hanseata's blog

A while ago, A&B Naturals, the local store that sells my breads on weekends, let me know that the "lunch crowd" were hungry for some nice rolls to go with their smoothies.

Since I like trying out new things and find it rather boring to always bake the same breads, I jumped at the chance to test some new recipes for rolls that had been on my to-do list for a long time.

Viewing my flour supplies, I decided to go with kamut, an ancient wheat with a lovely golden color and delicate, nutty taste.

Several years ago, a baking buddy asked me to help him with a German recipe.

The formula, published by a German bakers' association, combined rye meal and cracked wheat with mustard and cheese. The amounts, of course, were calculated for a commercial bakery, as were the sparse instructions. I had to downsize the formula to home baking proportions.

The looming deadline of a blog event, hosted by my blogging buddy Anna Antonia, gave me the much needed kick in the  energy to overcome my dog days' laziness and write a new post.

What to do with stale bread? For me a no-brainer: baguette or brioche leftovers usually end up as bread pudding. But for sourdough or other hearty breads there's only one option: grind, toast, and re-bake!

When I first learned of genius entrepreneur Nathan Myhrvold's endeavor to create THE Ultimate Work on Bread Baking, pouring thousands of dollars in his state-of-the-art scientific laboratory plus baking station, I was rather skeptical. After Modernist Cuisine now molecular baking?

But a presentation last summer at the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan/ME, with stunning photos of the process, was so convincing that I overcame my doubts (and qualms about spending so much money), and ordered my copy at Amazon.

Whenever I'm visiting my hometown Hamburg, I check out new bakeries. Two years ago I noticed people lining up in front of Bäcker Gaues, in lively Eppendorf quarter (where my Mom lives around the corner.)

Taking this as a good omen, I joined the waiting line. The shelves full of loaves and rolls looked promising, all with fairly dark crusts - boldly baked, as Ken Forkish ("Flour, Water, Salt and Yeast") would call it. A paradise for crust lovers!

This month Mini Oven challenged us fellow Fresh Loafers to create a special bread to commemorate the upcoming total eclipse of the sun. Spurred by astronomic ambitions I began to ponder how to go about this.

Just a new bread? Where was the connection to the total eclipse?

A two-toned dough? Once I baked a marbled rye bread and found its taste rather underwhelming.

Squid ink as a black dye? Not my cup of tea!

When I heard about breads made with spent grains - leftovers from beer brewing - I was fascinated.

How interesting! But, where on earth, could you come by those mashed grains, unless you worked at a brewery? We have two micro-breweries in Bar Harbor, so I left a message, asking whether I could purchase a small amount of their spent grains.

The sobering answer: the mash goes to the (dogs) hogs. All sold to pig farms - sorry!

During my childhood, we kids used to gather acorns and chestnuts (not the edible kind) to make funny little gnomes from them. Nice and shiny as they looked, I knew that only pigs and squirrels could eat them, they were much too bitter for human consumption.

When I read a facebook post ("Bread History & Practice") about the possibility to use acorns in bread baking, I was intrigued - the huge European oaks in our neighborhood had produced a bumper crop of acorns this year.

Just in time for World Bread Day 2016, I received my copy of Stanley Ginsberg's The Rye Baker in the mail.

I'm a curious person and love trying out new things. When "Cook's Illustrated", one of my favorite food magazines, published a gluten free cookbook, I bought it, out of curiosity, even though I have no problems with gluten.