Wednesday, December 23, 2009

POPPY SEED FILLING - MOHNBACK


Hier geht's zur deutschen Version dieses Post.





With Christmas looming ahead, I wanted to bake Mohnstollen - German Poppy Seed Stollen.

I looked up numerous recipes in my German cookbooks and the internet.

Most of them listed "Mohnback" as necessary ingredient, a ready made poppy seed filling you find in every decent German supermarket.

Lucky Germans don't need to know what it's being made of, but what shall a poor expat do in a Mohnback-less foreign country?

Oh, Dr. Oetker, you didn't only help stressed housewives by inventing the single-packaged baking powder, you also concocted Mohnback in your factory kitchens - why do you flood the US market with brownie mixes instead of poppy seed filling?

Americans can do brownies just fine, without German aide, but where is the mysterious Mohnback?

Finally Google, helper of the clueless, linked me with a Mohnback recipe. It was surprisingly uncomplicated, I only had to grind the poppy seeds, but my coffee grinder made short work of it.

A coffee grinder makes short work of grinding poppy seeds

MOHNBACK - POPPY SEED FILLING
(440 g/15.5 oz)

250 ml/1 cup milk
2 tbsp. semolina
250 g/8.8 oz poppy seed, ground (coffee grinders work well)
2 tbsp. honey
1 pinch salt
1 egg yolk
100 g/3.5 oz raisins
20 g/0.7 oz almond slices

In a medium saucepan, bring milk to a boil. Stir in semolina. Remove from heat, and add all other ingredients. Mix well.

In a container with lid, the poppy seed filling keeps in the fridge for a week.

Poppy Seed Stollen - Mohnstollen filling is made with Mohnback

Saturday, November 28, 2009

CAPUCHIN TORTE - KAPUZINERTORTE


Cake: (12 servings)
5 eggs
200 g/7 oz sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 tsp lemon juice
180 g/6.3 oz all-purpose flour
100 g/3.5 oz cornstarch
8 g/0.3 oz baking powder
200 g/7 oz unsalted butter, melted
100 g/3.5 oz kirsch liqueur (if using kirsch schnapps, add some sugar)
2 tbsp water
100 g/3.5 oz semisweet chocolate

Buttercreme:
63 g/2.2 oz unsalted butter
63 g/2.2 oz vegetable shortening
27 g/1 oz powdered sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Topping:
200 g meringues, chopped
10 g/0.4 oz cocoa powder (or leftover chocolate scrapings from the melting bowl)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line bottom of a springform pan (26 cm/10.2 inch diameter) with parchment paper. Grease sides with butter.
Bring water in a pan to a simmer. Place a metal bowl with the eggs, sugar, salt and lemon juice over the simmering water. With a hand held mixer beat eggs at high speed until warm (but not boiling!). Remove bowl from heat, and continue beating mixture until lukewarm.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, starch and baking powder. Fold flour into egg mixture, then, slowly, add liquid butter.
Pour capuchin batter into springform pan and bake cake for about 30 minutes. Place cake on a rack and let cool completely.
Melt chocolate over low heat or in the microwave. Remove torte from springform pan, turn it upside down and peel off parchment paper. Brush bottom with chocolate, let dry completely.
Mix kirsch liqueur with water. Brush repeatedly over top and sides of cake. Let sit for several hours or overnight.
For the buttercream, with a hand held mixer, cream together butter and shortening until foamy. Alternately add powdered sugar and eggs and beat at high speed until foamy. Add vanilla extract and mix well. With a spatula, spread buttercream over torte.
Sprinkle capuchin torte with chopped meringue, sprinkle with cocoa or chocolate scrapings and serve.

Tip for a richer buttercream experience:
Cut torte horizontally in halves and brush both halves with kirsch. Prepare double the amount of buttercream. Spread frosting first over top of both layers, assemble torte and frost sides also.













Finding the Best Capuchin Torte - Die Suche nach der besten Kapuzinertorte

In German food websites I found several recipes for Capuchin Torte with different doughs and frostings - one even with a marshmallow frosting. I tried the recipe that seemed most like the one I had in Bremen. The author was probably a pro, he just listed "buttercreme" as necessary ingredient without further specification. So Karl Neef's great baking book "Sunday Cakes and Holiday Tortes" supplied the missing vanilla buttercreme recipe.
I cut down on the amount of sugar, as usual, and wondered about the kirsch. Even though I do like alcohol in pastry, the given amount (300 g) seemed way too much, I really don't see how the cake can take it - unless it is totally submerged in booze!
The day before one of my bread baking class ladies had treated us with a wonderful Pavlova (recipe will follow). So I used what was left for the meringue topping. We liked the result of my baking experiment so much that I will sure do it again - but this time with double the delicious buttercreme (Richard's suggestion, of course!).

