I was soooo excited about making the next bread on the BBA Challenge line-up because the picture in the book looked so cute!

This bread contains 1/3 rye flour, so I was getting a little nervous because Peter Reinhart was speaking of white rye flour. What the heck is white rye flour? He gives an explanation for that but I wasn’t sure how to apply that to the German flour types – the types indicate the ash mass (mineral content) – the lower the number, the less mineral content there is. Which means normal white wheat flour has small numbers (like 405 or 550, which I use for  cakes and cookies) whereas darker flour has higher numbers (like 1050 – a bread flour I often use). Wholegrain flour does not have a type number because the extraction rate is 100%. Applied to rye this means that a light rye  flour would be type 812 (which is used for light rye breads), whereas a heavy rye flour is type 1740 (which is used for savory breads). The only rye flour I could find at the grocerie store was type number 1150, so something in the middle which probably is not what Peter Reinhart means. I bought it anyways and thought I could blame the flour type if something didn’t work out .

It’s also kind of tricky to get molasses here, I mean the real molasses. Here, people often use sugar beet syrup in baking, and not molasses. But I was able to retrieve it at a health food store known in Germany as Reformhaus.

Ok, so I got home and started making 2 doughs which were strictly speaking the same except for the liquid caramel coloring that was added to the dark rye dough. Additionally to the liquid caramel coloring I added 1 teaspoon of carob powder which I also retrieved at the health food store. I didn’t add caraway to either of the doughs because non of us really cares for this spice. I actually really dislike caraway.  Mixing, kneading and proofing as always.

Then came what I think was the interesting part: the shaping. Since the recipe makes 2 loaves I wanted to try 2 versions Peter Reinhart suggested: a spiral loaf and a braided marbled rye. So first I had to divide both the light and the dark rye dough into 2 portions.

For the braid I divided the braid portion of the light rye dough into 2 pieces. I did the same with the braid portion of the dark rye dough. Then I rolled out the pieces into strands, so in the end I had 4 strands (2 light and 2 dark ones). I braided those strands using the 4-braid-method and placed the loaf on a loaf pan.

For the spiral loaf I divided the light spiral portion into 2 pieces. Same goes for the dark spiral portion. I rolled out each of the pieces with a rolling pin into an oblong, took a light rye piece and laid a dark rye piece on top, then added a light rye piece again and one more dark rye piece. Then I rolled this stack up into a bâtard, sealed the bottom and placed the loaf in a loaf pan.

I sat them aside for proofing, preheated the oven, brushed the loaves with the egg wash – and in the oven they went. I was thrilled when I took them out – both breads just looked gorgeous.

They tasted really good and I think this bread makes a really nice sandwich bread. The only weird thing is that due to the coloring we somehow expected something sweet (like it was a chocolate spiral or something) even though we KNEW that this was a bread and not a cake. I guess, we eat too much chocolate cake .

I definitely would recommend making this bread. I think it makes a wonderful bring along to a party or a nice gift.

Not much to say about this bread. #18 in the BBA Challenge, a light wheat bread. I guess, it was too light for me: the whole-wheat flour was a little more than 1/3 of the flour amount. When I eat whole-wheat bread, I want more whole wheat, so if I had to make it again I’d probably reverse the flour amounts and use 2/3 whole-wheat flour and 1/3 bread flour. Well, probably I won’t even make this one again, because I have better recipes that even use 100% whole-wheat flour.

Don’t get me wrong. The bread was ok, the recipe worked out fine – I just didn’t get really excited about this bread.

