Austrian Easter bread, farmer's recipe

It is that time of the year again, where I can't wait for the taste of sweet bread with smoked meats, hardboiled eggs and

freshly grated horseraddish. It is very traditional to eat this kind of bread for the Easter holidays, some even put raisins

in it and there is a much softer almost no crumb version out there. Oddly everyone seems to fancy the contrast of

meat/radish/horseradish on a very sweet bread, but only for the holidays. It is a tradition,what can I say. My mom

scored this recipe from a farmer and she called me very excited to try this. I thoght it was about time to not only soak in

so many wonderful reciped but share a somewhat special and different one. So this is the 2nd year I have a go at it,

I have gotten a bit tired of the neverending sourdough fermentation times and my inability to keep track of time.  

This although is very different , it is a straightforward bread, you do not need a lot of time for it, and since it is so

enriched it does not benefit from long fermentation periods. I forgot how much fun it is to work with live yeast and

the sensational rise you get out of it, i doubt there can be a good sourdough version of this bread it is jsut perfect the way it is:

If former easterbread disappointed you because it was too soft, too little crust for you then you really

should try this it will reward you with a mouthwatering smell in your kitchen and a great aftertaste for your tastebuds

besides it is a LOT of fun to work with such a potent dough without all the wait usually included :)

Ingredients:

1000 g of bread flour

500ml of milk ( regular version, no skim milk )

130g of softened butter

1 lemon ( organic )

40g of live yeast

6 tablespoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of salt

lard ( from the pork )

I got very lucky these days finding the right kind of flour, more so because it is also very cheap it seems to have

an extreme tendency for perfect gluten development. Here bread flours are marked W700 this one is marked the

same way but milled a bit rougher than all the rest and binds very well. I recommend flour just like that.

To get started warm up the milk just a tad over handwarm, take a small bowl and dissolve first the sugar then

the live yeast in it. It is important to work with warm milk be careful to not get it too hot to kill off the yeast.

I followed a little discussion some time ago on sugar/yeast yes no.... All you need to do 

is take 2 bowls add yeast into it once with sugar, once without and observe. I always add the sugar it helps

your bacteria much faster along the way :) Let me prove that point, i started halfway with the bowl,

5 min later....

If you do not have live yeast I believe the correct formula is 2/3 dry yeast and 1/3 instant yeast instead

of the ammount of live yeast:

Pour the yeast and rest of the milk into the center of the bowl add the softened butter and one skin of a zested big lemon

be generous when you grate your lemon , add the salt and knead by hand, it is a fun dough to do so, once the dough is

firm and it should be firm, add one scooped table spoon of pork lard it will make the dough very silky and tasty.

I do not recommend omitting the lard and lemon since these 2 ingredients are what make this bread so special....

In the meantime put your oven on 180 degree Fahrenheit. As I mentioned before this dough does not benefit from

long fermentation and that is exactly the fun part for a change. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at

least to double( better triple ) in size within an hour at room temperature, the dough should be warm from the warm

milk still and smell sweet/lemon like, an awesome smell :). Here is my dough not even after 40 min, it tripled:

Knead the dough down to original size, a technique I almost never see in American recipes but very common here, is to do

exactly that, a double rise. Since time is no issue we can help the process along with our oven at 180F( 80celsius). Once the

dough is kneaded down divide in 3 parts and generously slash an X on top. Since this dough is highly active, try getting some

surface tension onto it as described in Peter Reinhards BBA. I kind of failed here a bit as you can see later. I didnt have a

baking stone nor did I find the right rack as I baked at my friends house. I would definitly use a stone if i I had one there...

There is no need to prepare the oven for hearth baking whatsoever even for phase 2:

I had to wait maybe 10 minutes till this happened at only 180 . Guess I did not build up enough surface tension.

Once doubled in the oven slide out the rack and cover the breads with a 50% egg yolk 50% milk mixture, crank up

the oven to 370 degrees Fahrenheit /  180 degrees Celsius

and slide the bread right back in, no need to wait till it reaches that temperature. Wait until the bread is golden

brown and makes a hollow sound when tapped.  I use hot air surround fan setting, if you do not have one

add 10 degrees.

Here is a shot of the final result, last year I had the height a bit better under control, you can also make the surface

more even when shaping, I did not bother it gives the bread a rustic look, and it is a farmer's recipe after all.

Here is a comparison shot the next day between an enriched sourdough I created ( curd cheese as enrichment/

pumkin seeds) You can see there definitly is a crumb and crust on this bread, much different than the storebought

ones that feel and taste like sweet Mc Donalds buns. This is one of the few breads that once taken out does not

benefit much from being toasted it will stay fresh quite a while and goes great with jam but also with the ingredients

I mentioned within the introduction. A special tip would be butter/hardboiled egg and some grounded horseraddish on top.

If you decide to make this bread I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did. Submitted to the YeastSpotting page

I've got a sandwich loaf recipe here that calls for a preferment that uses all of the water and a final dough that includes powdered milk, which I never have on hand.

