Soft Butter Rolls colored with Thai herbs

Katha of Katha Kocht is the host for Bread Baking Day#55. She came up with the lovely theme: Colored bread. 

Living in Thailand we see a lot of food with colors. Thai people use natural colors from Thai herbs for rice and sweets. There are many herbs to choose from and I used these:

Rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa). The juice is prescribed for gallstones, kidney stones and urinary tract infections. Also to treat indigestion flatulence, peptic ulcer, fever, cough, hypertension, kidney cramps and back pain. It’s high in calcium and lowers blood cholesterol. 

Butterfly pea (Clitorea ternatea). The seed is used to treat constipation and to soothe stomach pains and cramps. The herb is aalso a hair tonic, used to treat baldness and falling hair.

Tumeric (Curcuma longa). The rhizome is used as a digestive stimulant and for gastrointestinal complaints. It is said to lower blood sugar and a remedy for cough, arthritis, chronic back pain and painful or blocked menstruation.        

Beside the health benefits we love the taste of these herbs. We love to drink hot and cold Rosella juice and turmeric is often in our food along with garlic, chili, Thai basil and of course Gotu Kola.

Christmas stollen 2012

 It’s the first day of Christmas and we are all enjoying the Christmas stollen I made 3 weeks ago. This year our family came for a holiday to Thailand. I baked 2 stollen and we already ate the first one. It was delicious!

Today we ate the second one and it was delicious too. I can’t taste the difference between the two stollen.

I used raisins, hazelnuts (instead of almonds), orange peel and cranberries (instead of lemon peel) and almond paste.

I used the same recipe as last year.

We wish you a joyful holiday

Oat Bread with Avena Vital

Only when you leave the familiar surroundings you can explore new surroundings and discover new ways of doing. Growing up in a country where everyone eats bread we arrived in a country where everyone eats rice and only sometimes for us not so tasty factory baked bread. And because we live a four hours drive from the nearest big city, baking our own bread was the only option to eat good and tasty bread. But good bread needs good flour to begin with. 

In my search for unbleached flour I found Schmidt near Chiang Mai. They sell high quality products for pastry, baking and confectionery in Thailand. They have all those products you like to have when you’re baking bread and other treats. When I asked them if they were interested in advertising on my blog they suggested giving me 13 different pre-mixed flours instead. Even though their customers are confectioners, hotels and restaurants, caterers and artisan and industrial bakeries, the people of Schmidt are interested in artisan baking bread. They have no commercial interest in advertising on my blog, but are so kind to give me pre-mixed flours. Coming year they give me 13 pre-mixed flours to bake bread. Every month I bake one or more breads with their flour and write about my experiences on my blog. And maybe more people in Thailand will (start to) bake their own bread or ask their bakeries for healthy bread.

The first pre-mixed flour is: Avena Vital.
Of course the first question is: ‘what’s in there’. More than 60% of oats; a high percentage of whole meal oat flour, thick rolled oat flakes and coarse oats. And sunflower seeds and yellow linseeds plus aromatic brewing malt.

Depending on your taste you add 20% – 50% Avena Vital to your wheat flour. This first time I added 50% because we wanted to taste the full flavor of oats.

My conclusion: we like it!

The bread has a nice soft and moist crumb. The taste is full of oats. The crust is topped with oats flakes and sunflower seeds which gives it a nice bite. It’s a loaf you keep on eating until it’s gone. This one will be back on our breakfast table.

What I baked this week

Sometimes it looks like I didn't bake any bread. But I only post about breads I never baked before. But, every week I bake bread. Last week I baked some of my favorites again.  

Country Bread Tartine, the recipe is found here

Norwich Sourdough rolls, the recipe is found here

And again I baked 36 hours Sourdough Baguettes, the recipe is found here

For next week I want to bake Christmas stollen, Pull apart Buttery dinner rolls and Oat bread with Avena Vital. 

It's time to link your HOLIDAY bread to BYOB

This is our last month as host for BYOB. Sometimes it's hard to let go something you like. But, live is full of changes and it will bring something else to like. 

First I want to thank Heather of Girlichef for inviting me to join her as co-host, I had a great time. I loved watching the bread basket be filled with your breads and visited most of your blogs. I saw some amazing breads and you inspired me to try them too. I have a list of breads to bake (who doesn't) which grows and grows. But, one day I'll bake yours too. 

Thanks for sharing your breads and ideas these last months. 

We hope you fill our December Bread Basket with your HOLIDAY BREAD. It shouldn't be difficult to find a good recipe at you fellow bread bakers blogs in this festive December month. 

We give the breadbasket to Roxana of Roxana's Home Baking. We wish Roxana a great time too and we're all glad BYOB has a new host and we all keep sharing our home baked breads. Have a look at Roxana's blog for more details.   

Last month there were 56 loaves and bread related submissions, thanks for sharing.  

We like to thank MC of Farine. These last two months Farine was our Featured Bread Baker. MC is a very talented home baker and has baked a lot of breads and other delicious  treats. Have a look at her recipes, there are so many. I baked her Meteorites and they were delicious! even if one looked like a comet and the last one like the actual meteorite. And last month I baked MC's Egg in Cradle; you really should try them! If you didn't baked with us from this featured blog you have another month; go and have a look at her blog. 

We collected all the breads of BYOB, since 2009; go and see and be inspired. 

How do you participate?

1.    Bake bread in any form (use your own recipe or use one of MC's)

2.    Post about it on your blog and make a manual back link to BYOB (name BYOB in your post) or by using the BYOB button in your post (you find the button here otherwise the Linky tool doesn’t work!)

Are you new to BYOB? Have a look at this for more information. Do you have questions? Send an e-mail 

This last months hosts for BYOB are: Heather of Girlichef and I, Connie. 

Let the filling of the December bread basket begin! 

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Egg in Cradle

This is the last month of BYOB’s Featured Bread Blog. As you know, we visited MC of Farine. And again there was so much to choose from, did you see her Focaccia made with homemade squash flour? 

Maybe an idea for the 20 pumpkins in our living room. Some friends had a field full of about 3000 of these nice orange and white “Japanese” pumpkins. I don’t know if they are Japanese, but this is how I call them. I love to roast these pumpkins with some herbs, salt and pepper and toss the slices over a salad. Or just eat roasted. There are also nice Thai desserts with pumpkin. And we like pumpkin with tofu and Thai basil. And maybe I even try to make homemade squash flour, like MC. 

But, enough Pumpkin-talk. I fell in love with MC’s Egg in Cradle. 

It looks cute and it is delicious! Of course I should have baked her rolls, but…… I didn’t. I have no chestnut flour and have no idea where to get it. We did see fresh chestnuts. Along the most Northern Thai border with Myanmar, at Mae Sai, they sell chestnuts all year round. I thought of using these, but they are roasted. So, I’m not sure if I can use these. But, I’ll keep searching.

For now I used the great Potato rolls with Lievito Madre as a cradle. 

I hollowed out the rolls, poured two spoon full of homemade yoghurt, MC uses crème fraîche. Add salt and pepper, chives and break the egg open into the hole. 

Top with grated Parmesan cheese and bake for 10 minutes at 200°C. 

Egg Eruption

Before it was time, I was seduced by the delicious smell of melted cheese. Peter and I  shared 3 rolls; all that was left from our breakfast. Even though normally 1 egg is enough for me, I could have had another egg in a cradle (and probably another!) It’s a great evening meal with a nice salad, but also a nice breakfast meal and we would eat it for lunch too.

MC, next time I bake your rolls too, but for now: Thanks for sharing these amazingly delicious eggs in cradles.  

I send this to Susan’s YeastSpotting and to Bake Your Own Bread

What did you bake this month? Don’t forget to show it. 

Potato rolls with Lievito Madre

This month Stefanie of Hefe und Mehr is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day 54. She came up with the theme: overnight. She had fun baking several overnight rolls and loaves. And so did I.

I’ve baked overnight loaves before. I placed the dough in my refrigerator (also known as retarder-proofer) and baked the loaf the next morning for breakfast. Retarded proofing changes the flavor in bread and provide a crusty crust. Often the acidity will increase.

Before I had a look at my long list of “breads to bake” I had a look at Stefanie’s overnight rolls. I immediately loved her potato rolls with Lievito Madre. I had to find out what ‘Lievito Madre’ is: it’s an Italian sourdough.

When I started with sourdough I had to start from scratch and for days I was ‘collecting’ natural yeast and bacterial spores from the air. In the beginning I was very impressed by sourdough and especially starting my own starter. There are so many ‘instructions’ on how to collect your own and how to start and many ‘do’s and don’ts’. After days of collecting I had a bucket with bad smelling stuff and after several attempts I tried to convince Peter that the last one smelled not so bad. He just said: ‘it smells like vomit’. And again our compost pile grew a bit. Finally I succeeded with Peter Reinhardt’s pineapple sourdough starter. This is 2 years ago and I’m still using it!  I even have some dried for an “emergency”. 

I tell you this because I used a little bit of my sourdough starter to get the Lievito Madre going. Why? because I wanted to eat the rolls as soon as possible. Next time I’ll start the Lievito Madre from scratch like Stefanie did.

