hanseata's blog

1971, when I was a student, I traveled with my best friend, Andrea, through England, Cornwall and Wales. We didn't have a fixed itinerary, we just followed our nose to places we had read or heard about.

We didn't stay in hotels (only once, and that was as dusty as it was expensive), we preferred B&Bs, always looking for interesting old buildings. We slept in grand manor houses, rustic inns, cozy farm houses, and even a water mill from the sixteenth century.

The owner of A&B Naturals, the store that sells my bread, asked me one day: "Can you bake pitas, too?" I had never made them, so I said with conviction: "Yes!"

At least I knew where I could find a pita recipe!

A while ago I admitted neglecting some of my baking books, never giving them a second look, while shamelessly favoring others. To atone for my neglect, I pledged to give every book a fair chance with my "Equal Opportunity Baking" list, with one recipe from ALL of my baking books.

If anybody wonders why, after a furious start, my Equal Opportunity Baking has somewhat slowed down - that didn't happen only because of my recent trip to Germany.

My last three breads proved to be tricky, they didn't turn out quite right. One was overly spicy, one too sweet and one too dry. On the other hand, they were not so disappointing that I didn't want to deal with them again, writing a bad review, and be done, once and for all. 

Warnemünde is not only the harbor for Hansetown Rostock, but a graceful old Baltic Sea resort. Thanks to the former GDR's lack of money, none of the nice old houses was torn down to make place to modern non descript highrise hotels, like in West Germany.

When I first visited my cousin's family in 1957, houses were grey, with flaking paint, looking more and more dilapidated every year . That changed dramatically after the fall of the wall and the reunion 1989. All the houses were fixed-up, by and by.

Visiting my family and friends in Germany I took some photos I want to share.

My friend Michaela likes shopping at an organic farm store at Gut Wulfsdorf. I never sah Laugenbaguettes (pretzel baguettes) or Laugencroissants (pretzel croissants) before. The baguettes tasted quite nice, the crumb was airy but a bit chewier than regular one.

The breads are baked in a wood fired oven at the farm bakery. (This is a batch of Easter Bunny Cookies.)

The best recipe collection (bread, rolls and snacks) of German bakers' magazine, "Allgemeine Bäckerzeitung", supplied the formula for my third "fair baked" bread.

A heavy weight, scaled for 21 loaves, with selling points, marketing tips, production cost and time calculation, including sales tax (7%) and even a suggested retail price (1.83 Euro). The production steps are briefly listed - no need to explain to professionals what they do every day.

The second bread on my "Equal Opportunity Baking" list (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/26944/fair-baking-my-equal-opportunity-pledge) got its place near the top because of my curiosity.

In the past I had read several comments on the many errata in Leader's books, and, therefore, decided not to buy it. But Christmas came, and, being blessed with three daughters (2 step and 1 own), I found several baking books under the tree, among them "Local Breads".