The preferment is supposed to be very slack, batter like and fermented for up to 24 hours at room temp before use.

I know that the higher the hydration the faster a sponge develops, but would there be any obvious problem (enzyme action, black magic, bad juju?) using whole milk in the sponge instead of water and omitting the final dough's dry milk?

Thanks!

I have not had time to run any tests, but thought I would throw out the question.

Is reconstituted dry milk any better than milk?

Is it better to use dry milk powder mixed straight into the flour?

Should I scald the reconstituted dry milk to break down the yeast inhibiting enzymes (I forget the name at the moment) before baking?

Has anyone used King Arthur's Baking Dry Milk? How is it?

These are general questions and anyone with experience using these variables and knowing the benefits of each, I would graetly appreciate anything you can offer.

Cheers!

Dear bakers,

So many  of the wonderful bread recipes we use call for milk, buttermilk, butter, etc.   Have you found any good substitutes for any of these ingredients?  Specifically, would soymilk be a good substitute for milk or would some other food be a substitute for sour cream, for example?  Could cocounut or rice milk be used?  Any suggestions for butter substitute?  This all concerns those of our "customers" (aka family guinea pigs) who are allergic to dairy).

Please advise

My husband is British born and my Mother-In-Law loves cooking traditional meals even though they have lived on Australia for many years.  Here in the states, it's fun to experiment with different things British and one of my favorite dishes is Yorkshire Pudding.  People guess they are hard to make, but there really isn't anything easier.  We like them for Sunday dinner along with a roasted meat (usually beef) and a bit of gravy to go with it, although many people love these eggy crepe delights for breakfast too.

INGREDIENTS:

Whole Eggs, Milk, Flour and a pinch of salt (more on measurements below)

What is the secret to Yorkshires?  My Mother-In-Law says it's a very hot oven, smoking hot grease/fat and the right mixture of eggs, milk and flour.  She also has another secret that she was hesitant to share until I pressed her about measurements.  She said:

1.  Measure your eggs in a large measuring cup (Usually 4 whole eggs) - REMEMBER YOUR MARK!

2.  Now, measure exactly the same amount of milk as your eggs measured - KEEP REMEMBERING THAT MARK!

3.  Now, measure out exactly the same amount of all purpose flour as your eggs measured. 

In other words, if your eggs measured 1 cup, then you'd want a cup of milk and a cup of flour.  Now you have the three key ingredients for never fail Yorkshires... but there's more!

Using a mixer, blend together the eggs and the milk and add a pinch of salt.  Let that sit on the counter to rest in a bowl for about 10 minutes. 

In the meantime, take out a 12 muffin muffin tin or a 6 popover popover tin.  Pinch off about a pea size bit of beef fat, lard or if you want, you can use vegetable oil (approximately 1/2 tsp in each Yorkie cup.  Veg oil does not impart the roasted meat taste, but it is a decent substitute if you need one.

Now, your egg mixture should have rested long enough.  Now it's time to add the flour, but you'll want to sift it quickly into the egg/milk mixture.  Use your hand mixer and incorporate the flour, egg and milk together well until the consistency is like a thick cream.  Let this mixture rest on the counter for at least 30 minutes or longer.

About 15 minutes before you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Pop in the tin with the fat on the bottom and let it sit in the hot oven until it is starting to smoke.  This takes about 10 minutes. 

Remove the tin and quickly fill each cup about half way.  (Note:  you'll know your pans are ready if you hear the batter sizzle as you pour it in.)  Return the pan quickly to the oven and bake for 20 minutes.  Whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN YOUR OVEN during the baking time.  You can watch the show through the glass in your oven.. after about 8 minutes of baking, your Yorkies will begin to rise and they will emerge from your oven gorgeous, browned and crisp.  Enjoy them!

My path of research in bread making led me another step. This week I made yet another sandwich-bread and added different stuff into it.

I saw that in the several recipes most of the liquid in such bread consist of milk. It should make the bread richer in flavor as milk in oppose to water have a taste and in addition it contain some percent of fat.

All is good and well in theory. I already baked bread with water and bread with milk.

This time, I made two batches of the same recipe but in the second I replaced 2/3 of the liquid with milk.

Both bread looked almost the same. If there was any visual difference I failed to see it.

The crust on the milk bread was softer while the one with water was crunchier. There is a meaningful difference… I like both.

Another thing I wanted was thinner crust. So instead of baking at high temp with steam for 15 minutes (as I done in my previous bread) I reduce the time to 10 minute. The crust was good but thinner.

 To enrich the bread I added Pecans and Pumpkin seeds to the dough and sprinkled the top of the bread with Sunflower & Pumpkin seeds.

I didn’t use any preferment here, It was aimed to be a quick bread making. So, I used 3 teaspoons of yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar. This reduced raise time to 1 hour + 1 hour. I must try this same bread with the longer method to check the flavor difference. But this will be my project for next week J

I didn’t punch down the dough after the first rise. I just roll it out of the bowl and formed it. It looses enough air in any case.

