The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Having fun with ...

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Having fun with ...

... lots of things.

First of all, 

Happy Chanukkah, Happy Thanksgiving!

Now about my baking - I didn't have so much time for blogging recently, but I am still baking on!

My wife gave me a copy of Yotam Ottolenghi's book "Jerusalem", a great book if you like mediterrean food. Not so much about baking.

But having got over those impressive ingredients lists I realized that the recipes in there are quite easy to make, and very precise. I made the potato latkes (containing some parsnip) for the first day of Chanukkah, no photo because they disappeared too quickly. If you get a chance to look at this book - highly recommended.

Recently I had huge fun exploring the no-knead method - something I wanted to do for a while, and I made several doughs using this technique - withamazing results.

The ficelles in the title picture are my best baguette-style breads so far (flour 300g, water 200g, salt 6g, instant yeast 2g) 

Another very simple delicious bread is a pain-de-campagne style loaf (bread flour 900g, wholegrain rye 100g, water 680g, instant yeast 3g). After 3 hours proof with 5 folds the dough showed a lot of strength and bubbles, and was a charm to work with.

Here a picture just before putting it into the oven:

 

And here the finished product:

with a beautiful crumb:

Making a lot of "Bakery Challah" from "Inside The Jewish Bakery" left me with loads of eggwhite, so I made again a variation of Christophe Felder's Financiers (see e.g. http://www.petitebouffeentreamis.com/article-financiers-a-la-fraise-selon-christophe-felder-118536461.html)

using just almonds, a bit of coconut and honey:

They went down a treat at work and at home.

Then,it's time to make Dresdner Stollen.

I used nellapowers recipe

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25407/dresden-christmas-stollen

Unfortunately many of the images have disappeared. Here some impressions from my baking session:

Lots of fruit ...

This is the stollen after being baked and brushed with butter. The caster sugar soaks up excess butter during cooling.

And this is the stollen, sugar brushed off and ready to be coated with icing sugar and packed for the big sleep.

It will emerge again at Christmas eve ...

Happy Baking,

Juergen

 

Comments

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

All the breads look fantastic.  Happy Thanksgiving and Hanukkah!

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

I had to taste the stollen this evening - my wife was afraid it would pick up odors from our redecorating ...

Well, it didn't :-)

But it will be harder now to keep it wrapped up,now that the spell is broken...

 

 

varda's picture
varda

Juergen.   All looks great.   Particularly like the country loaf.    Happy Hanukkah.  -Varda

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Thank you Varda, 

I will definitely do more no-knead bread. As lumos noted in one of her posts, this method is great for developing flavor and texture

Janetcook's picture
Janetcook

Hi Juergen,

Nice to see what you have been up to.  Your results speak for themselves!

I am about to mix up a Challah dough today and I have decided to keep the whites in the dough rather than eliminating them….NicoV encouraged me to give it a try so I figured I really have nothing to loose.  He recommends intensive kneading and assured me that the dough will be great!  He has been doing a lot of experimenting along the lines of high egg content in doughs with great results….so I am giving it my best shot!

Your Stollen look great.  They are on my list for next week….I know, I should have baked them sooner and let them sit but I have been busy with other projects * - }  Yours make me feel a tinge of regret…

Anyway, thanks for the update.

Take Care,

Janet 

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

to make Stollen! 

Nellapower's recipe is great. 

The Bakery Challah from ITJB seems so perfect to us, I am not tempted to change that recipe - except for the timing. 

I do a 2 hour first proof and a 2 hour second proof ...

I made Challah with whole eggs before - Dan DiMuzio's, very nice.

Will you post your findings and formulas? (Maybe I missed some posts...)

Thank you very much,

Juergen