Ingredients:

• 1 dl (100g) lukewarm to warm water
• ½ dl (50g) plain naturel yogurt
• 15g fresh active yeast
• 8 g honey
  (pref. liquid)
• 10 g sea salt
• 10 g olive oil
  (this is a minimum, feel free to use more, I reckon 25g would be ideal)
• 250g various types of flour, I used and recommend:
  30g Graham flour
  70g semolina flour
  150g wheat baking flour
• Poppy or sesame seeds or for sprinkle

This recipe is very small, the smallest I've ever made. Usually I double the ingredients mentioned, except for the yeast, the dough rises just fine with 15g.

Recipe:

(Work: 20 mins - 1st rise: 30 mins - work: 5 mins - 2nd rise: 35 mins - bake: 30 mins)
Estimated time from start to finish: 2 hours 

Mix the warm water and yogurt, so you get a tepid mixture. Add the yeast and stir till dissolved. Add salt and honey and dissolve. Add the flour to the mixture, I ususally add 100g, mix and add then add more.

Knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes, put it into an oiled container, cover it with a hot teatowel and leave it to rise for 30 mins or so, can be more or less, usually more means better and less means less good.

Should be doubled after half an hour and shape it into a loaf. Place the loaf onto your baking surface of choice. Pat the bread with milk and sprinkle the seeds on top of it. Cover it again with a warm towel and let it rise for 30-60 minutes; Afterwards put the loaf into your oven.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and it makes that hollow sound you know so well, when you knock on the bottom of it.

Enjoy.

So... time to try something new and the pictures of the pita breads on the right side of TFL has always appealed to me.

Being European, I had to use some other measurements and didn't bother getting the exactly like the recipe, so here's what I did, inspired by http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pitabread.

Ingredients: (Made 8 pita breads á 50g)

• 1 dl tepid water
• 15g fresh yeast
• ½ dl plain natural yogurt (I can't seem to stop using this in my creations)
• 5g sea salt
• 5g honey
• 10g olive oil
• 50g durum/semolina flour
• 150g regular wheat baking flour + some for dusting and adding as nessecary.
• Optional: Spices (I used a tiny bit of ground chilli, smoked paprika and ground cilantro)

Mix the yeast with the water, add the yogurt, oil, salt and honey, mix well with a fork, till it's a greyish, oilish mixture.
Add the flour, a little at a time (100g) and stir with the fork as long as it makes sense.

Knead for around 10 mins or so. Let it rise under a luke warm tea towel in a warm place for 30 mins.

Carefully fold and strech the dough, and make a sausage. Cut the dough-sausage into appropriate size lumps, I weighed them and made them 50g. Let the pieces rest and rise for 5 mins.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough and hopefully you'll succeed in making them circular as well. Just make it really thin, not paper thin, but 3-5mm thick.

By this time your oven should be really hot (max. heat) and if you have a baking stone (which helps), it should be hot as well. Place the pancake lookalike dough onto the stone and bake them for 3 mins in 200°C or to taste. The breads should blow up like balloons.

Cut them up sidewise and enjoy your pitas.

Filling suggestion:
Garlic and herb roasted shoulder of lamb, sweet corn, tomato, cucumber, salad leaves and hot salsa.

...I'm going to quit blogging now and eat some more...

Been experimenting a little lately, and so far this is the recipe I'm most satisfied with. Baked it twice already and it's been amazing both times.

200g wheat flour
200g durum/semolina flour
40g wheat flour - for dusting and adding if it's too sticky.
15g fresh yeast
200g water
15g sugar
5g sea salt
100g plain natural yogurt
25g oil (preferably olive)
40g carrots.

Peel the skin off the carrots and use your peeler to finely slice bits of the carrot. Chop the carrot slices to reasonable pieces, quite small.

Mix the yeast with the tepid water as usual, add the sugar and salt and mix everything. Add the yogurt, make sure it's about room temperature, if it's too cold, microwave it for a few seconds, add the oil as well.

Get your flour in the bowl, add around 100g at a time and mix with a fork for as long as it makes sense. Get your hands in and start the kneading. The entire dough needs to be kneaded for approximately 10 minutes. While kneading add the carrots, little by little, so they get into the dough.

