Juergen Krauss's blog

Over a year ago I received my copy of Carol Field's "The Italian Baker". 

Until today I only used the recipes for Pugliese and the Chocolate And Milk Bread, both being among our favourite breads.

I wanted to explore this great book more in depth for a while, and took y first step today - making the white Pane Di Como, and the 50% rye Pane Nero Di Bolzano.

Both came out very nice, the Pane Nero with an amazing and surprising note of almond.

Dear All, 

I am posting here aafew photos taken along the way of making a Russian Rye, procedure and formula as in the first recipe in my blog (there it's called Russian Rye, Andy's version (85% Hydration, preferment 167% hydration, 35% flour from preferment)):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25940/hussian-and-german-100-ryes-4-recipes

Here the rye sour ready to go:

This is not for the fainthearted.

When I got ITJB (Inside  The Jewish Bakery) and flicked through, my rye addiction kicked in, and the unusual process (kind-of Auermann three stage) of the Black Bread intrigued me. This was the first recipe I tried from ITJB - and failed spectacularly.

The top half of the (freestanding) loaf was nice, but turning the temperature down as stated in the recipe let the loaf sink in, and the lower half was dense and badly undercooked.

For a long time I wanted to bake this bread. It sounds like home, and it tastes like home.

I am from the Black Forest, here a photo taken during my last visit:

Wolfgang Suepke posted the formula in his blog - quite a nice read because he sheds light on some regional eating habits in Germany.

When some friends invited us to the beach at West Wittering (near Chichester, England) last week, they asked me to bring some spelt bread, as they try to stay away from wheat.

Based on my previous experiments with spelt I came up with two very delicious.

Not even the fine sand on Wittering Beach (which gets just about everywhere) could do harm to the culinary experience (on the way home it was mentioned that we passed the food test ;-) )

== UPDATE ==

Since I started my explorations of German style mixed flour ( rye/wheat ) breads I was using caraway seeds.

I kept with using a small amount of commercial yeast,   mainly because the scheduling is very simple that way.

And I stuck to using wholegrain rye flour for the rye part - because I like the taste and texture.

Recently I started experimenting with using sourdough only, and using light rye as well as wholegrain rye.

Hi,

As many others these days I mainly baked my tried and tested formulas, with not much new to blog about.

With exception of my proof box - the parts were on top of a cupboard since last summer, but now I am putting them to good use.

I think the quality of my ryes have greatly improved since.

The parts for the proof box

1. cheap picnic cooler

2. reptile thermostat

3. reptile heat mat

4. cooling rack

Here a photo:

Hi,

I've made the Pane alla Cioccolata fron Carol Field's Italian Baker many times with great success, and I always wanted to try the Pane al Latte e Cioccolata, which brings milk bread and chocolate together.

However, I have some problems with the milk dough recipe from the first edition of the book.

/* UPDATE */

After input from lvbaker I recalculated the formula, and now I have a milk dough with the same hydration level as the chocolate dough. A charm to work with. My adjusted percentages are given below, here some new photos:

The bread on the rise:

Mischbrot variations

In earlier experiments with breads having a higher percentage of rye flour I found that adding spelt, emmer or semolina complemented the rye very well.

With this bake I wanted to compare the effect of substituting the wheat part with emmer and spelt in breads with 70% rye. The flours are all from Shipton Mill.

The outcome:

Happy New Year to everyone!

Around my native town Freiburg in south-west Germany we have thae habit to eat some huge and elaborately decoreted brezels made of sweet dough for breakfast on New Year's Day. (Usually they are made by professional bakers.)

I made  some of them in the past, here some impressions from this year's bake.

A little mouse made by my wife, peeking into the future:

The somewhat more conventional Neujahrs-Brezel I made: