The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Most bookmarked

sonia101's picture
sonia101

Big day making Pasta ( Maultaschen )

I'm soooooo tired!

I made my favourite Pasta today, I only do this a few times a year and spend the whole day making them. I always make them in bulk and freeze them, tho most of the time my extended family end up taking most of my stash!lol.....Hmmm I made 100 Maultaschen today, I wonder how many I will get to freeze and eat?

This is a bulk recipe that makes approx. 100 large Maultaschen.

Maultaschen

Pasta Dough

2 kilos of type oo flour

2 dozen eggs

salt

Filling

500 grams minced bacon (minced)

8 medium sized onions (minced)

6 cloves of garlic (minced)

1 kilo pork sausage meat ( I used pork sausages and squeezed them out of their castings)

3 stale rolls soaked in water and then squeezed to remove the water

1.5 kilo cooked spinach ( I used finely chopped frozen spinach and removed all the water)

1.5 kilos ground lean beef

9 eggs

10 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

salt, freshly ground pepper and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

1 egg and 3 tablespoons milk mixed (for brushing the pasta sheets )

Make the pasta dough and refrigerate until needed (depending on the size of eggs you might need a touch more flour). Mince the meat, bacon, garlic and onions and add all the ingredients and mix really well.

 

Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg...I recommend placing a tablespoon of mixture onto a plate and popping it into the microwave and having a taste test to make sure it is  tasty enough. I had to taste the mixture 3 times before I got the taste to my liking.

 

Roll out the Pasta into long strips ( Thank god I have an electric pasta machine, I used setting#7 as my final pass) Top with meat mixture (just under 1cm thick approx) and brush the edges with egg/milk wash and top with another strip of pasta. At this stage I normal have a mess everywhere and today I even got flour on my camera lens LOL

Using a wooden spoon handle make impressions to seal each individual Maultaschen.

Using a zig zag pastry cutter cut them into individual Maultaschen.

Drop a few (depending on the size of your pot, I cook 10 at a time) into boiling (soft boil or they might split open while cooking) salt water and cook for 15 minutes, then drain. Refrigerate or freeze until needed.

 

Reheat in stock and serve with either a beef or vegetable stock and top with slow dry fried onions. You can also slice and fry them in butter, or  scramble an egg over them.

 

My reward after a hard day of cooking :-)

Cheers Sonia

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Pain Rustique au Levain du Sud-ouest

I wanted to create a rustic rye, whole wheat, SD bread that was based on David Snyder's  technique for Pugliesi Capriccioso where it is baked upside down and no slashing is involved - since my slashing is primitive to say the least.  I also wanted to incorporate some rye, whole wheat and berries of each as as a boiled soaker to improve the taste, sour and texture of the SD bread while keeping the crumb open, soft and specked with brown bits.   The crust I wanted crunchy right out of the oven and turning to chewy as it cools and ages over 24 hours.  Well this it and it is named after the great Southwest of America - Rustic Southwest Sourdough Bread.   I am trying this with and without overnight retard to see which one I like better.  These pictures are from the none retarded bread that actually stuck to the benetton causing it's odd scar.  Wish I could do that every time.  This loaf also might have over proofed since I didn't get the oven heated in time to bake the bread when it was ready. It tastes terrific anyway.   The recipe follows the Pix's

Pain Rustique au Levain du Sud-ouest

 Yield: Two 850 g Loaves

Ingredients

Levain Build

50 g KA AP flour

50 g Whole wheat flour

50 g Whole rye flour

150 g water, cool (60 For so)

25 g active starter (100% hydration)

Boiled Soaker

25 g rye berries cracked

25 g WW berries cracked

25 g 6 grain cereal

Final Dough  (77% hydration, including levain excluding the soaker)

600 g KA AP flour

300 g KA bread flour

645 g warm water (80 For so)

14 g pink Himalayan sea salt (1.5%)

325 g  Levain

Boil and Soak – soaker ingredients in twice as much water by volume.  Bring to a boil and turn off heat and let soak overnight covered with plastic wrap.  Drain any excess liquid off in the morning.

