 °F.

Let the loaves cool down before you slice them. Eat with butter and maybe some sharp cheese, or why not cured salmon.

Would you like to be a Buddy and bake with us? Please post about it before or on September 7 and let me know so that I can include you in the Buddy round-up! (Thanks, Jamie for reminding me to include this part!!)

And of course – please check out how the other Babes handled this spectacular (some would say weird) bread – you’ll find the complete list of Babes in the right sidebar. Have fun!

This one also goes to Bread Baking Day #23, this month hosted by Nick at Iamafoodblog.

BBB July: Sukkar bi Tahin or Beirut Tahini Swirls

2009-07-15T11:02:00.001-07:00

At last I have some time for baking and blogging again! Pre-vacation and post-work stress made me go silent for a while, even non-baking, despite its therapeutic benefits. Instead, the first week of vacation I spent reading, sleeping and knitting. But after that, the knead to fire up the oven became overwhelming.

I’m one of those more than 200 people who struggle along the Bread Baker’s Apprentice, so I have been baking a few of the recipes there, but I’m also a lucky member of the 12 Bread Baking Babes who each month tackle a new, exciting bread recipe.

This month’s host is the lovely Natashya of Living in the kitchen with puppies, and she selected this semi-sweet Lebanese streetfood, quite mild in its flavour, which really turned out to be a fun and tasty experience. I had never come across this bread before, but I definitely will make it again. I also tried a savoury filling together with the sesame paste which turned out really good.

The first step for me was to make tahini. Not that I can’t buy tahini in Sweden, but I find that I get so much more taste when I make it myself, and it’s really easy. Besides, an opened jar of tahini has a limited life-span, and the flavour deteriorates quite fast. So I can really recommend making your own:

I use unpolished sesame seeds which contains a little more nutrients than the standard polished variety. For the filling of this bread, I used about 200 ml or 3/4 cups sesame seeds. The seeds are roasted in a dry pan, and as soon as they begin to smell good and the colour shifts a little to the darker side, the seeds are transferred to a cold tray or pan to cool down.

When the seeds have cooled down, I grind them in my special spice grinder which if course is nothing but a disguised coffee grinder. (But I actually bought it to grind spices and not coffee…) I then add equal amounts of oil (preferably a neutral oil) and water (1–2 Tbsp each) to the ground seeds until I get the consistency I want. Maybe a little lemon juice to spike up the flavour a bit.

Tip: Sesame seeds and many spices have strong flavours that tend to stay behind in the grinder. To get rid if unwanted flavours, just grind a small amount of white rice right after you grind any aromatic foodstuff.

I divided the dough in two parts and made two fillings: the original tahini-sugar filling, and one savoury filling featuring mint and parsley leaves plus a little salt combined with the tahini. And they both turned out very nice in my opinion. Unfortunately, my camera decided to call it a day in the middle of the process, but I got one pic of the final result:

Would you like to be our Buddy and bake with us? – It’s not your every-day bread, but it’s very easy to make, and I don’t think you will be disappointed! You will find out everything you need over at Natashya’s place.

Also check out how the other babes handled these yummy swirlies – you will find the complete List of Babes in the sidebar to the right.

BBA Challenge – Bagels

2009-05-24T04:14:00.001-07:00

The BBA Challenge is moving along nicely! What this is all about is to bake every single recipe in Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice. More than 200 bread lovers around the world are engaged in this, sharing findings, successes and failures on blogs, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and a Google mailing list. (Wow, that really sounds serious, how did I end up in this anyway?) The founder if this adventure is Nicole of Pinch My Salt, who had never dreamt of such interest, but nevertheless has taken on all the administration and management that a group this size requires.

Time for recipe #3, bagels. Our whole family loves bagels. I have actually baked bagels once a long time ago, and as I remembered it, the result was good, but it was quite complicated so I didn't think I'd bother to bake them again. But that was a looong time ago, and of course I'll bake them again, now with Peter Reinhart and the BBA group there to hold my hand.

What makes bagels so special is that you boil them before baking. That makes them chewy in a very special way. According to Peter Reinhart, a true bagel shall also retard in the fridge at least one night before it's baked. The long and slow fermentation lets the flavours develop to the fullest.

I cheated on one thing, and that was substituting honey for malt, which you can't find easily in Sweden. However, I know some online stores where it can be bought, so next time I will do it all correct.

The night before, the bagels are ready to be tucked away in the fridge over night.

In the morning, have just taken out the bagels from the fridge (and removed the plastic film that covered them).

Preparing the toppings: blue poppy seeds, sesame seeds and a herbs & salt mixture.

The first real question mark appeared here: when boiling the bagels, you are supposed to add 1 tbsp of baking soda. And I only had 1/2 tbsp. Would that mean disaster? I threw out a quick question on Twitter, but foolishly didn't hang around to wait for answers, I just let the bagels take a swim with half the amount of baking soda.

When I checked again, a twitter from Wendy of Pink Stripes pointed me to the introduction of the bagel chapter in the BBA, where PR explains which additions to the boiling water that can be used, and why he recommends baking soda. Well, I could have thought of actually reading the book, don't you think?

According to Peter Reinhart, there are many views on what you should add to the water, but the most important factor is actually the time that the bagels spend in the water. However, the baking soda alkalizes the water, which affects the starch on the surface so that a little more shine is added.

Apparently, no big deal about the missing half tbsp of baking soda!

Boiling the bagels, three at a time, one minute on each side.

They look like me when I have been in the bathtub too long!

Add the topping as soon as they come up from the bath.

Three bagels without topping as per my husband's request.