Auf deutschen Food-Websites fand ich mehrere Kapuzinertortenrezepte, mit unterschiedlichen Teigen und Cremes - eine sogar mit einer Negerkusscreme. Ich probierte das Rezept, das mir am ehesten dem Kuchen zu entsprechen schien, den ich in Bremen gegessen hatte. Der Autor war wohl ein Profi, er listete einfach nur "Buttercreme" als notwendige Zutat auf, ohne weitere Angaben. Also lieferte mir Karl Neefs grossartiges Backbuch "Sonntagskuchen und Festtagstorten" das fehlende Vanillebuttercreme-Rezept.
Ich reduzierte die Zuckermenge, wie ueblich, und wunderte mich ueber den Kirsch. Obwohl ich Alkohol in Kuchen sehr mag, schien mir die angebene Menge (300 g) viel zu viel. Ich kann mir wirklich nicht vorstellen, wie der Kuchen die aufnehmen kann - wenn er nicht voellig in Schnaps getaucht wird.
Eine meiner Brotbackkurs-Damen hatte uns am Tag vorher mit einer wunderbaren Pavlova verwoehnt (Rezept folgt noch). Also verwendete ich die Reste fuer den Baiserbelag. Wir fanden das Ergebnis meines Backexperiments so gut, dass ich es bestimmt wiederholen werde - aber dann mit doppelt so viel von der leckerer Buttercreme (Richards Vorschlag, natuerlich!).

Saturday, November 21, 2009

"If on a Winter's Night" and Kapuziner Torte

I just came back from my trip to Germany. It was gray and cold and rained relentlessly for almost two weeks, in other words, typical Hamburger winter weather. Of course, everybody assured me that it had been really nice and warm until just before I arrived. But I didn't come for the weather, I wanted to meet with family and friends, trying to see all of them, hear everything that had happened since my last visit and sharing all my Maine stories about our trials and tribulations with our backyard construction.
Going into a bakery in Bremen with my friend Christa I marveled again at the enormous selection of different breads even in such a small suburban place. And the Kapuziner Torte we enjoyed while listening to Sting's newest CD "If on a Winter's Night" was just delicious - I have to find the recipe somewhere, it definitely had some liquor in it.

Ich bin gerade aus Deutschland zurueckgekommen. Es war grau und kalt, und regnete fast zwei Wochen lang gnadenlos, mit anderen Worten das typische Hamburger Winterwetter. Natuerlich haben mir alle versichert, dass es noch kurz vor meiner Ankunft schoen und warm war. Aber schliesslich war ich ja nicht wegen des Wetters hingeflogen, sondern um Freunde und Familie zu treffen, moeglichst alle zu sehen, alles zu erfahren, was seit meinem letzten Besuch passiert war, und all meine Mainer Stories ueber unsere endlosen Baumassnahmen loszuwerden.
Als ich mit meiner Freundin Christa in einer Baeckerei war, habe ich wieder mal ueber die enorme Auswahl an verschienenen Broten gestaunt, sogar in so einem kleinen Vorort. Und die Kapuzinertorte, die wir zu Stings neuster CD "If on a Winter's Night" genossen, war total lecker - ich muss das Rezept irgendwo finden, da war eindeutig irgendein Alkohol drin.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Baking Class - Brotbackkurs


Today I had four nice girlfriends from Lamoine here in my home kitchen/bakery to learn how to make Multigrain Hearth Bread.

Three wanted sourdough, one preferred a biga.
Three shaped their loaves round, one a batard.
Three liked my bannetons, one did not use one.

Sounds like a childrens' rhyme, but all had fun and every one of the breads turned out great.

Heute hatte ich vier nette Freundinnen aus Lamoine hier in meiner Kueche/Baeckerei, die lernen wollten, wie man Vielkornbrot baeckt.

Drei wollten Sauerteig, eine lieber Biga.
Drei formten rundes Brot, eine 'nen Batard.
Drei benutzten Bannetons, eine brauchte keinen.

Klingt wie ein Kinderreim, aber alle hatten Spass und jedes der Brote wurde toll.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

DIY SOURDOUGH STARTER - HOW TO TAME WILD YEASTS

Mature wheat starter with a lot of gas
Hier geht's zur deutschen Version dieses Posts
 
















When I moved to Maine my stomach eagerly adapted to lobster rolls, crab cakes and blueberry pie.

But it developed an instantaneous dislike for American bread. The squishy, soft Wonderbread from the supermarket made me really wonder what was in there - besides additives, enhancers and preservatives.

Wonderbread - a modern miracle created by food chemistry!

And the so-called "Artisan Bread" wasn't much better - it had a crust, sure, but thick and rubbery.

My stomach kept complaining, until I made an interesting find at the "Grasshopper Shop" in Bangor: "French Farmhouse Cooking" by Susan Loomis. To my delight it listed a sourdough bread, including a RECIPE FOR HOMEMADE SOURDOUGH!

Inspiration for my first sourdough bread
Soon as I was home, I got to work. To be on the safe side, I had also purchased a package of sourdough extract at the Natural Living Center.

I wanted to bake two identical loaves, one with a DIY-starter, the other with sourdough made from the extract. At least one of them had to work!

Mixing flour and water in a bowl, I hoped that wild yeasts and lactid acid bakteria, from flour and air, would accept my friendly dinner invitation, and show their gratitude by rapid growth.

Lactobacillus, Saccharomyces & Co. returned my favor, and my first starter was born. And thus began my bread baking career.

Of course my first trials led to rather modest results. If you are completely clueless about bread baking, a working sourdough alone doesn't do the trick.

You also have to know how to handle dough, shape and bake it.

Though dense and hard like bricks, we bravely consumed my first loaves (we still have all our teeth!) At least the taste was definitely better than the one from Wonderbread.

During this stage, homemade and ready made sourdough still ran head-to-head, but the more I refreshed both starters, the more the "wildling" inched past the tame one. After three months it surpassed the store-bought starter by far in aroma and activity!

Mature wheat sourdough with typical spongy structure under the surface

The formula is very uncomplicated, just water and flour, and it worked every time, when I accidentally used all my saved starter, and there was nothing left to feed a new one.

What kinds of flours are best for a seed starter? Flours that contain a lot of starch as food for the sourdough cultures: wheat, rye or spelt.

Wheat and spelt sourdoughs are rather mild, compared with rye sourdough with its stronger sour taste. Once you have an active starter, you change it just by feeding it with another kind of flour, for example turning a wheat into a rye sourdough.

Some baking book authors swear by adding acidic fruit juice, chopped onions or other (more or less exotic) ingredients to prevent undesirable (leuconostic) bacteria from interfering with the wild yeasts. I never experienced this problem, my yeasts always grew well.

And if an alien invasion overwhelms the flour mixture, before the sourdough bacteria can acidify it sufficiently? If it ominously changes its color, or even grows a moldy "fur"? Has a yucky odor, instead of emitting a light vinegar smell?

Then you simply throw it away, wash the bowl thoroughly, and start all over again - for a few cent!
But be careful, during the fermentation process a somewhat unpleasant smell (like throw-up) might temporarily develop. No worries, this will vanish when yeasts and bacteria got comfortable with each other, and will be replaced by a pleasant fruity-acidic aroma.

German Many Seed Bread, made with rye sourdough

WILD YEAST SOURDOUGH STARTER   (adapted from Susan Loomis: "French Farmhouse Cooking"

(Ready to use in 4 - 5 days)

Ingredients:
2 cups flour (wheat, rye, or spelt flour), divided
1 cup lukewarm water, divided (no warmer than 104ºF/40ºC - otherwise you'll kill the yeasties!), more as needed, to achieve the right consistency.

DAY 1
In a medium-sized bowl, mix 1 cup of the flour and 1/2 cup of the water. The mixture should be like thick pancake batter. (Whole grain flours absorb more water, add a little more, as needed.)

Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and leave it in a warm place. (In this nurturing environment the wild yeasts and sourdough building bacteria will start to grow. Most of them are clinging to the flour, but some are floating in the air.)

DAY 2
No action is required, just let the microorganisms do their job.

DAY 3
Check your starter. It should be lively, puffed up, with little bubbles, have a slightly sour smell and possibly a darker surface: this means the yeasts and bacteria are doing just fine.

Add the 2. cup of the flour and another 1/2 cup of water, (or a bit more, if you use whole grain flour) to the starter, and mix well. Cover the bowl again with the kitchen towel, and let it sit in a warm place for 24 to 48 hours more.

DAY 4 or 5 
Your seed starter is ready when it emits a nice sour smell, forms little bubbles and its surface has turned slightly dark.

Transfer starter to a container with a lid (big enough that it can rise again, after deflating somewhat from the transport,) and place it in the refrigerator.

Your starter is now ready to be used: the mother starter for all your future sourdough breads! But don't expect top performance from your newborn sourdough - it ages slowly and needs several cycles of refreshing, before giving the bread its typical tang.

WARNING: Never use all of your mother starter, always keep a small amount, enough to refresh it, and make a new sourdough starter!

Bauernbrot - German Farmer's Bread (made with a white starter)

SOURDOUGH MAINTENANCE
Keeping an "allround-starter" is the easiest option: one that requires low maintenance and can be used as base for every kind of sourdough you want. For this purpose a whole wheat or rye starter works better than a white starter, and a less liquid sourdough keeps better than a high hydration one.