I wasn’t too excited about making these crackers because so many people participating in the BBA Challenge had been disappointed. So much work for just a little result…

Flour, salt, yeast, honey, oil and water were mixed together. Even though Peter Reinhart wrote that the dough would be almost as stiff as bagel dough and therefore it would be easier to knead it by hand than in a machine I used my kitchen machine and didn’t have any problems. After 90 minutes of fermentation I had to roll out the dough into a paper-thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. This is where I paused for a moment. Wait, 15 by 12 inches? That is 38 by 30 centimeters, my pan is only 35 by 29 cm, so there would be some dough left. Anyway, this again is another example for the fact that everything in the US seems to be bigger. I guess, the most famous example is an American refrigerator. Americans would be amazed how my standard German refrigerator (here’s a similar one – the upper part is the refrigerator, the bottom part is the freezer) holds food for 5 people for a week – yes, I go grocerie shopping once a week only. I’m wandering from the subject now.

So, I had some dough left. Then the fun part began. These are the spices I used: white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, salt, kurkuma, paprika, garlic flakes, thyme, curry, and Italian herbs. I think the result looked pretty nice!

I cut stripes in the dough and baked it for about 10 minutes. The crackers were eaten just right out of the oven. The kids didn’t like them at all, but I thought they were pretty tasty. I don’t think I will make them again, though. I think the result is just not rewarding enough…

And what happened with the remaining dough? I stuck it in the refrigerator for 2 days and read through the Cracker chapter again to find that this dough makes a nice pita bread.

You have to roll out 6-ounce-pieces of the dough into a circle and bake them in a 500°F oven on a sheet pan. OK, 6 oz? How much dough was left? Exactly 5,95 oz. Perfect! So I rolled it out, stuck in the hot oven and baked it just until it inflated and formed a pocket. Then, Peter Reinhart says, you have to count to 10, remove the bread from the oven, let it cool to deflate and cut in half then. That’s what I did, and I was impressed by the inflation in the oven. I was kind of afraid the pocket would explode so I counted to 8 only and removed the bread from the oven then. But look at the following pictures that show the process pretty nicely. I was really proud at the bottom of the pita bread because it exactly looked like the bottom of commercial pita breads I remember.

So, even though I won’t make this dough for crackers again, I’m pretty sure I’ll make it again to bake pita bread. It looked nice, tasted like pita bread and it’s a welcome change for my picky eaters at home .

I procrastinated the next bread on the BBA Challenge list – Kaiser rolls – for a couple of weeks because I can buy really good Kaiser rolls at every corner here. So I was not really motivated because I was sure my rolls definitely wouldn’t be better than the ones from the bakery.

Just in case you are wondering whether Kaiser rolls are really typical for Germany or “only something Americans think is German, or some American variation of something that is German” (as my friend Sara from Three Clever Sisters put it) – IMHO they are typical. You can buy them not only in Southern Germany (where they maybe originally come from), but in every part of Germany. Here in the Berlin area all poppy seed rolls are Kaiser rolls, but you can buy plain ones, too. I LOVE the poppy seed version!

For Kaiser rolls, I had to make a pâte fermentée again which spent the night in the refrigerator. The next day, it came out of the refrigerator, was divided into 8 little pieces to de-chill and then mixed with more flour, salt, diastatic  barley malt powder, instant yeast, an egg, oil and some water. After 2 hours of  fermentation the dough was nice and smooth, so it was easy to form 10 rolls which had to rest for another 10 minutes.

In the absence of a kaiser roll cutter I wanted to use an apple slicer because I had read somewhere that this would be a good substitute. I used it on 3 rolls only, though, because the rolls got totally flat and I couldn’t imagine that they would rise that much that they would look like rolls again. So I used the knotting technique for the remaining 7 rolls – this was easy-peasy and a lot of FUN!!!!

The rolls had to proof for 45 minutes and then be flipped over to proof for another 45 minutes. I didn’t have a problem until I got to the second part of proofing. I had to pick up my kids from daycare during that time and it took WAY more time than 45 minutes (let’s put it that way: picking up a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old from daycare can be a protracted procedure). Anyway, when I got home I had 10 flat flat-fish on the pan. I didn’t want to put them in the oven that way, so I took up every roll, kneaded and knotted it again, and proofed it for another 45 minutes. I misted them with water and sprinkled white and black sesame seeds over the top. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any poppy seeds . Then they went in the oven and came out pretty beautifully 20 minutes later. They DID look nice and they tasted fine, but I prefer the version from my bakery down the street! The kids loved the ones with the black sesame seeds a lot, though, because you won’t find black sesame seeds on any bread here in Germany. So they thought the rolls looked funny and interesting.