Six bagels on each sheet, means baking two sheets at once, that'll be interesting. PR suggests baking them 5 minutes, then let the sheets shift places AND rotate them, and bake another 5 minutes. Swedish electrical ovens are quite small, bit our oven happens to have a hot air function which I used here. I lowered the temp a bit to compensate for that.

And I have to say I'm pretty pleased by the result! They are by no means perfect, but that's not really my ambition.

Which one shall I taste first?

Mmm, I think I'll start with a poppy seed bagel ...

... with philadelphia cheese, serrano ham, rocket and tomatoes.

And one with blueberry jam, and one with cherry preserve.

Unfortunately I chose a bagel with herbs & salt for the sweet ones: blueberry + herbs + salt made an interesting combination! The cherries went on the underside of the bagel, which meant no interference there.

BBA – Christopsomos

2009-05-22T01:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I made the second recipe in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice which was Artos. I chose to make the Christopsomos style – well, because it involves more goodies of course!

I have an insane schedule today, so I'll let the pictures speakt for themselves most of the time:

I used sourdough starter and organic wheat flour from ICA (only another Scandinavian would know what I mean by that) and the result was a very loose dough. After adding an extra 100 grams flour things looked better:

Now, this is what I like to see in my DLX:

Adding goodies. Had no walnuts, so substituted hazelnuts and almonds. Golden raisins, dried apricots and figs:

Put dough in oiled container:

This is where I put all my doughs to rise. It's very handy because I can place the container anywhere, and even place things on top of it.

After first rise:

2/3 of the dough becomes a boule, 1/3 goes into the fridge.

Made 2 strands out of the chilled dough – appr. 40 cm/15".

Shaping the Christopsomos:

Ready to bake:

Oops, only 15 minutes in the oven and already brown – covered with aluminum foil rest of the time.

After about 40 minutes, the inner temperature had reached 87 °C. It was teared on top, I don't know why really and how to avoid it – but I didn't think it was such a big deal.

After glazing and sesame seeding:

Mmm, the crumb!

We brought the bread to a gathering and everybody liked it a lot! A bit unusual for Swedish traditions, but we all enjoyed it – it's not that sweet really, but very tasty. I will definitely make this again!

- And now it's posted on YeastSpotting!

A birthday gift – Leaf Lace Stole

2009-05-21T14:27:00.001-07:00

Leaf Lace Stole: A birthday gift for an old friend – I finished it just hours before we were off to her birthday party yesterday. It was a treat making this, every single row. The yarn – yum – kid mohair, unbelievably soft and light. Very nice to work with, besides from the inclination to get entangled.

I'm thinking this might be a perfect garment for chilly Swedish summer evenings when you don't want to go inside just yet. As a matter of fact, I have two more skeins of this yarn. I'm going to cast on for another one. And that one will have my name on it.

It's really a fairly simple knit, the pattern is free and can be downloaded here.

BBB - Italian Knot Bread

2009-05-20T02:28:00.001-07:00

Our host this month, Ilva of Lucullian Delights, decided that is was time for the BBB:s to shape up. We were going to tie some serious, Italian style knots. This bread recipe calls for very fine flour, no whole grain in sight. But hey, we don't have to be on short leash all the time, do we? And as it turned out, I found this bread to be excellent together with all kinds of healthy food that you can sweep up with a piece of bread.

The recipe also calls for lard, which for me was new, specifically in bread, but also in general. I have actually never used lard for anything, so this was the first time! It seems however that some people in Sweden really do use lard, since you can buy it at all large supermarkets.

Italian Knot Bread

makes 20-24

Biga:
500 g /1,1 lb normal bread flour
5 g/0,17 oz fresh yeast
240 ml/1 cup water (maybe a little more, depending on the flour)

Dissolve the yeast in a little water and quickly work the dough together.
Put it in a high container, cover it with a half closed lid or a kitchen towel and leave it for 15–24 hours.

If you get delayed and are not going to bake within 24 hours, just retard the the biga by placing it in the fridge. I believe it will hold for at least a couple of days, maybe a week. Just remember to remove it from the fridge in good time to allow it to assume room temperature before using it.

Dough:
0,500 g/1,1 lb biga
1 kg/ 2,2 lb 00 flour*
450–550 ml/1,9–2,3 cup water, finger warm
30 g fresh yeast (or 10 g instant yeast/13,5 g active dry yeast**)
50 g/ 1,7 oz extra-virgin olive oil
60 g/ 2,1 oz lard
25 g/ 0,88 oz honey
25 g/ 0,88 oz salt

* The flour assortment in Sweden isn't very impressive, 00 flour can not be found, I use ordinary (AP) wheat, organic flour instead.

** A yeast conversion table can be found here.

Put the flour either in a big bowl or on a baking board, add the lard and mix it with your fingers until it has 'crumbled' and is completely mixed with the flour.

Ilva usually works her doughs by hand, whereas I use my Electrolux Assistent as often as I can, so from this point, my M.O. was a bit different from hers:

Pour the (lukewarm) water into the mixing bowl, add the the yeast and dissolve it. Add the biga and the rest of ingredients. Mix and knead the dough in your stand mixer or Assistent (or by hand) until it's smooth and tacky.

I made a mistake and didn't take the biga out of the fridge early enough, so I had to work the dough quite long in the Assistent to bring the temp up, I'd say at least 10 minutes.

I also had to add a little extra water, probably due the different type of flour that I used.

After that, I had a very nice, smooth, tacky, but not sticky dough that passed the window-pane test.

Place the dough in an oiled plastic bowl or container and cover it with a lid or cling film. Let rise until it has doubled in size, or about 1 hour.

Shaping

Take up the dough, degas slightly and divide the dough into smaller pieces, about 100 g/3,5 oz each.

I got 22 pieces @ 100 g out of my dough.

