I'm living in India, hail from Belgium and my paternal grandmother was German. This (especially the latter part) might explain my love for Laugenbrezel (pretzels made with lye). Whenever I'm in Germany I just HAVE to sample at least one. I've always wanted to try and produce these and a recently recurring bout of insomnia provided me with the time to do some nighttime baking.
This bread is inspired by the 'Golspie loaf' recipe by Dan Leppard in 'The handmade loaf'. I always wanted to do a 100% whole wheat bread but they have a pronounced taste and I thought my main customer -wife- wouldn't be a big fan. Imagine my surprise when I asked her to pick any type of bread she'd like to have and she settled on this recipe. I modified it somewhat so I guess it's ok to post the full recipe which I followed:
Formula:
Preferment:
- 50 gr. Sourdough rye starter at 100% hydration
Being an insomniac I got up at 4 AM this morning with the firm intention of cleaning out my baking gear...of course after 10 minutes of diligent work a number of small metal moulds caught my eye, I had once purchased those thinking they'd be perfect for small cakes but didn't use them yet. Looking at them I thought 'pity they're not true madeleine moulds' (should be really shell-shaped, mine have only a slightly convex bottom).
The night before I had been reading Proust and his immortal ode to the classic French madeleine cake in 'A la recherche du temps perdu' came to mind:
This is my take on the 5 grain loaf as described in "The handmade loaf: Contemporary recipes for the home baker" by Dan Leopard.
A book which I certainly recommend, if only for the sheer variety of the recipes and the accessibility for the average amateur baker. I usually 'roll my own' but when following recipes and preparation descriptions they invariably turned out well. Plus, they're beautifully illustrated.
I'm not sure about copyright restrictions so won't post the detailed recipe here but in general terms, preparing it involves:
Before I start out: Credit has to given where it's due and the following post by David inspired me to give this a try. His description works perfectly and is all you need, really, I'm just going to write out my version of it.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36635/turning-100-hydrated-sourdough-starter-crisp-waffles
I have about 2 kg of maize (corn) flour lying around. Of Indian origin but as it has no gluten anyway I didn’t risk running into the typical complications associated with Indian flour (high nominal protein content but very low quality gluten due to bad milling).
This is a 3-stage bread, I started out with a small quantity of 100% rye wild yeast starter, built a white flour biga and finally integrated this with some wholewheat flour, white bread flour, toasted sunflower seeds and broken whole wheat to arrive at a 70% hydration dough that was shaped as a boule and baked it. It was just an experiment but turned out well so without further ado:
Preferment:
40 grams of 100% hydration wild yeast sourdough rye starter
200 grams white all purpose flour
123 grams water
Dough:
Cramique
Cramique (Fr) or Kramiek (Dutch) is the name given to a type of rich, sweet breakfast bread with raisins such as sold in traditional bakeries in Belgium. The following is the traditional recipe such as it’s been used for the past 100 years or so. Some variants exist and I’ll briefly mention those at the end of the recipe.
Last week I was getting ready for a short easter break when I realized I still had some kalamata olives, fresh rosemary and an opened pack with assorted italian cold cuts (salami, cured ham...) lying around in my fridge. It was all a bit too much to eat in one go so I decided to try my hand at a foccaccia-inspired bread that would incorporate all these ingredients.
The result was surprisingly tasty; I didn't have high hopes -especially because I wasn't working from a recipe- but it turned out really well and very tasty.
Preparation and recipe:
