Apple, Yoghurt, Rye and Cinnamon Sourdough Loaf

It's been a while since I posted about bread. We had to go to the Netherlands twice and we attended two funerals. It took me longer than I hoped to get back in my rhythm. Of course I baked bread a few times a week. But, I baked bread without have too much thinking, you know the no fail recipes. They were delicious, but now it's time to get back and look for new and different recipes. 

I bought some nice apples and I have homemade yoghurt in the refrigerator. I always have unbleached flour and rye in my pantry and the sourdough is ready for use.  I use my new Lievito Madre (you find the recipe below). I found at Stefanie's Hefe und Mehr. This sourdough is mildly sour with a nice smell of honey. 

So all I need is a nice recipe to combine this into a delicious loaf of bread.

I love what the people in Bourke Street Bakery make. Since I’m not going to Australia in the near future, I’ll bake what they share in their books. I’m happy that recipes are free of copyright and we can share them. Of course I mention and thank the creators of the recipe. I know that having the book is more fun than having just a recipe. 

Enough talking, it’s time to move to the kitchen and bake.

It’s a delicious smelling and fresh tasting loaf. I mixed the apple with the cinnamon before adding to the dough. This way you taste apple and cinnamon together instead of tasting cinnamon with each bite. It was the first time I used fresh apple in bread and it will not be the last time. 

Pain de Campagne for World Bread Day 2013

Every month I like to bake with Bread Baking Day and every year I like to bake along with World Bread Day. Like Zorra says: ‘The idea of World Bread is to honor our daily bread and be grateful that we have sufficient food. Not all of us are this lucky’.

I looked on the Internet for 'Hungry people in the world in 2013' and I found World Food Programme:

'There are 842 million undernourished people in the world today. That means one in eight people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. The good news is that hunger is entirely solvable. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone and no scientific breakthroughs are needed. Today’s knowledge, tools and policies, combined with political will, can solve the problem.'

When I read this I felt sad. On their website I tested my ‘hunger-IQ’ and a child was given a meal. I was shocked by the results of the test.

We just came back from a trip to the Netherlands. Peter’s brother is very ill and we stayed for a month. I came back with a throat infection and wasn’t feeling well. But, when I saw World Bread Day on my calendar I wanted to join. This gave me one day to pick and bake bread and post about it the next day. I wanted regular bread; just flour, water, salt and yeast.

I love to bake with sourdough. Because I left my sourdough in the refrigerator for a month it looked dead. I decided to make another. I started a new Lievito Madre (sourdough) which I found on Stefanie’s blog Hefe und Mehr. It’s delicious smelling sourdough with raw honey. But, that wasn’t ready so I used dried yeast. The recipe I found is Pain de Campagne from Richard Bertinet.

Falafel with cucumber-garlic sauce

Pita with Falafel and sauce

I love to find new recipes and when I see something I like and haven't tried I can't wait to try it. This happened with Falafel. It was more than 8 years ago since I've had Falafel in the Netherlands. It's a vegetarian dish. The Falafel is made with chickpeas and herbs and baked in a pan. The pita's are filled with lettuce, cucumber, tomato and some pieces of Falafel and topped with cucumber/garlic/yoghurt sauce. It's really delicious!

Pita's ready to fill

one Falafel ready to eat

Apple, Yoghurt, Rye and Cinnamon Sourdough Loaf

I bought some nice apples and I have homemade yoghurt in the refrigerator. I always have unbleached flour and rye in my pantry and the sourdough is ready for use.  So all I need is a nice recipe to combine this into a delicious loaf of bread.

I love what the people in Bourke Street Bakery make. Since I’m not going to Australia in the near future, I’ll bake what they share in their books. I’m happy that recipes are free of copyright and we can share them. Of course I mention and thank the creators of the recipe. I know that having the book is more fun than having just a recipe. 

Enough talking, it’s time to move to the kitchen and bake.

It’s a delicious smelling and fresh tasting loaf. I mixed the apple with the cinnamon before adding to the dough. This way you taste apple and cinnamon together instead of tasting cinnamon with each bite. It was the first time I used fresh apple in bread and it will not be the last time. 

Best Baguette of 2013 by Ridha Khadher

Peter’s birthday is coming up soon. He doesn’t want presents, a party or surprises. He’s really happy when I bake good baguettes to join his favorite birthday meal. Since he’s a young boy he loves to eat vegetable soup with baguette and French cheeses on his birthday. 

I’ve baked some different baguette these last months. And today it’s time to bake the Best Baguette of 2013. Ridha Khadher won the title Best Baguette 2013. 

Stefanie of Hefe und Mehr was able to build the recipe based on the rough information mr. Khadher gave in an interview. He uses nearly ice cold water, kneads his dough more and uses a long (24 hour) and cold (refrigerator) fermentation. I just followed Stefanie’s recipe and I’m lucky I did. It’s a delicious baguette. Of course there are more delicious tasting and smelling baguettes. But, this one is also very easy. The most difficult part for me is shaping baguette without destroying the bubbles. I’m still working very gently on that part.

Thanks Stefanie for building a recipe for us to work with.

Sweet Bread with Dutch applesauce

Anusha of TomatoBlues is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day #61. She came up with the lovely theme: Stuffed bread.

I made a mistake and made bread with Thai sausage and Anusha asked us not to use meat. I still wanted to joint Bread Baking Day and started to look for a sweet stuffed bread. 

Because of my mistake I found this delicious sweet bread on King Arthur Flour. The original bread is called Brazilian Sweet Bread and is stuffed with bananas and pineapple, plus rich cinnamon filling. Ricardo Neves Gonzalez makes it at his bakery. It sounded delicious and we almost always have pineapple and banana in our house. But, today our bananas weren’t ripe yet. Then I thought of the Dutch Apple sauce I made and lays waiting in the freezer.

That night we had our Thai friends over for dinner. Even though we don’t like to eat a lot in the evenings we all had to taste this enormous sweet bread with Dutch applesauce. It came out of the oven during our dinner and the smell was all over the house. And what a hit it is. It’s not too sweet and the crumb is deliciously open and because of the topping the crust is crunchy. This will be back on our table, with pineapple, banana, mango, coconut, or …

a big sweet loaf (35 x 25 cm)

Thanks Anusha and Ricardo!

White loaf with home made Thai sausage

Anusha of TomatoBlues is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day #61. She asked us to bake stuffed bread. 

There are so many delicious ingredients for stuffed bread, but I had this Chiang Mai sausage in my refrigerator since I made it myself yesterday. We found a package of herbs and spices and 5 pieces of sausage skin. Tonight we are also eating it on a pizza, but the rest goes in this soft white bread. 

The sausage is called Sai Ua, also known as Chiang Mai sausage. It's famous in Chiang Mai and is filled with minced pork, herbs, spices and  kaeng khua red curry paste. It's spicy and goes well with the slightly sweet dough. 

We like to eat vegetarian food, but this sausage keeps us from become 100% vegetarians. 

Persian Flatbread or Nan e Barberi

nice open crumb with delicious smelling and tasting crust

It’s avocado time and beside a lot of delicious recipes with avocado we can’t get enough of guacamole or just eating it out of the skin with some honey. And what goes well with guacamole? Yes, flatbread. So, you can imagine I loved the theme Elisabeth came up with for Bread Baking Babes of this month; Persian Flatbread also known as Nan e Barberi.

When I saw the photo of the Nan e Barberi the thought of garlic came to my mind. Wouldn’t it be even more delicious with bits of crunchy garlic and sesame seeds?

I had to add a bit more flour than the recipe calls for during mixing. I buy unbleached wheat flour from Germany and it’s known to use less water that American flour. I left the recipe as I found it at Elisabeth’s blog for other home bakers to follow.

It’s an easy recipe as long as you can accept the slack dough. I have to admit I had to control myself and added just a bit of extra flour during mixing to give it more strength. It worked well. The dough rose very well. When I poured it out of the mixing bowl I left it as it was. In fact I can say I have a non-shaped flatbread. The difficult part was when I poured the dough onto my floured work counter and had to transfer it to the floured parchment paper.

The monsoon pours heavily so I have to put Nan in the oven just before we eat it.The result is delicious. The crumb is full of air and the crust is deliciously topped with crunchy garlic and black and white sesame seeds. Even with the rain we’ll eat outdoors. The rain blocks the view, but there’s enough to see up close. Of course there’s the Nan e Barberi with avocado. And there the Koi’s and turtles eating together in the pond, the birds and butterflies in the garden are hiding from the rain and the snails and earth worms coming out of the rain onto the terrace. Then there’s the fresh smell of water in the air and the sound of all the frogs in the pond sounding almost as loud as the pouring rain. The sky looks grey, but there’s always a bit of blue in the far distant even if you can't see it. 

And the best part is Peter’s smile when he finishes the last piece of Nan and he says: ‘and again delicious bread on our table’.

Armenian bread not by Connie but this time by her husband Peter

Today is a very special day. I finally kept my promise to Connie to bake her a bread. As you all know, Connie is a great and skilled home baker and I am the lucky one to taste everything and having the most wonderful loafs for breakfast, lunch or with a soup for diner.

Because I am grateful for all she bakes for us I promised her to bake the bread I baked a very long time ago. It was the only bread I baked in my life, but it was delicious and I remember the taste of it even today.  At that time I baked it from a recipe I found in a book about herbs and spices. But the book is gone and I only knew the name of one special herb I needed; Common Rue. So first I searched on the WWW and found a very basic recipe. It was so very basic that Connie said you can’t bake bread with this recipe, there is so much missing and unclear. So she was so kind to change it into a good recipe.

But here in Thailand we can't find Common Rue. Two years ago we went to the Netherlands (it’s really on old promise) and I bought the Common Rue. But then it took me too long before I started. When I finally did, the Rue was all moist.

Last April we visited the Netherlands again, and again I bought Common Rue. And yesterday I started baking. The result matched my memory. It was delicious and beautiful and more important Connie was very happy. She was very surprised with the special taste of this bread. I won’t be baking much in the future, I like gardening more, but when I bake again it will be this Armenian Bread.

Connie asked me to send it to Zorra for Bread Baking Day#60. I'm very honored to do so and happy because it's the 6th anniversary. The theme is Glazed Bread. I think my bread is very glazed. Congratulations for all participants.

Sourdough Vermont with Figs and Walnuts

It’s a while since I posted about bread baking, that doesn’t mean I don’t bake bread. I bake a few loaves of bread each week. It’s because I like to post about bread I bake for the first time. But, I also like to eat bread I baked before and I don’t post about these.

Today I saw figs and walnuts in my pantry and thought about that delicious Vermont Sourdough of Jeffrey Hamelman.

The smell of figs and walnuts give this loaf a rich filling and it doesn’t need too much topping. Except for cheese of course or some butter. The next day we drove to Chiang Mai, a 3,5 hours ride, and a nice slice of Vermont with Figs and Walnuts makes the ride even better.  

This way we have another loaf of bread I’ll bake again.

Spelt Whole Wheat or Dinkelberger Vollkorn

This month I baked bread using the pre-mixed flour given to me by Schmidt from Chiang Mai, Thailand. I choose Dinkelberger Vollkorn.

In this mix you find: spelt and whole wheat. As most of you know spelt is a very old type of grain. The Celts and Ancient Egyptians already cultivated it. Spelt emerged from the early types of wheat called in Germany einkorn or emmer. The spelt kernel is tightly surrounded by a grain hull, protecting it from pollutants, pests and during storage, from the loss of nutrients. Spelt contains the ideal combination of carbohydrates, fats, protein and dietary fiber. It has a nutty flavor and taste.

The original recipe uses baker’s yeast which I changed this for my own sourdough starter. I used the 100% sourdough starter. Normally sourdough gives the bread a slight sour taste, but it seems to me that using spelt this sourness balanced out.

I love to make artisan bread and love the shape made by hand. Normally I don’t use the bread pan but today is an exception. When I mixed all ingredients it became a soggy mass. The recipe said to mix it for 15 minutes, instead of the 5 minutes I’m used to. But, I followed the recipe. After 15 minutes it still was a soggy mass. I left it to ferment but couldn’t help myself and gave it 2 stretch and folds with wet hands. At the end of fermentation it was a well risen dough but still very sticky. At that time I decided to use the bread pan. On the top of the dough, I sprinkled flour. This broke open in the oven and gave the bread a nice appearance.

The crumb looks like a light version of dark rye bread, it’s moist, and smells very nice without sourness. The taste of this bread is mild which makes it bread for every day. 

Next time I will add some seeds such as linseed or sesame. It keeps the originality of spelt bread and gives it a little extra flavor. Such healthy flour doesn't need too much extras. 

Turkish bread

We’re home again! We were in the Netherlands for 2 weeks to see our family and friends. It was great to be together and hug them all. Every two years we try to visit them. But, since our mothers are getting old (88 and 81) we hope to see them every year now. 

We were lucky, because Prince Willem-Alexander was crowned King during our visit. In Amsterdam there were many festivities organized for the royal couple, Willem-Alexander and Maxima, and their three daughters Amalia, Alexia and Ariane. It was a great celebration and we saw a lot of orange, the color of the Royal Family and the Netherlands, on the street. Off course we ate a lot of orange pastry.

some of the goodies we took home

When we were in the Netherlands we saw a multi-cultural melting pot of delicious food. We enjoyed it. All kinds of ingredients and dishes from around the world are now easy to find. We had delicious Turkish bread with hummus, a delicious Croatian dish of filo pastry filled with shredded pumpkin, homemade strawberry ice cream, white asparagus, fresh pasta with asparagus sauce, rolls with croquette, soft goat cheese and Dutch cheese, salted herring, Belgian fries, and of course other Dutch delicacies. The Netherlands have a long history of immigrants so most dishes are now regarded Dutch regardless of their origin.  

Ninive of Ninivepisces is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day #59. She came up with the theme: Bread for company. There are so many combinations of good food with bread as a company. This was a easy theme because we love Baba Ganoush and Guacamole and both go very well with Turkish bread. This bread was on my long list of breads to bake, so I had a recipe at hand.

It’s easy and delicious!

Baguette with grains and seeds

This month Cinzia of Cindystar is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day#58. She asked us to bake with seeds and flakes. Like most artisan bread bakers I too have a full pantry. It looks like it’s filling itself. Thank you, Cinzia for this great theme. Now I can use some of the delicious and healthy grains and seeds out the pantry.

Since I always enjoy baking with BBD I immediately got started because next week we’re off to see our family and friends in the Netherlands. We’re looking forward seeing our loved ones and hugging them. Even though it’s our choice to live here and we enjoy it a lot, still there are moments it would be great if we could say: ‘beam me up, Scotty’. And in a few seconds we could be there and join in a celebration or give some comfort in grieving. Now we have to travel for more than 20 hours, not including the waiting time. But, it will be worth it!

At this moment it’s the hottest season in Thailand and everybody is enjoying Songkran; Thai New Year. The temperature in our house is every dayabove 35°C and humidity is around 30% which makes it even hotter. This means I have to keep a close eye on the proofing of the dough. I bought an insulated box for this purpose. I will try it when we come back. But today I bake straight from the refrigerator. It made scoring easy and with a very hot oven there was a nice oven spring. The taste and smell is great and the extra flavor came from the grains and seeds I added. We loved the smell and taste of the seeds. It gave this great baguette something special.

I found the recipe for the best baguette of France 2006 on the blog of Plotzblog, who found it on the blog of MC’s Farine, who went to France and talked with the bakers of the contest and blogged about it, who found it …. We are happy with the recipe and thank all people involved.

Essential Columbia

It’s the second week of April and everybody is preparing for the big Songkran celebration.

The Songkran festival (สงกรานต์) from the Sanskrit word saṃkrānti, or literally "astrological passage") is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year's Day from 13 to 16 April. It coincides with the New Year of many calendars of South and Southeast Asia.

Songkran has traditionally been celebrated as the Thai New Year for many centuries, and is believed to have been adapted from an Indian festival. It is now observed nationwide, even in the far south. However, the most famous Songkran celebrations are still in the northern city of Chiang Mai, where it continues for six days and even longer. It has also become a party for foreigners and an additional reason for many to visit Thailand for immersion in another culture.

The traditional way of celebrating, is pouring some scented flower water of the hands of the elderly people. It symbolizes the washing away of troubles and worries of the old year. And the old people give their blessings to the younger ones. Nowadays you can’t cross the street without a few buckets of water over your head.
The mother of one of our Thai friends, Jaai Deng (meaning Red Grandmother), lives in Bangkok at the moment and we cannot visit her this year. Jaai Deng loves good bread and our pizza. The last time we visited Bangkok she even called before and asked me to bake her some bread. We decided to send the bread by postal mail for Songkran. 

A while back I baked this delicious Essential Columbia which is filled with different flours and has a great smell and taste. This is the loaf of bread I want to bake for Jaai Deng to celebrate the astrological passage. Instead of pouring some flower scented water we send her flour scented bread.

Yesterday evening we heard the bread had arrived and Jaai Deng loves it. Since I baked two loaves we can enjoy it together and share the celebration even though we are almost 1000 km apart. This beautiful world is like a big house full of rooms, you just have to open a door or window to see the ones you love.

Soft rolls

For many years I’m looking for soft rolls. It’s difficult because they are hidden in my memory and to make a comparison they have to be exact the same as the ones in my memory. Not only the shape, but also the smell and taste have to be the same. Recognize this?

As soon as I saw the soft rolls made by Lutz I knew these were the ones from my memory. I could almost smell and taste them. But, could I make them too? I used the Google translation because my knowledge of the German language is very rusty and dates back to my schooldays. Even though the Google translated recipe looks like a bit like a puzzle I think I knew enough to use it and went for it.

When they were ready and we finally took them out of the oven we recognize the smell of butter and milk. They are really soft and when we pull them apart there’s a thin piece of crumb hanging there. And the taste is great!

These are the soft rolls from our memory, the ones Peter used to eat with corned beef and he hit the rolls flat as he often had done as a child. I have no idea why someone would like to hit a roll flat, but he loves it. My memory is a soft roll with Dutch cheese and strawberry jam. And Peter has no idea why someone would combine strawberry jam and cheese together on one roll and not hit it flat. Together we sat quietly enjoying our soft rolls and enjoyed those memories.

Breadsticks with Italian herbs

We live in a very small village in the North of Thailand. And we are very happy here. But sometimes we long for the tastes of the European delicatessen. A long time ago, long before I baked my own bread, we discovered an authentic Italian pizzeria in one of the big cities. And we were up for a treat. To our surprise the restaurant served complementary breadsticks on the table. There were sticks with sea salt, sesame seeds, Italian herbs and cheese.  And we eat them all, leaving only little space for the pizza yet to come.

Luckily now I can make them myself! The Rex Milano, pre-mix of Schmidt, looks promising to make breadsticks. The rolls with Italian herbs which I already made with this pre-mix, tasted really nice.

I followed the recipe Schmidt gave me.  I made some bread sticks with coarse sea salt, sesame seeds and some Parmesan cheese which I added at the end of baking time to prevent it from melting too much. It worked out well and we enjoyed all the breadsticks.

Rolls with Italian herbs

This is already the fourth month I bake with pre-mixed flour of Schmidt. This month I choose Rex Milano. As the name suggests it’s filled with Italian herbs, sundried tomatoes and cheese. The kitchen smelled like a pizzeria. It’s easy dough to work with. The only question that came to my mind was about adding salt. I followed the recipe Schmidt gave me and didn’t include salt and it turned out ok.

The rolls smell very Italian and the soft crumb has a nice yellow golden color. This roll goes well with soup. It’s nice to taste bits of sundried tomatoes and Italian herbs.

ready to proof

Wheat Loaf in Dutch oven

Zorra has invited us all to come to her blog warming party and asked us to bring a loaf of bread. Have a look at this month’s Bread Baking Day #57.

The idea of a party made me turn on some music. Sometimes I like music while I bake bread and sometimes I enjoy the quietness. This morning I feel like listening to the Mantra of Compassionate Avalokitesvara. It brings back memories of time I spend in the temple. I lived for a year in a Buddhist temple in Thailand. During walking meditation we heard this mantra and others. Hearing this mantra also brings back the serenity I sometimes had.

Music works like thoughts, smells, images and other stimuli and takes you to a situation in the past or future. Reading Zorra’s invitation to come to her blog warming party did the same. I had a look around her new blog and saw enough to be inspired for the next time. And just before I clicked and took off for yet another good recipe it was time to come back to the present moment and bake for Zorra’s blog warming. I can’t go to her party without my gift. I baked a Wheat loaf.

Butter knots

We love to eat croissants. From time to time I bake them. I've baked them using different recipes, with and without sourdough. Some pretty good and some pretty bad. A good reason to keep on trying so one day I can bake that 'close to perfect' croissant. 

When I saw these butter knots on Levine’s page I knew I would bake them one day. She made them look absolutely delicious. They smell like croissants. They are easier than croissants because or their shape. You make a knot of the strip of dough instead of rolling them. It's difficult to adjust the temperature of my oven and this makes it mostly too hot. Sometimes the outside of the croissant will be crispy before the inside is well done. These butter knots don't have this problem. 

Levine had a good tip for the roll-in butter. As you might know it takes time and strength to pound the butter before it's thin enough to use it as roll-in butter. With temperatures of 30°C in the house I don’t have much time when I want cool dough. Levine cuts the butter into thin slices and suggests it’s also possible using a cheese slicer. This is what I did and it works great! I could work quicker than before and kept the dough cooler this way.

This is an easy recipe with great success. I loved playing with the knots. The only thing I changed is that I brushed some whisked egg on top of the knots.

These Butter Knots are dangerously delicious. 

I baked them in two batches. The first batch was cooling on wire rack when the next batch was in the oven. We couldn’t wait until they were cooled enough and we had  fresh strawberries in the fridge. Only a few weeks during winter time we find strawberries in the North of Thailand. We already made 2 jars of strawberry jam and last night we had a Dutch treat: vanilla vla (a thin custard dessert) with strawberries. And now we have all those great smelling butter knots waiting for us to put strawberries on.

Live can be a joy when you see it, don’t you agree! 

Brown Sourdough Bread with Soya, Oats, Flax and Sunflower seeds

This month I baked bread using the pre-mixed flour given to me by Schmidt from Chiang Mai, Thailand. This time I choose Multi Malt Mix.

In the mix you find: Soya, Oats, Flax seeds and Sunflower seeds. This all makes it healthy bread. The malt gives it a nice color without the taste of molasses. For many years’ people thought brown bread is healthy. We know it’s not the color that makes bread healthy, but the ingredients like whole wheat, oats, flax seed and using unbleached flour.

The original recipe uses baker’s yeast which I changed for my own sourdough starter. I have good results with the stiff starter, especially during hot weather. The 100% sourdough starter sometimes grows too fast during the night, even with a pinch of salt. The 66% sourdough starter acts more stabile and gives me more time in the morning to get started.

It’s delicious bread. The malt gives it a nice soft crumb and a nice smell. The soya, oats, flax and sunflower seeds give this bread a good taste. Luckily there’s enough mix left in the bag to bake more loaves.

Assyrian spinach pies

It’s been 5 years since the Bread Baking Babes started. Every month they bake a recipe and all Buddies can bake along. I've been baking along for about 2 years now and still enjoying it! Babe Tanna found these good looking Assyrian Spinach Pies.

We just bought some spinach and I made a nice quiche with it. Luckily I had some spinach left to put in these pies. They’re easy to make; the dough is smooth and soft and the filling has a good bite. Tanna uses mahlab, made from the pits of sour black cherries. Since I don’t have this I omitted it and have no idea what I missed. I saw Babe Lien used raisins instead of pomegranate seeds and hard cheese instead of feta. This worked great for me too. For the bite I added fresh chili.

We loved them! I baked only 4 pies because I didn’t have enough spinach and we ate them with a nice salad for dinner. But, next time ……….. for sure.

Frankisher Kipf with Sourdough and 7-grains

About one week ago I baked these delicious Frankisher Kipf or Crusty Rolls. Today I wanted to bake them with sourdough and 7 grains. It's a great recipe which allows you to play with it. 

Bakers yeast doesn't goes well with gout and arthritis so whenever I can, I will use sourdough instead. And we like grains in our bread. 

So here are the crusty rolls with grains! 

I did the same as with the other Frankisher Kipf or crusty rolls. I changed the 2.6 grams yeast for 150 grams of active sourdough and instead of the rye flour I added 25 grams of 7-grains. 

For the poolish I kept with the 0.03 grams of dry active yeast.

Did you like them too?

 

Crusty rolls or Frankish Kipf

The first time I baked these rolls we had our friends Ning and Chue over and we ate the rolls with French onion soup. This was the first time they ever ate this soup. They liked the soup and loved the crusty rolls. We had a nice talk about good bread in Thailand.

Thailand doesn’t have a bread baking history, so not many people have an oven in their house. Most cooking is done on 1 burner and a small wood or charcoal burned bbq. Some dishes require a steam pan, but most cooking is done with the wok. In the big cities you see more and more people changing their lifestyle to a more Western one. The food preferences change too. In the shopping malls you’ll find products from all over the world and there you’ll find all the Western fast food too. Some Thai people eat factory made sandwiches with their coffee or with a scoop of ice. You’ll find Artisan bread in some stores. Mostly it’s bought by foreigners living in Thailand. But, we see something changing here. Ning and Chue love my Artisan bread, even though they have to get used to the crunchy crust and the chewy crumb of sourdough bread.

When we talked about good bread in Thailand they came up with the idea of baking their own and selling it to Thai people. Off course I agreed to teach Ning how to bake bread.

When we talked about good bread in Thailand we also talked about unbleached and bleached flour. They had no idea what the effects can be of bleached flour for your health. They were surprised to hear that bleached flour is banned in most or all Western countries.  Now they only want to use unbleached flour when they start baking.  

Today its baking day and we started with crusty rolls. I found this recipe at Ploetzblog. Lutz had a reader who asked for these rolls and the found them and shared the recipe and the beautiful result with us. Now we have new favorite rolls in our house, and car, and garden, and …. Thank Lutz.

I wanted to show Ning how to bake these delicious rolls with minimum materials. She needs to buy an oven, but maybe she could do without an electric mixer? I showed Ning how to “pull and throw” the sticky dough until it’s smooth and cleans the work counter. Its tiresome work, but it can be done. Even though I enjoy sometimes kneading by hand I’m happy to have an electric mixer. Beside the kneading by hand we followed Lutz’s instructions. Ning translated this into Thai.

 For lunch we baked 2 pizzas; a Thai version topped with Yam Pla Kapong; (spicy salad with canned sardine) with sardine in tomato sauce, onion, chili, lemon grass and an Italian version with slow roasted tomato sauce, mushroom, olives and parmesan cheese.

After this delicious lunch we baked the rolls. This is how they came out of the oven.

It was fun baking with Ning!

Sourdough Roasted Garlic Bread

Host for this month Bread Baking Day is Jenni of The Gingerd Wisk. She would like to have a Bread Fashion Show. We can do whatever we want as long as we decorate our bread. She gave us some examples and as soon as I saw Sourdough Roasted Garlic Bread made by Susan of Wild Yeast, I knew what to bake. I’m a fan of Susan and this recipe is high on my list of bread to bake. 

Often I started with the preparations for this bread and then we ate the roasted garlic without baking the bread. But not today; today I will bake the bread! The garlic’s are roasted, more garlic heads than I need just in case and the levain is ready.

Because I know Susan’s recipes are good I bake 2 loaves. Even though Susan said to hold back some of the water I just went for it and used all the water. I did all the required stretch and folds, which helped, but still the dough was slack. Considering this I’m very happy with the result and want to show them anyway. The loaves a not as well risen as I’m used to. But the smell and taste were very good.