Laowai's blog

It's been a while. Baked a bunch of Moon Cakes the other day, we even found a matching box. 

Since it is customary to give them away I only had the opportunity to eat 4 and I am pretty happy how they turned out. 

Just a quick shot of the Mohnstritzel (Poppy Seed Roll) I  baked today.

The hardest part was finding poppy seeds, my wife had the ingenious idea to check the local Halal store and voila, a bag a poppy seeds.

What do you know, I had some butter, milk and yeast in the house. Seize the moment and make some Hefeblätterteighörnchen. 

I believe there is a subtle difference between Hefeblätterteighörnchen and Croissants, honestly I don't really care too much, or better, my baking skills are not sophisticated enough to care. At this stage of my adventure into baking I am happy things taste reasonably well.

In any case, it turned out all right SWMBO approved. Can't complain too much about that.

Today I felt like baking a Rührkuchen (sort of like a pond cake but less butter and less sugar, never enjoyed these super-sweet bakeries that we have here in the US).

Turns out we have no butter in the fridge---oil will do in a pinch! No Milk? Water will do, no electric mixer? 30 min of whisking is not too bad, it's a good exercise.

Wife does not like powdered sugar or sugar glazing? We'll eat the cake alfresco so to speak with a hand-brewed cup of coffee.

It may not be a cake according in compliance with the recipe, but it tastes good, looks ok, I am happy.

Original recipe:

Recipe #1292 in Hofmann, M. and Dr. H. Lydtin, Bayrisches Kochbuch, 53rd Edition, Birken Verlag 1986, ISBN 3-920 105-01-X, p. 610

It's the second attempt of a French Baguette.

Recipe is via google search that had me land a the "Joy of Baking" youtube channel.

No fancy oven stones, yeast, malt, etc. here, just simple all purpose flour from Aldi, augmented with a little bit of sticky rice flower and garden variety yeast.

For what it's worth, I am pretty ok with how it turned out.

Recipe #1193 in M. Hoffmann, H. Lydtin, "Bayrisches Kochbuch" Birken publising, 53 Ed., 1986

Simple yeast dough (ok, I don't have milk or butter in my household, so I substituted it with water and peanut oil, which according to my sister would make it a pizza dough and according to my wife it's a cake since it has eggs and sugar).

Wikipedia tells me that Rohrnudeln are also called Buchteln and originate from Bohemia, Austria, Slovak, Slovenia and Hungaria.

Thanks to all the good advise on this site.

Wild yeast sourdough using off the shelve general purpose flour. What's the best place to buy rye flower in the Arlington, TX (DFW metroplex) area?