I´m here back now in this my first post of 2010.

I´m an artisan bread baker from Petrópolis, Brazil, where i started baking breads to survive. I have had a pet-shop at my city for 23 long years , but i´d losted my business on a riverflood at 2003, January. The waters invaded my pet-shop and destroyed all. Then, with lots of bills to pay, lots of unsolved payments i declared me on bankrupt. The next years were so hard times and for many following days i had no money to buy breads on bakery. Then i decided to study recipes of breads and study how to bake my own bread at home. I found a new recipe of that famous Jim Lahey´s no-knead method and started to bake that breads first to my own, but then i decided to sell them to neighbors, parents, and friends. Parallel i´d started to reasearch lots of new breads from all the world´s corners. Now, after one and 8 months after that challenge, i have my own small bakery where i produce a variety of 170 breads, cakes and buttered biscuits. I had my history narrated at one of best reportage Tv show in Brazil from local Globo Network Tv. My history you could view in this video but the language is our local portuguese:

http://g1.globo.com/globoreporter/0,,MUL1052006-16619,00-COMERCIANTE+REVELA+RECEITA+PARA+SUSTENTAR+A+FAMILIA.html

And here you could view my flaxseed bread step-by-step recipe of that Jim Lahey´s bread version, but still in portuguese language:

http://g1.globo.com/globoreporter/0,,MUL1052070-16619,00-VEJA+COMO+PREPARAR+O+PAO+INTEGRAL+DE+TRIGO+COM+LINHACA.html

  I hope you enjoy it.

After those months of many reasearchers i baked lots of ethnic breads and Challah Bread is one of my favorites.

In my city, of Germanic colonization, i´ve been contacted on last June to bake breads at a local Germanic Festival called Bauernfest. And i created an original bread for that event, that folks loved a lot. With the Challah dough, i baked a bread filled with honey brushed on top, sliced rippened bananas, walnuts and golden raisins, sprinkled with grounded cinamon. When i finished, i´d folded that bread similar like Germanic Strudel. It turns AMAZING. The people at festival looked to that loaves and asked me imediatly: Is it a Strudel??? Then i decided name that bread as Jewish Strudel.

Then it was a ´must` after that occasion. Always baking Jewish Strudel i become famous among locals and i decided to begin the 2010´s post productions here sharing with you this bread i think you´ll love a lot!

Here the recipe:

You could begin making the dough of KAF blog´s recipe for Challah you get here:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2009/01/05/challa-lujah/

Then, do the following path:

Rest the  original dough of Challah to double size for one hour, then deflate it and rolling it in a great rectangle shaped dough. Brush the surface of dough with honey, sprinkle clover and cinnamon all over the dough, then sliced sliced rippened bananas or apples, golden or sultan raisins and a lot of chopped walnuts. Then fold the dough in a third then another folding in last third, just like an envelope sealed. Sprinkle an amount of wheat all purpose flour and cinnamon clove mixture at top and bake exactly like you done with Challah.

This bread turns excellent, with astonishing aromas and softly sweetened dough. You could variate the fruits you choose for filling it with a diferent assortment like figs, black prunes, apricots, combining them with those correspondent jams to brush on surface. It´s amazing when sliced the bread with fresh heavy cream on top.

For your mouthwatering P.J.Hamel promised me to publish a recipe and picture of this marvellous Strudel...a Jewish Strude for next posts at KAF blog!

This morning I woke up and decided, why some bread? Why not some bagels! And that is all it took to start my bagel baking!

Now I was rather excitied with how these turned out! Especially since I created my own recipe seeking out a nice, chewy, multi-grain bagel in the end.

To start with;

I combined in a large bowl - 1 and a half cups of luke warm water, a packet of yeast and 1 tablespoon of organic cane sugar and then set it aside while I continued on with the other ingredients.

I proceeded to mix together 2 tablespoons of organic cane sugar, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 2 table spoons of organic vital wheat gluten, 1 cup of KAF Organic Flour, 2/3 Cups KAF White Whole wheat flour and 1/3 cup mix of 10 grain cereal until well mixed.

Then I poured in the yeast mixture and proceeded to mix the dough adding a bit of water until it came together into a nice semi-shaggy mass which I then in turn promptly floured my counter and proceeded to kneed the dough for 8 minutes until I achieved a slighty tacky dough.

Once the gluten was developed to what I felt was sufficient, I gave it an hour rest covered with plastic wrap in a oiled bowl.

After the rest I pre-heated my oven to 425 f and also started boiling a large pot of water with a pinch of salt and moved onto forming tweleve balls of dough out of the original bagel dough making sure to cover them with a damp towel after they were formed.

Then onto the bagel shaping and boiling! By taking an individual piece of dough I proceeded to poke my thumb gently through the middle until I made a slight hole. When this happened I started to have fun by placing the dough ring on my index finger and twirling it around until the hole was almost the size of a 50 cent piece. Once all the bagel were shaped I placed them (3 at a time) in the boiling water and boiled them for 1 minute, then flipping for another minute and placing them on my baking sheet and covering with sesame or poppy seeds then a towel until all were ready to bake.

After all of the fun the bagels were ready to bake and I proceeded to bake them for 20 minutes in batches of six. The end result was exactly what I wanted!

I also attempted my first strudel today using some organic whole wheat phillo dough, unforunately it looks sloppy, but it did taste excellent for lunch as dessert! And I know I will be attempting to 'strudel' again.

It was filled with fresh strawberries coated in powdered sugar, delicious!