Now, roll out the pieces to long cords so you can make the knots out of them. Ilva made her cords 25 cm/9,8", but I found that I had to make them 45 cm/18" in length to be able to tie the knots.
Next step is to shape the knots out of the cords! Over at Ilva's site, you'll find the instructive pictures from the book she used. And here's how my knots took form:

Cover the knots with a towel and let them rise about 1 hour.
Bake the knots in 200 °C/390 °F for 30–35 minutes or until they have become golden brown.

Enjoy!

And head over to the other BBBabes for further tales about tying knots!

Bake My Day (Karen), Canela y Comino (Gretchen), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn), Notite van Lien (Lien), I Like to Cook (Sara), Living in the kitchen with puppies (Natashya), Living on Bread and Water (Monique), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), My Kitchen in Half Cups (Tanna), The Sour Dough (Mary aka Breadchick) and Thyme for cooking (Katie).

Swedish thin pancakes and "pancake cake"

2009-05-19T01:25:00.001-07:00

I don't actually know if this cake only is made in Sweden, but anyway I don't think you'll find it in so many other places.

This cake is simply made out of a stack of thin pancakes with whipped cream and berries or jam between the layers. Top with more whipped cream and more berries, and you're done!

Our two daughters love this cake and it's a standing request for their birthdays in May and June, respectively. Our youngest one turns 16 today, and she turned into a vegan a couple of months back. Since the rest of the family prefer natural dairy to soy, I made two cakes.

For North Americans, a typical pancake is thick and puffy, whereas Swedish pancakes are thin. Swedish pancakes contains eggs but no baking powder or baking soda. Making vegan pancakes without eggs requires something to create a little volume, which brings the baking powder back on to the scene again.

Swedish regular thin pancakes

Makes about 12 pancakes
3 eggs
600 ml/2,5 cups milk (1,5–3 % fat content)
300 ml/1,2 cups AP flour
0,5 tsp salt
butter for frying

Beat the eggs with half the milk. Add flour and salt and beat until smooth (I use an electric handmixer). Add the rest of the milk and blend. Wait at least 15 minutes to let the flour swell.
In a medium hot to hot frying pan, add a little butter (about half a tbsp for each pancake). When the butter has melted and turned yellow-brownish, pour in a small amount of mixture in the pan -- the whole frying area of the pan should be covered, but only after you tip the pan back and forth.
If the pan is hot, the frying will only take a minute or so – stand by with a spatula, lift up the rim to peak under and be ready to flip over the pancake when its golden brown underneith. The other side will bake even faster.
If this turns out to very difficult and the pancakes keep tearing to pieces, you may need to add a little more flour to the mixture. Just be sure to blend thorughly after adding flour. (Remember that even if some pancakes are teared, you can still use the pieces in the cake!)
Repeat from 2. until you have used all mixture.

Vegan pancakes

Makes 8–10 pancakes
500 ml/2,1 cups soy milk, medium fat
400 ml/1,7 cups AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
0,5 tsp salt
50 g/1,8 oz milk-free margarine (can be excluded)

Follow the steps above to bake the pancakes (without the eggs obviously). You will find that these pancakes will turn out a little thicker.

Pancake cake

Now to the fun part – the cake building! The traditional pancake cake contains whipped cream and berries and/or jam, but basically you can use whatever you like for the filling – custard, chocolate mousse or lemon curd to name some examples. You could of course make savoury versions too, but my healthy conscience tells me that I should save pancakes to rare occasions, this is not the healthiest food in the book.

Today, for one regular and vegan pancake cake I used:

500 g/18 oz fresh strawberries
250 g/9 oz frozen, thawed natural blueberries + 1 tbsp sugar, mixed
1 small jar organic strawberry jam with high fruit content
Whipped regular or soy cream with a little vanilla aroma added
Some left-over custard (of course only on the regular cake)

Whipped cream goes here

A couple of layers done

This layer gets jammed

Wasn't there a strawberry there a minute ago?

Happy birthday, and watch out for the strawberry landslide!

Older sister wanted to place 13 candles instead of 16. Decided to place 16 after all, probably thinking about possible vengeance and personal health.

BBA – Anadama

2009-05-08T01:06:00.001-07:00

Yes, I must be truly insane, but I have signed up to the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, which is an adventure created by Nicole of Pinch My Salt. The challenge is to bake every single bread from Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's apprentice, at the pace of one bread per week. I think there are 54 recipes in the book, so this will take a little more than a year to accomplish.

I ~~got lured into this~~ was inspired by Tanna of My Kitchen In Half Cups who entered before me, and I didn't have to think long – I already had the book and liked it a lot.

At this moment, the group has 123 members, and is still growing. There is also a Google emailing list, a Flickr group, a Facebook group and most of the members are on Twitter. Gosh!

But however grand this may be, my first priority will still be the BBB – Bread Baking Babes. That makes it 5 breads per month, no big deal, right? We eat a lot of bread in this family!

Anadama bread

I will not recite the whole recipe, but this one includes a soaker, consisting of corn flour/polenta plus water prepared the day before the baking. The final dough has wheat flour and a substantial amount of molasses (I used Swedish "ljus sirap"). No wild yeast, just baker's yeast.

It was easy to prepare, but to be honest, we weren't overly thrilled by this bread – OK, I guess we'll finish it, but I won't be baking it again. But I'm definitely not sorry about that, it was fun trying!

I'll give this a 2. Or 3? No 2,5 – that's my final bid!

Both loaves were baked in aluminum pans, the left one with black non-stick coating, the right one without coating.

Nettlelette and nettle water

2009-05-03T08:52:00.001-07:00

May in Sweden means an abundance of emerging, young stinging nettles, if you know where to find them. When they're young and tiny, they don't sting, at least not so much, and the taste is delicious.