Get the dough into a bowl and let the dough rise for 6 hours (should quadruple). Get the dough out and handle it really carefully, shape it into loaves or rolls and let it rise under a moist lukewarm clean towel for around 2 hours.

Get your oven to maximum temperature, place the bread in and turn the heat down to 200°C. Bake it to taste or until golden brown. If possible spray milk on the loaf/rolls every once in a while. If possible, use steam while baking.

Expect incredibly light, fluffy and tasty bread.

*They are not supposed to be this burned

I am wondering something.

I made Peter Reinharts' whole wheat bread with soaker and biga.  In the soaker, since I didn't have any buttermilk (and my buttermaker died on me - and I didn't have time to make butter by hand) I used some fresh (but older milk).

My bread turned out wonderful!  I was so pleased.

Well, now that I am back to square one with no butter milk, I am wondering how water will fare in a soaker in my bread?

Can anyone share some insight with me?

Becky

I bought some cultured Vermont butter a few weeks ago. It was delicious, but expensive. So I came up with a recipe of my own, which yields 12 ounces of butter and, as a bonus, about 2 cups of buttermilk.

http://gaaarp.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/recipe-cultured-butter/

Hello, everybody!  

This begins with a resounding thank-you to user jannrn for asking a question and giving me an excellent idea...  A week ago, I posted about my Greek Fennel, Yogurt, and Honey Bread, and sweetly Jan told me she liked the photographs but hated fennel (I'm really the only person I know who does!).  She asked about alternate flavors, which got me to thinking...  

Here is a picture of the original fennel bread:

But after Jan's comment, I decided to experiment in a couple of ways with its basic formula, which is available on the old post too.  As before, these recipes are for individual loaves, but easily multiplied

My husband, David, adores onions (he could eat them like apples), so here:

For Love's Sake Onion Bread

Ingredients:  

165 grams flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

3/4 teaspoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon powdered onion soup mix (a huge thanks to floydm's onion braid for this idea!)

dough enhancers: 2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten, pinch of ginger, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

2 oz. warm water

1 cup total yogurt (2 oz. + 2 teaspoons yogurt for dough)

1 onion 

Instructions:

First, prepare the onion-yogurt blend.  Place 1 cup yogurt and 1 onion (but reserve slices for topping) in a food processor.  Blend well, until mixed.  

Whisk a little bit of the flour, yeast, sugar, and dough enhancers in water, and allow to autolyze.

Add salt, soup powder, the rest of the flour, and 2 oz. + 2 teaspoons of the onion yogurt blend.  Reserve the rest of the yogurt blend as a fantastic dip/spread!

Knead for 15 minutes, until the dough is elastic and will not break if stretched.  

Place dough in a lightly greased bowl and allow to rise, covered, for 1/2 - 2 hours or until doubled.

Remove dough from bowl and give it several soft kneadings and envelope turns.  On a lightly greased baking sheet, shape into a boule.

Allow to rise for 45 minutes or so, while preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.  

Before baking, brush with milk and arrange onion slices on top as desired.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown, with an inner temperature of 205 degrees Celsius.  Enjoy!  Trust me, it sounds strange, but the yogurt-onion blend is amazing!

Or: Harvest Apple and Spice Bread

(okay, I know this bread looks really stupid and like a first grader made it.  I got dumb and silly, but it was still so tasty!)

Unlike David, I love actual apples.  Moreover, we have the dried fruit resulting from ten or so pounds of them (an unexpected and enormous present from our neighbors), and I'd better use some up.  So...

165 grams flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

2 teaspoons honey

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

dough enhancers: 2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten, pinch of ginger, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1 cup total yogurt (2 oz. + 2 teaspoons yogurt for dough)

1/2 ripe red apple

2 oz warm water

2 tablespoons chopped dried apples, plus extra for decoration

First, blend the yogurt with the 1/2 apple until very smooth.  

Whisk a little bit of the flour, yeast, honey, and dough enhancers in water, and allow to autolyze.

Add salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, the rest of the flour, and 2 oz. + 2 teaspoons of the apple-yogurt blend.  The rest make a pretty good spread!

Knead for 15 minutes, until the dough is elastic and will not break if stretched.  

Place dough in a lightly greased bowl and allow to rise, covered, for 1/2 - 2 hours or until doubled.

Remove dough from bowl and give it several soft kneadings and envelope turns.  On a lightly greased baking sheet, shape into a boule.

Allow to rise for 45 minutes or so, while preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.  

Before baking, brush with milk and decorate with bits of dried apple, though you don't have to make it as dumb-looking as mine!

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown, with an inner temperature of 205 degrees Celsius. Hope you like it!

This, by the way:

is the original crumb from the fennel bread, and I had identical results with the onion and apple variations, including the satisfaction!  And thanks again to Jan for the idea!

Hello to all the bakers and Loafers!  I'd posted about 5 months ago about my upcoming camping journey around the Mediterranean, and received so much wonderful advice...  I can't thank everybody enough for their kind, helpful ideas, or begin to tell all the traveling tales.  

Apart from a broken camp stove (aaah!) I did discover a number of fantastic, unique local breads, but I will have to wait to post some pictures and descriptions of those (though I promise I will!)...

But as I'm sure so many of you can imagine, now that my husband and I have returned to our home in Hungary, I'm enthralled just to have an oven again!  Every day has featured me dancing around a new bread, and it's been a blast - but it's high time I share a bit!

Though my husband, David, disagrees, I think this recipe has been my favorite new bread thus far...

Greek Fennel, Yogurt, and Honey Bread

I unearthed this recipe in The Bread Book, by Sara Lewis, which my little brother's girlfriend gave to me last December.  I'd never heard of it, but I very much enjoy the breads it's offered.  Both my husband and I try to eat as healthily as we can, so I admit this recipe has been somewhat modified, and though sometimes this leads to problems I was entirely satisfied, and if fact declared it my best ever!  Multiple times! 

On our camping trip, we spent a month in Greece, between beaches and ancient ruins, and found a lot of fabulous flavors - yogurt featured prominently, as did spices like fennel, anise, and sesame.  This evoked it for me...  It's very sweet, with a dense but extremely soft crumb, and a soft, pliable crust, and filled with the flavor of the fennel seeds and a tad of citrus.  

These ingredients, by the way, are scaled down to an individual loaf, for me, because my husband doesn't like sweet breads, but it's easy to multiply as desired. 

Ingredients:

165 grams flour

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

1-3 teaspoons honey (all depending on your personal taste for sweetness)

(dough enhancers I utilized):

2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

pinch of ginger 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

2 oz. + 2 teaspoons yogurt (warmed to room temperature)

2 oz. warm water

Extra honey, milk, and fennel seeds (to glaze)

Instructions:

Whisk a little bit of the flour, yeast, honey, lemon juice, and water in a large bowl to autolyze for 3-5 minutes.  

Add the fennel seeds and yogurt and blend well to distribute the seeds.

Add the salt and the rest of the flour and knead with floured hands on a well-floured board.  With the large proportion of honey, the dough will be extremely sticky at first, but after ten minutes of kneading it tends to become smooth.  Knead for 15 minutes, or until the dough is elastic and does not break if stretched.  

Allow dough to rise in a covered bowl until doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  

Remove dough from bowl and give it several soft kneadings and envelope turns.  On a lightly greased baking sheet, shape into a spiraled loaf, like a cinnamon bun.  

Allow loaf to rise for 45 minutes or so, while preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.  

Lightly glaze loaf with milk, sprinkle with extra fennel seeds, and drizzle with honey, especially in the creases of the spiral (yum!).

After rising time, bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until shiny and golden brown, with an inner temperature of 205 degrees Fahrenheit.  

Allow to rest and cool - and enjoy!

p.s. if anybody would care to look at some travelogue accounts and photographs of our Mediterranean trip, as well as here in Hungary (currently how we are making our own wine), my blog address is http://erzsebetgilbert.blogspot.com...

http://i12etu.com/wordpress/2008/02/27/sourdough-yogurt-bread/

http://i12etu.com/wordpress/2008/02/27/sourdough-yogurt-bread/