My standard mother starter is a whole wheat sourdough with a flour/water ratio of 100 : 75. This 75% starter is medium acidic, and keeps at least 2 weeks in the fridge, without being fed.

This is the formula (in baker's math the amount of flour always equals 100%):
100% whole wheat flour + 33% mother starter + 75% water

Feeding a whole wheat starter (75%) 
60 g whole wheat mother starter (75%)
180 g whole wheat flour
135 g lukewarm water

Mix all ingredients (by hand or at low speed,) until all flour is hydrated. Knead for 2 minutes (by hand or at medium-low speed), then lest rest for 5 minutes. Resume kneading for another 1 minute.

Cover, and leave for several hours or overnight, until the starter has visibly grown (the time depends on the prevailing temperature) Transfer starter to a container with lid, and place in the refrigerator.

Due to its lack of gluten, a rye starter looks more puffy then spongy

Conversion into a rye sourdough:
 Feed with 180 g whole rye flour instead of whole wheat. When mature, it will only look puffed, but doesn't develop a spongy structure, due to its lack of gluten.

A white starter has a very spongy structure and sticks to the bowl

Conversion into a white sourdough:
Feed with 180 g bread flour, but add only 113 g water  (white flour needs less water than whole grain flour). Formula: 100% white flour + 33% mother starter + 63% water.

Many bakers like keeping their starters at room temperature. Since sourdough cultures multiply much faster in a warm environment, such a counter top starter is high maintenance and needs feeding every day.

But what to do with the all that surplus? People who don't bake every day, and don't go through a lot of sourdough, will have to trash it, before their kitchen turns into a Little Shop of Horrors ("Feed Me!")

I don't like throwing out something perfectly good and usable. Therefore I keep my mother starter in the fridge.


STARTER SURVIVAL GUIDE
You are dreaming of sun, beach and a Margarita, but don't want your precious sourdough starve to death at home?

Dreaming of sun and beach? What about your sourdough?
1. Stuff it: you should always feed your starter the day before your trip. A regular feeding (see above) is okay for a 2-week leave.

If you plan a longer trip: double the amount of flour and water.

2. Dry it: smear sourdough in a thin layer over a large cutting board. Leave it for several days (at room temperature) to dry completely.

Scrape dried starter flakes on a piece of paper, and empty them into a container with lid. Dried starter keeps basically forever in the fridge.

To revive it, simply mix it with an equal amount of water (by weight.) After 2 hours soaking, feed it with flour and water as usual.

3. Freeze it: though this is possible, it will take much longer to wake and activate your starter, since many yeast cells will die from hypothermia. 


DEAD OR ALIVE?
You won a several week long cruise, but were so excited that you forgot to feed your starter before you boarded the Queen Mary?

Or, one day, you make the horrible discovery that your starter lies prone in its home and looks more dead than alive?

You climb up Mayan temples in Cobà - and your starter?
How do you know, whether your starter has finally bit the dust, or can be resuscitated?

Even, if the starter looks dark and shriveled, with a puddle on top, and smells more like a cheese:

Always looks for signs of life before you trash it!

Remove the dark top layer with a spoon:
if you find lighter colored sourdough with its typical spongy structure beneath, there is still hope!

Salvage some of the healthy part, feed it with flour and water, and the seemingly deceased will come to life again.

RED FLAG:
Hands off, if your starter has grown a "fur". A moldy sourdough has to go in the trash. R.I.P.!

BACK-UP:
Even if you don't win a trip to Cancun: it's always good to have a dried starter as back-up in the fridge!


BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE!
In the meantime, I found some very unconventional ways to create a starter from scratch: for slobs who don't clean out their fridge before their jam or apple sauce starts getting boozy, and for health conscious kefir fans: check out my post FUN WITH SOURDOUGH!

Kefir cultures thrive on flour and water!

Let's end this wild yeast starter 101 on a "sour note": and check what Stanley Ginsberg, NYBaker and co-author of "Inside the Jewish Bakery", has to say about sourdough maintenance: "Sour Notes - a Carmudgeon's Take on Sourdough Starters."

Cranberry Power Bread, made with wheat sourdough

(Sources: Susan Loomis: French Farmhouse Cooking, Peter Reinhart: Whole Grain Breads,
Martin Pöt Stoldt: Der Sauerteig - das unbekannte Wesen)

Newest update: 4/11/2015

Monday, October 12, 2009

Why English bread?

Why on earth can't Yankees bake decent bread? (oh, lucky Seattle and San Diego!). According to polls Americans claim more often German ancestry than any other. Did they choose, along with English as their common language, also English bread as their common bread?
Sorry, there's one exception: Portland's Standard Bakery.