Nettles are very versatile and have been used for a very long time all over the world.

Quoted from Wikipedia:

”Stinging Nettle has a flavour similar to spinach when cooked, and is rich in vitamins A, C, D, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. Young plants were harvested by Native Americans and used as a cooked plant in spring when other food plants were scarceA soup made from the young shoots is considered a spring delicacy in Sweden. Cooking or drying completely neutralizes the toxic components found in this plant. Stinging Nettle should not be consumed after it enters its flowering and seed setting stages, as the leaves develop gritty particles called "cystoliths" which can irritate the urinary tract.

Soaking nettles in water will remove the stinging chemicals from the plant, which allows them to be handled and eaten without incidence of stinging. Young leaves generally have a better taste than older, more bitter leaves.

Nettles can be used in a variety of recipes, such as polenta and pesto. Nettle soup (or Nässelsoppa in Swedish, Nokkoskeitto in Finnish) is a common use of the plant, particularly in Northern Europe. Young nettle leaves are similar in texture to spinach and other leafy greens, and can be substituted for or mixed with other greens in recipes.

Nettles are the highest known vegetable source of protein: 40%, higher than meat or fish.”

Besides from cooking, nettles can also be used for various medical purposes, making textiles and for fertilizing (see below!) among many other things. Nettles also make excellent nurseries for butterflies, that's another good reason to keep them in your garden.

Nettlette – omelette with nettles

Lunch for 1

Appr. 0,5 liter/2 cups young nettle leaves
1/2 onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 eggs
salt, pepper
olive oil
grated parmesan or grana padana
herbs if desired
greens and veggies on the side

Rinse the nettles thoroughly and remove any coarse stems. Remove as much water as possible with a towel or a salad spinner. Chop them into smaller pieces.
Sizzle the onion and garlic a couple of minutes in the oil. Add the nettles and cook a couple of minutes more on low heat. Make an omelette batter or just add the eggs and stir a bit to break the yolks. Add the cheese and herbs (if any) on top and cook until the omelette is ready.
Eat with greens and/or veggies of your choice.

Make your own nettle water

Nettle water is high in nitrogen and can be used as fertilizer, it also strengthens the plant cell walls which makes the plant more resistent to fungus diseases.

Put 1 kg/2,2 lb fresh nettles in 10 litres/2,6 gallons water.
Let soak for 1 week.
Dilute to 10 %, i.e. use 1 litre/1 quart nettle water to 10 litres/2,6 gallons fresh water.
Apply the nettle water by watering or spraying the plants.
Watch it grow!

BBB goes Ethiopian -- Injera!

2009-04-21T00:43:00.001-07:00

I had never eaten Ethiopian food before in my life, which is a shame because we have many people from Ethiopia and Eritrea in Sweden, and quite a lot of them in the university city of Uppsala, where I live.

So this was an exciting thrill -- not only did I bake Injera, the traditional Ethiopian bread aka universal table spoon, but I also cooked the dishes that our hostess of the month, Mary aka Breadchick of The Sour Dough suggested, and we were enthralled. A million thanks, Mary!

The Injera bread is started with a starter, consisting of teff flour, a pinch of yeast and water. Teff or taf is an annual grass and an important food grain in the Horn of Africa. It turned to be hard to find teff flour in Sweden, but eventually I learned that teff is used by people with allergies, and so I found a website with products for people with all kinds of allergies.

You have to start the Injera at least 5 days before you want to make it. I understood that you can keep the starter for some time if you feed it every other day with 1/3 cups teff flour and 1/2 cups water. If you get too much volume, toss out half of the starter and then go on as usual.

This is what my starter looked like after a couple of days. My teff flour turned out to be very finely ground, and I didn't have to mix it to get rid of the gritty texture.

This bread does not require an oven, you cook them just like crepes in a pan. I used a non-stick pan which I didn't grease.

I'm not quite sure if this is the proper look, however, they tasted very good but were perhaps a bit too compact. Maybe I should have used more baking powder?

Along with the recipe for injera, Mary gave us several suggestions and recipes for Ethiopian dishes to go with it -- and I made them all! Very yummy, tasty and sometimes spicy -- exactly as we like it here!

Yes, we cheated and used spoons!! I made one veggie wot and one chicken wot. I also made Ethiopian Lentils with Yam and Ayib Be Gomen. I should have doubled the lentils dish, everybody wanted more of that.

Eggplant salad -- the eggplant cubes became surprisingly crisp after having marinated in lemonjuice and salt. We used black-eyed beans and chickpeas.

A perfect ending of a delicious dinner: oranges, peaches, strawberries, pomegranate and sugar mixed with mint and basil.

Mary has the complete recipe and all the necessary instructions for injera and these Ethiopian dishes over at her site, it is definitely worth to bookmark for immediate or future use! This was indeed a very pleasant experience for us, now we have to find an Ethiopian restaurant to visit to find out if their food is any better ...!

I am late as usual, so the other Babes of course already have their posts up -- please visit them:

Swedish semlor aka Lenten buns

2009-02-23T16:44:00.001-08:00

This is a very Scandinavian pastry which traditionally is made and eaten the day before Lent or the fasting period at Easter time, more specifically on Fat Tuesday, which this year happens to be tomorrow, February 24th. (Although in the southern-most part of Sweden and in Denmark, this bun was eaten on Monday of the Easter.)

When I googled for facts on semlor, I stumbled upon this and this article, which pretty much says it all.

And of course you need to be informed about the grammar: 1 semla, 2 semlor.

The buns

Makes 24 semlor (could easily be halved if needed)

150 g/5,2 oz butter
500 ml/2,1 cups milk
50 g/ 1,8 oz fresh yeast
150 ml/0,6 cups sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom (preferably freshly ground)
1/2 tsp salt
1500 ml/900 g/6,3 cups/2 lb wheat flour
1 small egg lightly whipped, for washing

How-to

Melt the butter. Add the milk and heat the mixture to 37° C/98 ° F. Crumble the yeast into a bowl, add the milk mixture and stir until dissolved. Add sugar, cardamom, salt, and almost all of the flour. Combine into a dough and knead 5 minutes by machine or 10 minutes by hand. Cover the dough and let rise for 40 minutes.
Pour out the dough onto a floured counter, give it a few kneads and divide into 24 peaces. Roll into balls and put them on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes. Heat up the oven to 225° C/435° F.
Wash the rolls with the whipped egg and bake in the center of the oven appr. 10 minuter or until they are golden brown. Let cool on racks covered with a cloth.

Filling

The traditional filling consists of almond paste, a small amount of milk and some bread crumb, which you of course get from inside the very buns that you are going to fill. If you can't get almond paste where you live, or if you don't like to buy it ready-made, you can easily make your own:

Almond paste
250 ml/1 cup sweet almonds
250 ml/1 cup confectioner's sugar (approx.)
0,5–1 egg white
2 bitter almonds
2 tsp water

Blanch the almonds and grind them finely. Combine the ground almonds with the sugar and egg white, add a little water if the paste is too thick, or more sugar if the paste is too thin.

The filling
400 g/14 oz almond paste
150 ml/0,6 cups milk
bread crumb
600 ml/ whipping cream
confectioner's sugar

Cut off a lid on each bun and carve out some crumb to make a hole. Grate the almond paste coarsely. Combine the crumb, almond paste and milk. Adjust with a little more milk if you think the mixture is too stodgy.

Divide the filling into the buns. Whip the cream and pipe or spoon it on top of the buns. Put the lid back on and sprinkle a little confectioner's sugar on the lid.

Semlor for vegans

My youngest daughter (soon 16) has recently become a vegan after some time being a vegetarian. At some occasions, one has to make special arrangements to accomodate this fact. This time, it wasn't very hard – although I still think that buns without the egg washing, or whipped soy cream just isn't quite what you'd want these days.

The eating of semlor

There are two main methods to eat semlor. You can hold it in your hand and just scoff it down, or you can place the semla in a bowl to which you add hot milk and use a spoon to eat it (a little more elegant and ladylike). If you eat it like this, the semla is also called "hetvägg" (from German "heisse Wecken" or "hot wedges", because of the shape that the Lenten buns often had those days.

Picture borrowed from alltommat.se

The croissants that the dog ate or at least licked on

2009-01-20T00:27:00.001-08:00

That is the punishment for being late and avoiding things until it's almost too late. I knew very well that this month's challenge wasn't going to be easy, so I really should have started earlier to be able to compensate for mistakes and retries.

I had never even thought of trying to bake croissants, so I was thrilled when this month's challenge was announced by Katie of Thyme for cooking. Silly, silly me to wait so long to start baking! The result of my first and only try was not really what I have anticipated, they were heavy and didn't have that flaky texture that you want in croissants. I think I should have folded the dough and rolled it out again more times than I did.

There was a discussion among the babes about the fluid content, and again there seemed to be at least partly an issue of the different flours that we use. One of the babes had used an additional l 100 ml of milk, but when I tried to do the same, I got a very loose dough and had to add more flour instead. I started over again, and now used an additional 50 ml of milk which was appropriate for my circumstances.

I don't know if this was subconscious decision, but I didn't close the gate (one of those gates intended to keep small children out or in, in our case used to keep the dog out) to the kitchen properly before I went to bed which of course resulted in the dog feasting on everything edible in the kitchen. OK, she left 3-4 croissants, but since she probably had licked on those, so no one wanted to eat them. And therefore, I didn't have to hear what I already knew, i.e. that the croissants were a failure ...

I don't think there was any problem with the instructions, since the other babes came out with good results, at least after a second try. If you want to try too, and become a Bread Baking Buddy, head over to Katie for the recipe, all instructions plus a lot of other interesting stuff about croissants.

And some of the other babes succeeded very well with their attempts, so I suggest that you steer over to them and see how they did it:

Bake My Day (Karen), I Like to Cook (Sara), Living on Bread and Water (Monique), My Kitchen in Half Cups (Tanna), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Notitie van Lien (Lien), The Sour Dough (Mary aka Breadchick), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn)

And I will definitely try again, some day I WILL bake good croissants!

Buddy Roundup - Rosendal crisp bread

2009-01-03T01:39:00.001-08:00

I guess that the Christmas and the preparations for it hit me with full force, I practically haven't done anything blogwise since November. This roundup was actually due nearly a month ago! That's bad behavior ... so sorry for that, Buddies, Babes all others!

Having said that, here are the competent Rosendal crisp bread buddies, in order of appearance:

Marjoke of Company In My Kitchen produced this lovely stack of bread:

Astrid of Paulchen's Foodblog completely understood the purpose of the hole:

Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina had an alternate interpretation, very good indeed, but the backdraw is that the breadholder might have walked away when you want to make a sandwich:

Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies used a breadholder that won't run away on its own:

Caitlin of Engineer Baker made snowman holes and crackers with her only cookie cutter (so much more fun than round holes):

Rita of Soepkipje made these beautiful breads and crackers (and also used an interesting bread pricking device, which picture I unfortunately couldn't copy):

Judy of judy's gross eats Mickyfied her crisp bread:

Gretchen of Canela & Comino added red pepper to some of her bread, that is something that I have to try:

Thanks to all Buddies for participating in this challenge, and for creatively giving new ideas on how to bake this bread!

Rosendal's crisp bread - updated

2008-11-16T16:20:00.001-08:00

Updated: All Buddies -- see below!

So, at last, it was my turn to choose a challenge for the Bread Baking Babes! As you may know, the Swedes like their crisp bread a lot, so much that people bring it when they go on vacation abroad. I'm sure this is one item that always can be found at every IKEA store abroad.

This recipe comes from the (in Sweden) well-known café Rosendal. The bread is very easy to make, but a little word of warning is called for. Don't try this at home! -- No, just kidding, the only thing you need to be careful about is the amount of flour. After a couple of baking sessions where rye was involved, I think we in the BBB have established that "rye" can vary a lot from one place to another depending on grind, how much of the grain that is included and whether "rye" actually is 100% rye or if it's mixed with wheat. Among other things.

Rye is also more sensitive to over-kneading, so if you're not sure about the proportions, it's better to hold back on the flour and add a little at a time, which can be done more gently than if you try to add more water to a dough that has become too stiff.

Ingredients

Makes 16 round breads

Pre-ferment
500 ml/2,1 cups milk
25 g/0,9 oz fresh yeast
3 tbsp honey
180 g/6,4 oz rye flour
80 g/2,8 oz whole spelt flour (or whole wheat flour)
50 ml/3,5 tbsp rye sourdough starter*
Optional: 1 tsp aniseed, pestled

* If you don't have any rye sourdough, you can easily make one in 3–4 days.

Dough
2 tsp salt
300 g/10,6 oz rye flour
100 g/3,5 oz wheat flour

Preparation

Pre-ferment:
Heat milk until it's lukewarm. Dissolve yeast and honey in milk. Add flours and sourdough. Cover with cloth and let rise for 40 minutes.

The pre-ferment is almost runny

-- but it rises very nicely!

Dough:
1. Add salt, the wheat flour and 2/3 of the rye flour to the pre-ferment mixture. Add more rye as needed until the dough is "firmish", but not stiff. It should still be a little tacky. Mix well, but don't knead. Let rise for 30 minutes.

2. Divide dough into 16 pieces, form the pieces into round, tight spheres and leave on table under cloth.

3. Heat oven to 200 °C/390 °F .

4. Roll out the dough balls to thin rounds. Prick the rounds with a fork and take out a hole in the centre with a small glass or a cookie cutter.

5. Bake** two rounds at a time for appr. 15 minutes until the bread is nicely brown and crisp. If necessary (watch out!), cover with foil during the last 5 minutes. Let cool on racks.

** I used my baking stone, but I think you can just as well bake on a cookie sheet. I placed the rounds on parchment paper on cookie sheets, and transferred only the parchment paper to the baking stone in the oven.

Comments:
The orginal recipe suggests variations such as substituting flour, adding caraway, aniseed or fennel, rolling in sunflower seeds or sesame seeds, brushing with olive oil and sprinkling caraway and salt flakes. I have tried some of these, and I have also tried brushing with water before sprinkling with sesame seeds. All very good, although in this round, I chose to stay traditional and just add aniseed to the dough.

I found that when I had brushed with olive oil and water, the bread became less brittle. The oiled bread was also more heat sensitive and needed to be covered earlier during the baking.

And -- if you want to go all Swedish -- butter the bread, top with sharp cheese, e.g. "Västerbottenost", and enjoy with a bowl of hot pea soup on a Thursday!

Some of the Bread Baking Babes couldn't make it this month, but I am very curious of how the other Baking Babes tackled this one -- let's go see:

I like to cook (Sara), Living on Bread and Water (Monique), Notitie Van Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn), Bake my Day (Karen), A Fridge Full of Food (Glenna)

Updated: Of course we welcome every Buddy out there to participate and bake with us this month, sorry for leaving that out before. If you would like to bake the knäckebröd, please send the link to your blog post to my mail address, granivor (at) gmail (dot) com, no later than ~~November 30~~ December 5, and I will compile and display all your fabulous entries shortly after that! If you like, use the following badge for your Buddy post:

Rye sourdough starter

2008-11-16T16:12:00.001-08:00

This is one of many ways to make a rye starter:

Day 1–3:
100 g/1 dl/0,43 cup water, luke warm
200 g/7 oz fine rye flour, preferrably organic (and 100 % rye)
100 g/3,5 oz shredded apple

Mix the above, cover and place the container at a warm spot (ideally 26–30 °C/79–86 °F). Leave it for three days, stirring it occasionally to promote the process.

Day 4:
Move the micture to a larger bowl. Add 200 g/7 oz rye flour and 200 g/2 dl/0,85 cup luke warm (35 °C/95 °F) water. Mix thoroughly and leave for another 24 hours.

Day 5:
Your sourdough should be ripe ny now, store it in the fridge until it's time to use it.

Challah

2008-10-20T08:44:00.001-07:00

Time för the Bread Baking Babes to present another baking challenge again! This month we had the joy of baking challah under supervision of Sara of I like to cook. Challah is a Jewish traditional bread, but according the Wiki article on challah, it is related to the Swedish bread barkis (in Göteborg) or bergis (in Stockholm). I had no idea of that, this was news to me! But there are lot of references to this on the internet, i.e. here and here (in Swedish).

This version of the bread (it seems that there are several) reminds me of Swedish Christmas sweet bread, a little because of the saffron, but also due to the texture -- but the challah is less sweet, and turned out to make very good toast bread.

The dough is smooth and elastic, and lets you form the mandatory braids with ease.