As said before, often acidity will increase with retarded proofing, but using Lievito Madre gave the rolls no extra acidity. The rolls smelled a bit sweet. When I placed the rolls in the oven I too enjoyed the moment of great oven spring. These rolls are in the top 3 of “our favorite rolls”. The crust is good, not too thick and the crumb is open and the flavor is slightly sweet. 

We had some for breakfast with our favorite Dutch cheese. You have to get up early (I started at 06.00 AM) to prepare but we had delicious warm rolls for breakfast! 

Thanks Stefanie.

Middle Eastern Flatbread; Man’ouche with za’atar and Baba Ganoush

We found some nice eggplants at the market and I had a good recipe for Baba ganouch somewhere in my brain. I found a nice recipe for flat bread from the Middle East; man’ouche with za’atar.

Manakiche (plural for man’ouche) are aten rolled or folded over to taste with: labne (thick yoghurt),mint leaves, black olives, spring onion, cucumber and tomato. We ate the manakiche with Baba Ganouch (recipe below).

You can bake the man'ouche in the oven, but I had fun baking them on the bottom of my  wok. They're done in a few minutes and don't you love the big bubbles too?

I heard the people in the Middle East have man'ouche for breakfast and when they buy them early in the morning, they're still wearing their pajama's. When we go to the market in our village (in Thailand) early in the morning of lot of Thai people are wearing their pajama's as well. It looks cosy.

I baked the man'ouche fully dressed.

More than 36 hours Sourdough Baguette

We love baguettes. We love the shape, it's easy to eat, has a lot of crusty crust and a nice tasty crumb. It goes well with soup, garlic butter, guacamole, with cheese, salami, as a side dish with pizza or pasta or in the evening as a main dish. It goes well with almost everything. You understand we love baguettes. 

I've tried a few different baguette recipes and they all taste slightly different. I haven't posted them all because most didn't look like baguettes. As you know, baking ciabatta can be difficult if you are not experienced enough. But the same goes for shaping baguettes. Everything goes well with the dough until you reach the moment of shaping. In the Netherlands we have a saying: "experience comes with age". Of course its true, but luckily when you want to bake baguettes it also helps if you do it often enough. My baguettes aren't close to perfection yet. But, I keep on trying. 

A while back I saw beautiful baguettes. Nicely shaped, scored as it should, good color, good appearance and full of nice holes. Of course I had to try. There are people who will try new things in life only when they are sure they will succeed. I'm not like that. That's a good thing, otherwise I wouldn't speak one word of Thai in public. Thai is a tonal language and Dutch isn't. There's a big chance that you don't pronounce the word correctly, even after six years in Thailand. Fortunately, I am not so worried about it and a smile brings you every where.

Those beautiful baguettes I tried this time, are baked by TX Farmer: " She puts everything she knows in this bread". 

Today is a day for challenge. Today is the day I start and tomorrow we’ll see. The whole process looks more about waiting and gentle handling than about kneading, feeling, seeing, smelling, you know the 'normal' process. 

It all starts with combining flour and water and a fridge. The next day it's about adding mature starter and salt, combining them by hand, waiting and a fridge. The day after it looks like a normal day for a baguette. Dividing, resting, very gently shaping, resting, pre-heating, steaming and baking. And then it’s time to see, smell and taste.

My conclusion: it’s a great baguette; it’s full of flavor and holes. It’s a great baguette if you know how to handle 70% wet dough. I’ve baked it twice since and it’s very high on my list of delicious breads. My next challenge is to bake it again with a better appearance.

Thank you TX Farmer for sharing your knowledge on this delicious baguette.

The Soul of Bread; a movie

We saw this Taiwanese movie about bread; the soul of bread. It’s a nice romantic movie for people who love bread and baking bread.

I hope you enjoy the movie as we did.

I send this to BYOB 

It's time to link your baked breads of November to BYOB - Bake Your Own Bread

Before we share last months breads we have a question for you:

We are looking for a home baker who like to fill the bread basket on her or his blog in 2013. Do you want to host BYOB? Please send an e-mail (mydiscoveryofbread at gmail dot com). 

UPDATE: We found a new host already for next year: Roxana of Roxana's Home Baking. Thanks Roxana; we're all glad BYOB has a new host and we all keep sharing our home baked breads.  

Many of you know where to find BYOB and every month more are sharing home baked breads at BYOB. We are so happy to see the great amount of breads you all send to BYOB to share. There were 67 ! loaves of bread, buns, flat bread, pie, cakes, artisan and many more bread related submissions.  

