Baking Bread

As you may know I follow lovely Lucy's blog called Attic24. She introduced a bread recipe (no-knead bread) which seemed to be very easy to follow and which looked so scrummy that I had to try it.
I already baked bread, but only with the no-fail, easy bread recipe I blogged about in September. The main difference to the easy bread recipe is the amount of time for the yeast dough to rise - and it really takes time for the no-knead bread, around 12 - 18 hours! And it's worth every hour waiting: the taste is terrific and the texture wonderful. It reminded Peter and me of the white bread we have eaten at an Italien restaurant.
I baked this bread twice already and I can confirm that it's really quick and easy to set up the yeast dough. The first time just plain. The second time with some olive oil and black olives added.



You have to be patient again when taking the bread out of the oven and wanting to cut off a piece of it. The better it cooled the better to slice.

So this was my breakfast on Saturday morning: freshly baked olive bread with butter, orange-banana juice and green tea with lemongrass. Oh what a great way to start the day!

Apple Crumble

Autumn time is apple time! And I love the smell of apples. Unfortunately I cannot eat them raw, they need to be either cooked or baked. So an easy and quick way to eat apples is to make some apple crumble.

You need:
150 g butter
500 g apples
1/8 l white wine or lemon juice
100 g flour
100 g ground almond or flour
100 g sugar

Peel apples, cut into pieces and mix it with the white wine or lemon juice.

I do this in the baking pan, so less dishes to wash afterwards.

Then combine butter, flour, ground almond and sugar in a bowl until you get crumbs. You can substitute ground almond with flour and white sugar with brown sugar. If you like you can add some cinnamon spice. Then scatter the crumbs on the apples.

 Now place the baking pan into the preheated oven (175° C) and bake until crumbs are golden (approximately 20 minutes).

 Take out of the oven and enjoy the apple crumble while still hot. Delicious! :-)

Easy bread recipe

This morning I felt like having freshly baked bread for breakfast, and I remembered an old, no fail  recipe I have used before.

You need following ingredients:
500 g flour
450 ml water
40 g yeast
1 tbs honey or sirup
2 tbs vinegar
1 tsp salt
Variations: sunflower seeds, pumkin seeds, oat flakes, dried onions.......

First dissolve yeast (fresh or dried) in warm water, add honey or sirup and stir. I use sugar beet sirup which gives a light brown coulour. Then stir in the vinegar and add salt.
Now mix flour and your favourite seeds until you get a dough which is quite sticky.

As for the flour I use wheat, spelt, maize meal or whatever is available. You can mix different types of flour as well.
And for the seeds you can also add anything you like, you can also add nuts or bacon bits or raisis if you like it sweet. I ususally add about one to two handfuls of variation ingredients.

Grease a loaf pan and fill in the dough.

Put the pan into the oven and bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 50 minutes. You do not need to preheat the oven! When finished take the bread out of the pan, turn off the oven and put the bread back into the oven for another 10 minutes to get a nice crust.

Take the bread out of the oven and when the bread has cooled down it is much easier to cut. But I cannot wait.I love warm freshly baked bread with butter. Soooo delicious! The bread stays fresh for about three days. I cover it up with a large glass bowl. Mostly it is gone very quickly though ;-)
A very easy recipe indeed where you can use whatever is in store. Try and enjoy!

Onion Tart

I love all things baked. And I love to bake and cook, but mostly there is only time at weekends for cooking. Yesterday Peter surprised me with a delicious onion tart. It's a simple recipe and serves 4 people.

ONION TART
For the pastry:
250 g flour
250 g curd cheese (German: "Quark")
250 g margarine or butter
1 tsp of salt (optional as ham and cheese already contain enough salt)

For the filling:
1 kg onions
300 g ham or bacon
300 g cheese
4 eggs
4 tbs milk
2 tbs flour
pepper, nutmeg, chervil, herbs of the Provence, basil

a) First make a pastry. Mix all ingredients for the pastry and make a dough. If you cannot find curd cheese, try joghurt instead. Spread the dough evenly onto a baking tray.

b) Then prepare the filling. Chop the onions and stir fry them with a little bit of oil in a pan until glazed. Dice ham/ bacon and stir fry shortly as well. (We usually buy diced ham.)
Now spread the onions and the ham/ bacon evenly onto the pastry.

c) Grate the cheese (any type of hard cheese will do) and sprinkle onto the filling.

d) Now whisk the beaten eggs together with milk and flour and add the seasoning. I have used dried seasoning, but you can also use fresh herbs. If you can't find herbs of the Provence you can also use (dried) marjoram, thyme, savory, rosemary and sage. Or just the herbs you like or have in store. Pour the mixture over the onion-ham/bacon filling.

e) Place the baking tray in the middle of a preheated oven and bake at 200°C for about 20 minutes. The pastry should have risen a bit and the cheese is melted and golden brown.

 

Cut the tart into pieces, serve and enjoy! You can serve new white wine with the onion tart (usually available end of September/ October). It's very yummy!