So here goes:

Challah – 2 loaves

750–780 g flour
12 g fresh yeast
3 tbs sugar
1,5 tsp salt
115 g soft butter
250 ml warm water
1 tsp cold water
4 eggs
Poppy seeds (or – if you're out – other small seeds)

Stir the saffron and the fresh yeast into the warm water until dissolved. Add sugar, salt, softened butter and the smaller amount of flour to the water mixture and blend thoroughly. Beat for 2 minutes with an electric mixer at medium speed.

Separate the yolk and white of one egg. Blend the single egg white and the other 3 whole eggs into the batter, and set the single egg yolk aside. Carefully add enough additional flour to make a soft dough. Continue to beat the dough by machine 5 minutes or by hand for 8–10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Let the dough rise until doubled (approximately one hour).

Take up the dough and give it a few kneads. Divide it into 2 equal parts, then divide each part into 2 pieces, with one piece about twice as big as the the other one. Divide each piece into 3 equal portions. Roll each of these into 12 inch ropes. Braid the ropes together tightly, using your fingers to press the dough together at the ends. Divide the smaller piece into 3 equal portions. Roll each of these into 10 inch ropes and braid tightly. Place the smaller braid on top of the larger one and seal the ends. Repeat this process to form the second loaf. Place both braided loaves on a greased baking sheet or on baking parchment.

Mix the reserved single egg yolk with the 1 tsp of cold water and brush the top of the loaves with the mixture. Sprinkle with poppy seeds. If you have any, that is – I didn't, and used sesame seeds on one of the loaves and nigella/kalonjii seeds on the other one.

Let the loaves rise until doubled in a warm, draft-free place (approximately one hour). Bake at 200 °C for 20–25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on wire racks.

I found it very good buttered, or toasted with a slice of not-to-sharp cheese.

Now you'll have to take a look at the challah made by the other Baking Babes:

I like to cook (Sara), Living on Bread and Water (Monique), Notitie Van Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Bake my Day (Karen), A Fridge Full of Food (Glenna)

Next month I am hosting – and we are going to make something Swedish!

BBB – The Splendid Sûkerbôlle

2008-09-30T03:05:00.001-07:00

I'm late! But better late than never! This sweet bread was September's challenge for the Bread Baking Babes, this time hosted by Monique at Living on Bread and Water in the Netherlands, and I urge you to head over to her post to read about the background of this pastry!

Indeed it was a challenge to get all the ingredients: the first one I couldn't find was ginger syrup -- I know that you can get candied ginger in glass jars somewhere in Sweden, but I couldn't find it now when I needed it. But I am very glad that I didn't, because then I had to make it:

... and as side effect, I got these little yummies:

The ginger syrup recipe came from Cookie Baker Lynn (who also happens to be BBB), and it turned out to be so easy, rewarding and inexpensive that I will do this again and again, believe me.

The next hard-to-find ingredient was the sugar grains or lumps that was supposed to be of a certain size: Parelkorrel suiker in Dutch, or is it Flemish? In Sweden you can buy "pärlsocker" (which probably is what parelkorrel suiker means), but those grains are smaller. The idea here is to create small pockets of sugar in the bread, and that requires rather large lumps. The simple solution was to cut ordinary sugar lumps for coffee into smaller pieces with a knife, I should say the final size was 6–8 mm or 1/4 inch. Here mixed wiith cinnamon powder:

And finally, I was all set, mise-en-place'd and all! So here's the recipe, and how I got the act together:

500 g all-purpose flour
10 g salt
1 tsp cinnamon powder (or more)
3 tbsp ginger syrup (see above)
Add milk to the ginger syrup to make a total of 2 dl (0,85 cup or appr. 7 fl oz)
25 g fresh yeast
75 g unsalted butter
2 eggs
150 g sugar grains (see above)

Melt the butter and add the ginger syrup/milk mixture. This needs to be luke warm, so either let it cool down or heat it up as necessary.

Dissolve the yeast in the buttermilk and add flour, salt, and the eggs. Beat the dough a couple of minutes by machine or 5 minuts by hand. It will become very smooth and elastic, and a little bit sticky, but not very much.

Let it rise for 45 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the sugar grains and mix with the cinnamon powder.

Take up the dough and give it a few kneads. Flatten it with your hands or a rolling pin. Sprinkle the sugar-cinnomon mixture on top of the dough, fold the dough on itself or roll it like a jelly roll, and then kind of knead the sugar lumps into the dough, but not too thoroughly, as the general idea I believe is to have it quite unevenly distributed.

Form the dough to a loaf and place it in a generously buttered bread baking pan. Let it rise for 15 minutes.

Bake in 200 °C / 400 °F for 30 minutes.

Try to wait until the sûkerbôlle has cooled down at least a little bit, then slice, spread with unsalted butter and enjoy!

And please steer over to the other Babes, who were participating in this month's challenge, and see how they made it:

Living on Bread and Water (Monique), Notitie Van Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Bake my Day (Karen), I like to cook (Sara)

My name is Rye, Onion Rye.

2008-06-25T13:44:00.001-07:00

I must admit that I am a very lousy blogger. I love reading other people's blogs, but I'm very bad at leaving comments and even worse at posting myself. Especially at this blog, the English one, is this the third post ever or something like that? But this month I decided that I really have write at least a little about the recent, very interesting Bread Baking Babes baking session, only now I am two days late!

This month's challenge was a dark rye bread, flavoured with molasses, onion and caraway. Besides from the onion, this is in fact very similar to Swedish "limpa", at least as far as it comes to the ingredients. The crust however, became completely different - much more chewy and rustic, exactly as I want it!

There were a lot of discussions about the flour, it appears that there are huge variations between American and European rye flour, and apparently even between Dutch, Italian and Swedish rye. It turned out to be a very interesting experience!