Additional thing I tried with both loaves was to score them right after I formed them into loaves. This is because when I try to score the bread right before baking, it loose height. I should look for a razor blade as my knives (sharp as they are – 8” knife is too big) are not good enough for this job.

The Dough:

-       3 1/4 cups flour

-       3 teaspoons yeast

-       1 teaspoon sugar

-       1 ½ cup of water (replace 1 cup of water with milk)

-       1 ¾ teaspoon of salt

-       ½ cup of chopped Pecans

-       ¼ cup of Pumpkin seeds

-       ½ egg

-       ½ egg for glazing

-       Sunflower seeds for topping

Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, egg and water (or milk) into a unified mixture and let rest for 20 minutes.

Add the salt Pecans and Pumpkin seeds knead for 10 minutes. Let rise for 60 minutes.

Form into a loaf and let rise for another hour.

Bake in high temperature with steam for 10 minutes.

Reduce the heat (180-170c) and bake for another 40 minutes.

Until the next post

Ilan

Forum,

I'm a total newbie. I've made 6 loaves that I had to throw away,
Yet, I learn someithing new each time.
And Now I've got some random questions.

1) What does yeast do???
    Does it just aerate the dough?
    Or does it do more like change the dough's structure.

2) Does dough keep rising? or does it stop.
    E.g.: does the yeast reproduce or does it just eat?

3) If when proofing yeast, I'm to leave it in water for 10 minutes
    or until the water begins to foam.  What happens if I leave
    the proofing fluid for 20 or 30 min?  Is the yeast worse off,
    do I need to add more yeast or does it not matter? Again,
    is the yeast reproducing or just eating and dieing??

4) Can I fix fallen dough?? E.g.: the recipite calls for letting the
    dough rise for 2 hours, folding it and trasfering it into a
    9 x 5 bread pan and letting it sit for another 2 hours.
    BUT, I dropped the dough when moving it to the bread pan
    and now the dough is 1/3 its previous height.  Can I leave
    the dough in the bread pan for 4 hours or 6 hours to get the
    intended hight and airyness???

5) If a recipite calls for whole milk and I use 1% milk, can I
    expect the dough to be more or less airey?  Are there other
    changes, e.g.: sweeter

6) Is there a difference between covering dough with an airtight
    plastice wrap versus a breathable cloth??

Any thoughts would be wonderful!

John.
In Annapolis, MD

I learned last night that my wife has allergies.  She can't have brewers yeast or baker's yeast.   I've heard of creating a starter from just mixing and resting flour and water on the countertop for a long time.  Does this work?  Does it have the same properties as packaged yeast?

She's also, seemingly, allergic to cow's milk, but that's a whole different kettle to stir.

thanks in advance,

John

Today is my second day in baking bread in my life. I am easy to excited and fast to fall in love with something new and creative. This morning i bought The Bread Baker's Apprentice which The Flash Loaf recommended and find a recipe easy to follow and also funny to made —— the breadsticks. I use the white bread formula to make the dough, and using the half dough to make a simple loaf for my breakfast , another half dough to make my fingerfood breadsticks. The outcoming is delicious, i like the milk smell fill in my room when i am baking. I like the shape of the breadsticks, long, crisp and litte soft inside.

those are my second bread: white bread loaf and my breadsticks.

I actually put this together, meaning to for a while, after dmsnyder mentioned Suas's whole wheat. This is my first try at a truly 100% whole wheat bread and both Adam, my husband, and I think it's a keeper, but with one change: it needs more honey.

Soaker

• 200g whole wheat flour
• 115g white whole wheat flour
• 35g gluten flour
• 260g milk

Biga

• 200g whole wheat flour
• 150g water
• 5g instant yeast

Final Dough

• all of the soaker
• all of the biga
• 50g butter
• 55g honey (we think that 80g would have been better)
• 12g salt
• 25g milk

Method:

Put soaker ingredients together in a bowl and thoroughly combine. Set aside. Put biga ingredients together in a bowl and thoroughly combine. Place plastic wrap over both bowls and let alone for an hour or so. Mine went for a little over since I was feeding Alexander at the time.

To mix the final dough, break both the soaker and biga up into small pieces and place into the bowl of a stand mixer. Add all other ingredients and mix on low until everything is incorporated into the dough, then medium-low for 3-4 minutes until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. Place in a bowl for bulk ferment.

During bulk ferment I did 2 letter stretch and folds. I don't really think I needed to as the dough seemed to be very elastic, but I wanted to be sure. Allow to double after the second stretch and fold if you decide to do it. Overall, the dough got a 2 hour ferment.

Cut into two pieces and shape into loaves. This worked for 1 loaf sandwich bread and about 4 rolls. Baked at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, then went down to 325 for 10 minutes. I took the rolls out before turning the temperature down.

This is soft, light, and perfect for sandwiches. Both my husband and I like the fact that it isn't too heavy, yet it's 100% whole wheat. Considering the fact that none of my projects have been going completely right lately, this success (and one other that I'll mention on my other blog once I've figured it out *without* it being a slight accident) makes me feel good again.

Now I think I can tackle David's San Joaquin Sourdough. ;)