Directions

1. Levain : Make the final build 10-12 hours before the final mix.

2. Mix: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt or the soaker. Mix just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary. Cover the bowl and let stand for an autolyse phase of 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and knead 8 minutes with dough hook on KA 3. The dough should have a medium consistency. Add the scalded and caramelized berries and mix on KA 3 for 1 minute

3. Ferment with S&F: 2 hours. Stretch and fold the dough in the bowl 5 strokes at the 30minute mark. Stretch and fold again, 5 strokes, at the one hour mark folding it into a ball in lightly oiled bowl. Do 1 S &F two more times at 90 and 120 minutes.  Divide dough in two.  Form into ball stretching the skin tight and place in floured benetton or shape into batard leave to ferment 1-2 more hours until the dough is at least 75% larger than when you started the ferment.  Remove from benneton and bake as below.

4. If retarding: do 1 S&F in the lightly oiled bowl forming the dough into a ball again. Refrigerate 8-20 hours, depending on how much time you have and sour your taste.

5. Divide and Shape: take dough out of refrigerator and let it come to room temperature about 1 ½ hours. Divide the dough into what 2 pieces and pre-shape, then shape into boules or batards 20 minutes later.

6. Proof: Approximately 1.5 to 2.5 hours a t82 F. Ready when poke test dictates.

7. Pre-heat: oven to 500 with steam apparatus in place - 45 minutes minimum. I use a loaf pan half full of water and a dry12”cast iron skillet that go in the bottom rack of the oven at the beginning of pre heat and the stone on the rack above. When the loaves go in, I throw 1 cup of boiling water into the cast iron skillet right after loading the bread on the stone.

8. Bake: Do not slash loaves. Bake seam side up on stone at 500 F for 5 minutes, turn down temperature to 450 and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove steaming apparatus after 15 minutes. Turn down oven to 425 F convetion  now and bake 15 minutes more, turning loaf every 5 minutes for browning evenness as necessary. When done (205 F internal temp), leave loaves on stone with oven door ajar, oven off for 10 minutes. Move to cooling rack until loaf is room temperature.

 

 

  
Wild-Yeast's picture
Wild-Yeast

Pain au levain a la Poilâne

An interesting journey shown below. Five years for the levain to teach the baker what the flour wanted..., 

'Que sais-je?'

Wild-Yeast

 ~ 1 kg loaves...,

FlourChild's picture
FlourChild

Rye & Onion Bialys

Today's family breakfast included rye bialys with cream cheese and smoked salmon, we enjoyed them!  The dark rye pre-ferment for these was adapted from The Bread Bible's rye pugliese, but the main dough, as well as the proportion of pre-fermented dough, is quite different.  In addition to the dark rye and unbleached flour, they also have KAF whole grain white wheat flour, which I sifted to remove the larger bran pieces.  The bran was used to coat the outside of the bialys in place of the tradtitional flour coating.  The onion, poppy seed, salt and pepper filling is from the Bread Bible's bialy recipe, it's a great filling.

     Pre-ferment       Dough Baker's %
unbleached flour, KAF AP70 g125 g66.1%
whole grain dark rye flour45 g 15.3%
white whole wheat, sifted to remove bran 55 g18.6%
water90 g135 g76.3%
instant yeast           1/8 tsp    5/8 tsp0.8%
salt           1/4 tsp    3/4 tsp1.9%

 

The pre-ferment was mixed and left overnight (12 hrs) at cool room temperature, until doubled.

The flours, yeast and water were mixed and autolysed, then salt and pre-ferment added, and the main dough kneaded for about 5 minutes in my stand mixer.

Bulk ferment was 75 minutes at 80F.

Final proof was 60 minutes, also at 80F.   Before baking, I docked the centers and filled with the onion-poppy seed mixture.

Baked about 10 minutes at 500F.

Last time I made these, I used bread flour, which I think I'll go back to next time.  These were moist and tender, but I missed the chewiness of the bread flour.  The centers are dark from the poppy seeds (not burnt onions). 

 

 

 

 

PaulZ's picture
PaulZ

AVOIDING TOUGH BAGUETTE CRUST

Hi all,

I know this topic has cropped up ad infinitum on this site and posted to the point of tearful yawn-inducing boredom but I am really REALLY trying to find an answer. Nothing seems to work.

PROBLEM: My baguette's crust is too hard. Would knock an intruder out cold with one blow! The crumb inside is beautifully soft, flavoursome and the mix of holes (high hydration) is ideal - I think. Yet, I've read on TFL that steam (within the 1st 5min) helps develop a crisp crust. However, I have ALSO read on previous postings here that to induce a softer crust one needs loads and loads of steam before the firming and caramelisation eventually takes over. A contradiction of intentions? Neither seems to work. To create steam in my 6ft single deck oven, I use a plastic cannnister pressure pump hose (the one used to spray chemicals in the garden - not the same one! - a similar one you understand!!!) I place the baguettes directly onto the pre-heated metal deck / floor of the oven at a temp of 280C (530F), spray for 10-15secs and immed. reduce to 250C (500F). I spray again (10-15secs) after 3 mins and I give a final 15secs spray after 6 mins. The temp is then reduced to 220C (425F) and the baked baguettes are pulled at 22mins. Should I be using more steam? This means a greater heat loss while I insert the nozzle of the spray hose. Less steam, perhaps?

The baguettes have a beautiful colour, lovely crumb but the crust ? oh-so hard!

Good crumb but very-very tough crust!

The watchman's "night stick" baton!!!!

Baked in a deck oven (the convection oven has to perch above - sorry, no space in the kitchen!)

And here is the formula (if that would help solve anything)

1,000g White Bread Flour

800g Water

18g salt

22g Fresh Bakers Yeast.

 

Thanks all.

 

GermanFoodie's picture
GermanFoodie

German Cheesecake Brownie Bars

While I would never go so far as to devoting a whole blog to a single type of pastry, I have found some pretty cool ones out there devoted solely to brownies. Over the past couple of years, brownies have made their way to Germany as well, and they are now found as a regular item in bakeries and on cookie trays.

One of my specialties is cheesecake, and I was hunting down a way to pair it with brownie somehow when I stumbled upon a few recipes for German cheesecake with brownie bottom on chefkoch.de. None of them were quite what I wanted, so I combined the best ideas and a cheesecake recipe of my own and created German cheesecake brownie bars.

You could easily make this in a brownie pan and cut them, but for some reason I think they look prettier baked individually. :) Another one of those international “cross-over recipes” that I love. Enjoy!

PS. These are best eaten warm or warmed up. Just sayin'. :)

German Cheesecake Brownie Bars

(Original Recipe.)

For the brownie bottom:
125 g dark chocolate, melted
125 g butter, soft
2 eggs
215 g powdered sugar, sifted
80 g milk
160 g flour, sifted
35 g sugar

Heat up water until it boils and pour over the chocolate chunks. Let stand for a moment to give the chocolate a chance to melt. Drain as much of the water as you can, stir in the butter. Beat the sugar, powdered sugar and eggs until creamy, add the milk, chocolate mixture and flour, stir just enough until combined.

TIP/NOTE: This way of melting chocolate is a shortcut that will only work if you are using the chocolate IN a cake, not if you should have tempered it for topping.

For the cheesecake top:
375 g ricotta or quark
150 g sugar
2 eggs
35 g butter, soft
25 g flour, sifted
10 g corn starch, sifted
10 g vanilla flavor
10 g lemon flavor

Beat the sugar and eggs until fluffy, add the ricotta, flavors and butter. Keep beating until the batter starts to look creamy. Add the flour and starch, continue beating for another minute or two. The mixture should look creamy, if a little on the liquid side. This is normal, it will solidify later.

TIP/NOTE: RESIST the temptation to add more flour to the cheesecake mixture. It will appear too liquid, but solidify later. If you add more flour, it will become too dense.

Preheat the oven to 300 F (150 C). Either first spread the brownie batter on the bottom of a 13 x 9 inch pan, then top with the cheesecake, OR scoop the brownie batter evenly into the cavities of a square bar pan (12 square bars), then top with the cheesecake batter.

Bake for about 45 – 60 minutes or until the tops appear puffy and browned at the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center of one bar comes out clean.

Makes 12 bars.

[Printable Recipe]

MichaelH's picture
MichaelH

Classic French Style Croissants

The Weekend Bakery is one of my favorite websites. They recently posted the best video that I have seen on how to make and bake Classic French Style Croissants at home.  All of their videos and recipes are extremely well done, especially for "amateurs".

The forming video is here, and their baking log with recipe is here.

They give credit for the recipe, technique and inspiration to Jeffrey Hammelman and TXfarmer.

Michael.

dwfender's picture
dwfender

Enzymes?

I'm interested in learning more about enzymes and how they affect the dough. People seem to talk about them frequently and I have a general understanding of what they do but I'm really looking to expand my knowledge a little more. 

davidg618's picture
davidg618

Challah braiding crutch

I bake challah rarely, once every two or three months, usually two loaves. One I pan bake; it gets sliced and frozen for French toast, two or four slices thawed each time; it lasts a good while. The second loaf I braid, only because I like the way the shiny, chocolate-colored, bulging braid looks: eye candy. However, each time I bake challah I have to relearn six-strand braiding--my favorite. I baked challah two days ago, and the braiding was especially frustrating, in part because I'd tried a new recipe--it turned out delicious, but I'd made the dough softer than usual--as well as having to, once again, look at my cheat-sheet, make a move, look at my cheat-sheet, make a move, answer the phone, try to figure out where I was...well, you know the rest. I finally got it to look half-way decent; proofing, oven spring and browning aided considerably.

Yesterday, I recalled how, when I was about ten years old, I'd learned to braid four strands of flat, plastic lacing--called "Gimp"--into an attractive round braid. With a metal snaphook on its beginning end,  a yard of it, doubled back on itself and the loop closed with a square-braided slide finished in a Turks-head knot it made a handsome lanyard. I got so good at making lanyards I supplemented my meager weekly allowance by making them for other, less-talented Boys' Club campers, and kids in my neighborhood. I recall I also made a few dog leashes too.

With that memory recalled...

I made my self a practice string which I carry with me in my shirt pocket.  Now, at most free moments, I take it out; my latest mantra is, 6 over 1, 2 over 6, 1 over 3, 5 over 1, 6 over 4,...etc., etc., etc.

David G

bryoria's picture
bryoria

Rustic Sourdough & Sourdough English Muffins

Today's bread was a rustic sourdough using my wild yeast starter:

I was out of aged whole wheat, so used all white flour instead (the recipe usually calls for 13% whole wheat).

  • 300 grams starter (100% hydration)
  • 725 grams white flour
  • 495 grams water
  • 1 tsp malt powder
  • 17 grams salt

Mixed all together with a 30 minute autolyse before adding the salt, then let it sit for 4 hours with one stretch and fold halfway.  Made fairly freeform loaves, being careful not to de-gas the dough, and let them proof at room temperature (on parchment on the back of a cookie sheet) for 45 minutes while the oven preheated.  I cover them with a smooth kitchen towel tucked around the well-floured loaves and put a paper towel roll between the loaves to keep them from spreading into each other.  Very high tech!

After proofing I slashed them and baked them at 425F for 45 minutes, putting a cup of hot water into a hot cookie sheet in the oven at the same time to make steam.  I think the slashes should have maybe been deeper.  When the loaves sprung (?) up the oven they just sort of flattened.   But other than that, I have no complaints. 

I've made the rustic sourdough a few times since I developed the starter last fall and I am always amazed and thrilled when the loaves rise so beautifully in the oven, with no added commercial yeast.  It's very magical.  Also extremely chewy, sour and delicious!

It was dark by the time we sliced it for supper, but I managed to get an okay photo of the crumb:

And as a bonus, while the bread dough was sitting for most of the day in between stretch and folds, I used the rest of my starter to make sourdough english muffins using the recipe from Wild Yeast blog.  This was my first time making english muffins, and I was really pleased. 

My only modification was to use all white flour due the aforementioned whole wheat flour shortage in the house.  The dough was very, very sticky and stayed that way, so I did add a little more flour as I mixed.  I cut them out with a 3" crumpet ring, and proofed them on the back of a baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap.  I baked them on my Oster griddle set to 275F, 8 minutes per side. The griddle is known to stay pretty cool, so I can't guarantee that the 275 setting is really 275, but whatever it was, it worked well.

They ended up looking pretty close to the storebought Costco ones my kids devour when they go to their grandparents, but taste so much better!  And I recognize all the ingredients!  I'll be doing this recipe again, with the whole wheat flour next time.

 

Pages