When looking at the recipe for the next bread of the BBA Challenge I couldn’t really figure out what the difference might be between French and Italian bread.  Ok, French bread is made with a pâte fermentée (pre-ferment with salt), whereas Italian bread is made with a biga (pre-ferment without salt). And Italian bread contains oil and diastatic malt powder whereas the recipe for French bread doesn’t need any of these. But the result is something that looks like a baguette to me. Anyway, Peter Reinhart says that also the Italian bread is softer and less crusty than French bread. Still, I couldn’t really imagine I would even notice a big difference between the two. Anyway, this bread was part of the challenge, so I didn’t want to skip it. And, OMG I am sooooooooo glad I made this bread.

First, I had to prepare the biga and let it rest in the fridge for 2 days. On the baking day I removed it from the refrigerator and cut it into several small pieces well before making the dough so it could de-chill (does this word exist in English at all?) a little bit. I added more flour, salt, sugar, yeast, diastatic barley malt powder, olive oil and milk.

Finding diastatic barley malt powder here was quite a challenge. First, I couldn’t figure out what diastatic and non-diastatic would be in German – well, it’s not hard to translate because diastatic = diastatisch and non-diastatic = nicht-diastatisch. But these weren’t the terms being used when I was looking for malt powder in different online stores. But finally I found out that for diastatic malt powder the term “enzymaktiv” is used.

As always, kneading and fermenting… When it was time to divide the dough into either 2 pieces for loaves or 9 pieces for torpedo rolls, I went for the rolls option. We just had eaten the baguette the day before; plus, I wanted to try out something else design-wise. Ok, so there were 9 rolls that had to be formed into torpedo rolls which I more or less successfully did. Some more proofing, and then it was scoring time again. Of course, I couldn’t be much more successful than the day before with the French bread because I still had the same razor blade and still no clue what went wrong the day before. So I used the same technique as with the French bread, and of course had the same result. No nicely scored rolls. Oh well. They went into the oven anyway. Who cares about scoring? I do, actually .

Maybe the rolls didn’t look really THAT pretty, but flavor-wise they were FANTASTICO. This was the best bread I’ve ever eaten and I will totally make it again very soon!

]]> http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/bba-challenge-15-italian-bread/feed/ 1 ap269 Italian Bread http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/bba-challenge-14-french-bread/ http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/bba-challenge-14-french-bread/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:15:05 +0000 ap269 http://ap269.wordpress.com/?p=674 ]]>

The next bread on the BBA lineup was French bread. We buy baguettes every now and then because the kids like it so much, so I was curious whether my homemade baguette could stand up to the – admittedly good – bakery version.

This was the first time that I had to make a pâte fermentée. This is, simply put, plain French bread dough that has to stay in the refrigerator overnight. Ok, I mixed together the pâte fermentée, put it in the refrigerator, took it out the next day 1 hour beore making the dough, cut it into 5 small pieces (I wanted to make only 1 big baguette, so I used half the recipe) and let sit covered for about an hour to take off the chill.

Then I stirred together flour, salt, yeast and the pâte fermentée, added water and kneaded it with my kitchen machine. I transferred the dough to an oiled bowl, covered it and fermented it for about 2 hours. After fermentation, I formed the dough into a baguette which means making a bâtard first, then pulling it out from the ends, creasing the dough down the middle and folding it like a letter. Then I had to roll out the dough to the desired length and prepare it for proofing. As I don’t have a couche and don’t intend to buy one, I built a couche-like construction using baking paper and kitchen towels. Et voilà, here’s my baguette ready for proofing (hmm, it might be the proofed version already):

Anyway, after about 60 minutes I prepared the oven for hearth baking – I had much more routine now compared to my ciabatta baking day. I wasn’t even afraid to break the glass or something. Before baking I wanted to score the baguette which didn’t really work. I used a razor blade, and couldn’t handle it at all. This is the result:

I guess, I have to work on that a little more. Maybe the lame I just ordered will help me to do better scoring next time. Anyway, I put the bread in the oven, went thru all the hearth baking procedure, baked the bread and received a yummy bread that DID taste like baguette. At least like our local bakery’s baguette. I don’t want to guarantee, though, that it does taste like real French baguette from Paris – I’ve never had one, so I can’t compare.

]]> http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/bba-challenge-14-french-bread/feed/ 3 ap269 French Bread baguette couche failed scoring Baguette slices http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/bba-challenge-13-focaccia/ http://ap269.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/bba-challenge-13-focaccia/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:30:43 +0000 ap269 http://ap269.wordpress.com/?p=661 ]]>

I know, I know – I’m really late on posting my BBA Challenge results. But I’m clearing the backlog .

We hadn’t had pizza for quite a while and my kids were craving it so I thought the pizza-style focaccia would be a good thing to make. I don’t really remember whether it was the non-poolish or poolish version, though, because the pizza baking happened almost 3 months ago. I think, it was the poolish focaccia, though.

I followed the instructions through the stretch- and-fold and bulk fermentation stages. Then I transferred the dough to a bed of flour, divided it into 8 pieces, gently rounded them into loose balls, taking care that they would degas as little as possible. Then I put them into soufflé molds, covered them with plastic wrap and refrigerated them for 2 days or so.

On the baking day I took them out of the fridge long before baking to take off the chill. Then I gently pressed the dough  pieces with my fingertrips into disks, transferred the disks to a sheet pan, rubbed some herb oil over the top and pressed peppers, mushrooms and pepperoni (salami) into the center of the dough. I covered it with plastic wrap and let it proof for about 2 hours. Then I added cheese and baked it for about 12 minutes.

The result was a yummy pizza, so the kids said. I REALLY  liked the flavor of the herb oil and will make the focaccia soon without all the toppings and just the herb oil.

This is the cake I made for my 2-year-old daughter’s fall festival at her daycare. I used the basic recipe for my devil’s cake and decorated it with M&M’s.

This is the cake I made for my son’s 4th birthday party at his daycare. Everybody was thrilled!

Jeez, I don’t even remember when I made these English muffins. The picture details tell me it was 3 months ago. I’m not sure I still remember much about the process of making them. Anyways, here’s my story .

I was kind of curious about baking English muffins because I’ve never heard of them before. Then my friend and her family from the US came to visit us, we went grocerie shopping together and she said her husband liked English muffins for breakfast a lot. We actually DID find them in the bread section of the supermarket – they are called “Toastbrötchen” here (toast rolls – I guess, the “English” is omitted because Germans hate the English – do I have to mention the Wembley goal of 1966?). Actually, I could have made the BBA challenge English muffins then because they were the next thing on the BBA list but I didn’t want to be a bad host and offer something I had never made before so I waited till our guests’ departure. The advantage of this procedure – I could compare the store-bought muffins with the self-made muffins .

I mixed all ingredients together, fermented the dough for about 90 minutes, divided the dough into 6 equal pieces, shaped them into boules and proofed them for another 90 minutes. Then I heated two skillets and preheated the oven. I carefully lifted the boules to the pan and waited… I could not cook them for the recommended 5-8 minutes because the bottoms started to burn, so I flipped them over and cooked them for another 4 minutes or so. The book said the dough would flatten in the pan and spread lightly – my boules didn’t flatten at all. Anyway, I transferred the cooked boules to a sheet pan and baked them for about 8 minutes in the oven.

These English muffins were fabulous, both untoasted and toasted. It was like they melted in my mouth. Undescribable. I’ll definitely make them again, I just have to find out how to master my stove a little better so the bottoms don’t burn that early.