Featured Blog: last month we picked MC's Farine. MC has baked a lot of breads and other delicious  treats. Have a look at her recipes, there are so many. I baked her Meteorites and they were delicious! even if one looked like a comet and the last one like the actual meteorite. If you didn't baked with us from this featured blog you have another month; go and have a look at her blog. 

There’s a big breadbasket to be filled with homemade breads baked in November. We have a few full baskets already from the previous months; go and see and be inspired. 

Come and join us all in filling the November basket. All the breads you bake during this month are more than welcome. But, there’s more. Also if you want to share knowledge on baking bread, have a bread book review or have bread based recipes you want to tell us all.

This month we've picked a fellow home baker and bread blogger and now we all meet her. The Featured Bread Blog of NOVEMBER is: FARINE 

MC has baked a lot of breads and other delicious treats. MC loves to visit bakers and mills and post about it. Have a look at her recipes there are so many, it must be easy to choose one or more to bake this month. I know what to bake this month, do you?

How do you participate?

1.    Bake bread in any form (use your own recipe or use one of MC's)

2.    Post about it on your blog and make a manual back link to BYOB (name BYOB in your post) or by using the BYOB button in your post (you find the button here otherwise the Linky tool doesn’t work!)

3.    Click here to fill the basket of November.  When you are linking a post that was inspired by the BYOB - Featured Bread Blog of the month; Farine, please put in your blog name - FBB name of the bread.  Typing 'FBB' identifies you as a featured blog poster.

Are you new to BYOB? Have a look at this for more information. Do you have questions? Send an e-mail 

Heather of Girlichef started to fill the breadbasket in 2012 and since July Michelle of Delectable Musings and I, Connie, are helping her. On all these blogs, when you see the BYOB logo, you can add your bread and it will be linked to the big breadbasket.

Let the filling of the November bread basket begin! 

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1. Almost New York Bagels	2. Marble Chocolate Wheel Bread	3. Soft Pretzels	4. Dried Longan Wholemeal Pai Bao - Jessie	5. Tomato, Onion & Herb Rolls with Sage Leaves
6. Roasted Pepper and Chile Focaccia	7. Pumpernickel Braid . . . and a Story	8. Pine Nuts Spelt-Rye Sourdough Bread	9. Flatbreads with Sprouted Kamut	10. Apple Bread Ring
11. Yam Buns	12. Movie: the soul of Bread	13. Kitchen Flavours - Briarpatch Herb Bread	14. My Discovery of Bread - More than 36 hours Sourdough Baguette	15. Freezer Buttermilk Biscuits with Honey Cinnamon Butter
16. girlichef - Apple Cheddar Beer Bread	17. Pumpernickel, Sunflower Seed Rye, and Stollen	18. Flax Seed Rye Sourdough	19. Rachels Cinnamon Swirl Sourdough= French Toast Casserole	20. Stellas Cinnamon Raisin Buns
21. Kitchen Flavours - Orange Oatmeal Bread	22. Sourdough Apple Bread - Karens Kitchen Stories	23. My discovery of Bread - Middle Eastern Flatbread: Manouche with zaatar	24. Whole Wheat Oatmeal Sandwich Bread	25. Green Onion Sesame Rolls
26. Elizabeths Pocketbook Rolls (BBB)	27. Natashyas Pocketbook Rolls	28. Kitchen Flavours - Onion Lovers Bread	29. Molasses Honey Whole Wheat Bread via x2babies. com	30. Mixed Fruit and Chocolate Chip Bread Wreath
31. Garlic crescents	32. Chocolate Rolls with Coffee Icing	33. Pumpkin Eggnog Bread	34. Pan de Muerto - Bread of the Dead	35. Kitchen Flavours - Dinner Rolls
36. Ultimate Banana Bread	37. Gluten-free & Vegan Yeasted Buckwheat Muffins	38. Potato rolls with Lievito Madre	39. Egg in Cradle	40. Spiced chocolate loaf - Blue Kitchen Bakes
41. English Lincolnshire Plum Bread	42. Chocolate Kugelhopf	43. Semolina Sourdough Boule	44. Sweet and Thats it - Fat reduced & Filled Pocketbook Rolls	45. Brittany Cooks: Cranberry Orange Pumpkin Muffins
46. Italian Braided Herb Bread	47. girlichef - Buttery Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls	48. Welsh Bara Brith	49. Over-the-Top Banana Bread	50. French Bread in a Baguette Pan
51. Mini Herbal "Hoagie" Rolls	52. Lemon-Streusel Oatmeal Muffins	53. Chickpeas flour focaccia with rosemary and garlic	54. Kitchen Flavours - Naan Bread	55. Blue Kitchen Bakes - Spicy & smoky 8 strand plaited loaf
56. Natashyas Light Multigrain Sandwich Buns

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