The comprehensive recipe, instructions on the starter and an in-depth discussion about rye flour can be found at Breadchick's place. Very interesting, and absolutely worth bookmarking!

Sullivan Street Potato Pizza

2008-04-21T04:33:00.001-07:00

Even if I failed to make a "real" posting of this month's Bread Baking Babes' baking challenge, I actually baked the Sullivan St Potato Pizza in March, so here are some photos from that baking session:

The dough never gave in and became fluffy, despite 30 minutes intense beating.

But look at the potatoes and rosemary filling, doesn't it look yummy?

The crust was thin, but together with the filling it became a very nice experience, much appreciated by my teenage children!

St Patrick's Crocodile

2008-03-17T15:36:00.001-07:00

Things didn't go exactly as I had planned yesterday or today, so it seems that I'm left with 40 minutes until midnight to make a post about my croc adventures. My eyelids are down at the floor, so I'm afraid this will be a very quick tour of my two versions of the crocodile bread.

Version 1:
Followed recipe, but had no stone-ground fluor, so took a locally produced organic flour, have absolutely no idea about protein content.

Bread # 1: flat, but tasty, good crust

Version 2, completed today, was made with Änglamark organic wheat flour (13 % protein) only. The dough was so wet that wouldn't even call it a dough, it was more like a thin souop (or filmjölk). I actually added 150 g extra flour and it still was very wet, but it was possible to handle.

S:t Patrick's Day bread – rose a bit more, very good flavour despite the colour

I'll try to complete this post tomorrow! Goodnight ...

Homage to the swede

2008-02-03T02:24:00.000-08:00

The American name, rutabaga, has Swedish origin too -
it comes from "rotabagge" which is the dialectal name
for swede in the Swedish province Västergötland.

I was very surprised but happy when my suggestion, the swede or rutabaga, actually became one of the ingredients in this round of Paper Chef. Traditionally in Sweden, this root has mostly been used in the dish "rotmos och fläsklägg" which is mashed swede and leg of pork. The pork is simmered with vegetables until very tender, and the swede is boiled in the broth together with a couple of potatoes and carrots. The roots are mashed with butter and some of the broth into a soft, hearty mash. The dish is served with Swedish, sweet mustard. I personally like to have some knäckebröd, crisp bread, with the dish, which is excellent buttered and covered with a layer of swede mash.

"Rotmos och fläsklägg" - picture from www.tasteline.com
where you also find a recipe to this dish in Swedish.

But the swede is versatile and can be used to so much more than this. I like to include it in casseroles because it adds depth to the flavour. It goes very well with garlic and parsley. Just like celery root, it is very nice to braise until al dente and then add cheese on top and put it under the grill.

The allotted ingredients are swede, potatoes, bacon and plum tomatoes - which I think go very well together and could be varied indefinitely into different dishes. Moreover, apart from the tomatoes, these are ingredients that I can find ecologically, locally and ethically grown/produced. In Sweden, we really should avoid tomatoes, paprika, cucumber etc. in the wintertime because they are grown in energy-consuming greenhouses and/or are transported long distances on carbon dioxide-spewing trucks BUT swedes, potatoes and other root vegetables can be grown locally and stored for a long time and be used most of the winter. During the 80's and 90's we got accustomed to be able to buy all kinds of vegetables all year around, and the root vegetables was regarded as the anti-thesis to the elegant, sophisticated, mediterranean style that we embraced at that time. Now, with the climate changing in mind and the growing awareness of the impact that our consumption has on the ecological system, the root vegetables have really come back in style.

And then we have the pigs. Adorable, intelligent, curious and playful creatures that really know how to enjoy life. Is it right to confine them in tiny, dark and noisy spaces and never let them see sunlight or root in the ground? At least I don't think so, so therefore I only buy pork from pigs that are kept outdoors as well as indoors, and have the possibility to express all their instincts and complex signals. Of course this meat is a little more expensive, but apart from the ethical view, the meat is so much more tasty - these animals have actually been using their muscles!

But enough lecturing! Today, I chose to make it very simple and combine the ingredients into a quite plain but tasty lunch dish.

1/4 swede/rutabaga, peeled and diced
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
50-100 g bacon (preferrably from a pig that was happy when living)
5-6 baby plum tomatoes
1 garlic clove
Parsley (fresh or frozen)
Salt, pepper to taste (and/or other herbs/spices)
Olive oil

Put the diced swede and potatoes in a small oven pan, sprinkle a little oil and salt and pepper (and/or other herbs or spices) and bake in 200 °C/440 °F for 15 minutes or until the veggies are half done. In the meantime, chop the garlic cloves finely togheter with the parsley. When the roots are half done, sprinkle the garlic/parsley mix on top and bake another 10-15 minutes. Add the plum tomatoes during the last couple of minutes. During baking, divide the bacon in smallish peaces and fry in its own fat until crisp. Spread the bacon on top of the baked vegetables and enjoy your lunch!

Food! Knitting!

2008-01-26T07:28:00.000-08:00

Two subjects that are pretty good to be blogged about in English. And just now, I decided to (at least try to) participate for the first time in this month's Paper Chef which from now on is hosted by my dear sister-in-law Ilva. Being a Swede myself, I suggested swede or turnip for one of the ingredients - of course!

I also just got a membership in Ravelry, where I realised that
1. the knitting trend is HUGE
2. I don't have time to work anymore, which is sad because
3. I need a lot more money to buy yarn, because there's so much yarn I need

But I won't just knit, I will cook a little too. Next weekend.

Just in case

2007-09-19T03:34:00.000-07:00

Just in case I should have enough time to submit an entry to one of the English-speaking food blogging contests - maybe even this year?