French countryside with poolish

Every year on 16^th of October it's time for Zorra's World Bread Day. 

This year I want to honor my bread with soup. I've seen it often but never done it myself. It looks so good to eat the bowl too and it was! Especially when you know the bowl is delicious bread.

I haven't had time to start my dried sourdough since we came back from the Netherlands so this bread is made with instant yeast. I made a nice broccoli soup for this bread. It goes very well together. And with some nice cheese it will be even better.

Enjoy your meal like we did! 

Potato rolls with Lievito Madre

This month Sandra of Snuggs Kitchen is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day 77, the great invention of Zorra of Kochtopf. Sandra came up with the theme: Summer buns and rolls. These go well with hot weather.
Back to the potato rolls. They are delicious. The potato and the yoghurt makes the dough soft. The rolls smelled a bit sweet. 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 flavour is slightly sweet. 

I love to use my Lievito Madre sourdough. I've used other sourdough starters, but this one is so easy and forgiving. I found the recipe at Stefanies Hefe und Mehr. The rainy season can be tricky for sourdough. Last year it went bad when I fed the sourdough during the rain with the window open. But, it's so easy to start a new Lievito Madre.

That's also where I found these delicious potato rolls. Stefanie likes to bake overnight rolls. Even though we wake up pretty early, around 5.30 - 6.00 o'clock, I can't find the time to proof and bake them. I'm more a fan of baking during the day and eat them the same evening. So, I did let the dough ferment overnight in the refrigerator I baked them after breakfast.

We ate the rolls with our friends who came for dinner. We had potato rolls, Baba Ganoush, Hummus, Garlic butter, Guacamole and a nice salad. We had a nice evening.

Sourdough English Muffins

Immer wieder Sonntag is the host for Zorra's Bread Baking Day 75. She likes us to bake our favourite weekend bread for the 75^th Bread Baking Day.

Every Tuesday we visit our friend Gerard who lives in a small Karen village 25 km from our house. First we visit the local market and then we all have breakfast. Many local hill tribes come to this Tuesday market; like Longneck Karen, different kind of Lahu, Lisu, Thai and us foreigners. They come to sell their home grown vegetables and fruits. 

At our breakfast we eat a lot of local food (fruit, noodles, sweets, soy products) and most of the time I bring some freshly baked bread. This morning I brought English Muffins. I'd seen them at Susan's blog Wild Yeast a long time ago and this was the perfect moment to make them. 

I fermented the dough in the refrigerator during the night and the next morning I shaped the muffins and let them proof in the car. It was the first time I proofed bread in our car! I baked the muffins at our friend's house and we ate them warm. 

Our friend had made a delicious jam with mango, apples, banana and wild honey.

This was our favourite weekend bread. It's delicious: soft crumb with a nice crust, the taste and smell are really nice. It's fun to make!

Persian Flatbread or Nan e Barbari

Brotwein is the host for Bread Baking Day 74 and she asked for savory bread. I knew I wanted to bake flat bread because we love savory flat breads. It goes well with so many dishes. We love to eat sesame seeds, garlic and onion. I can say we almost every day have some in our food.

It’s an easy recipe as long as you can accept the slack dough. I have to admit I had to control myself to add just a bit of extra flour during mixing to give it more strength. It's good I did control myself because it worked very well. The dough rose very well. I shaped it by pulling it with wet hands under the dough. I pre-cooked the garlic and onions and dry roasted the sesame seeds. The romal (sauce) is spread over the dough before baking.

We ate the Nan e Barbari with sun dried tomato soup; this brought the sun back to our rainy day.

Hamburger buns

 They taste as they look: absolutely delicious 

with Peter's hamburger

soft good tasting and good smelling crumb and nice light crusty crust

Dutch Sourdough Brown Bread with Oats

"Breads from all over the world" is what Susanna from Mehlstaubundofenduft likes to see. She is the host for Bread Baking Day 73.

I'm born in the Netherlands and moved to Thailand almost 10 years ago. I started to bake our own bread because Thailand has no original bread culture. Of course you can buy bread everywhere in the world, but all we could find here was white fabric baked bread. Nowadays you can find very nice baked artisan bread in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and probably in other places too. But in our small village in the North of Thailand we still can't find a nice artisan baked bread. 

Susanna likes to see bread typical from my country. The Netherlands is a typical Bread country with enough bread to choose from. The first one that came to my mind was a typical Dutch loaf: tijgerbrood or Dutch crunchy crust. I had no rise flour in the house, only rise starch and that doesn't work. Of course I tried it and it gives a nice whitish crust but not the beautiful tiger pattern I was looking for.

Today I baked typical Dutch bread; brown bread and I rolled it in oats. It tastes very nice. 

Here in Thailand we just finished Songkran; Thai new year celebration for the year 2558. So with this delicious typical brown bread from the Netherlands we wish all you a happy new year.

Krusti's with carrot mix

Crispy Krusti's 

Yesterday we had Stefanie's Krusti's and today I tweeted them a bit. I used 750 flour and 50 grams of Carrot Mix by Ireks, given by Schmidt to try. The result is a good tasting and nice smelling roll with seeds and dried carrot slices. 

delicious with cheese

Krusti's or crusty rolls

In the Netherlands you can buy these delicious crusty rolls. Long before I baked my own bread and long before I had any idea about sourdough I knew there was something with these rolls. Regardless of the time of day you came into the bakery shop and buy these crusty rolls, they would ALWAYS be crusty. Not like the rolls I made, after a while they turn softer. Of course when you placed them in the oven for a few minutes they are crusty again. But, mine never stayed crusty the whole day. 

Until I found these crispy rolls on Stefanie's blog Hefe und Mehr. Stefanie said "to turn on convection mode for the last 10-15 min while opening the oven door ajar". Since I have no convection mode on my oven she suggests: "reducing the temperature to 220°C after you put the rolls in the oven and bake them with falling heat a little bit longer than normal. That creates a thicker crust which normally stays longer crispy".

I have to admit it's difficult for me to bake them, because my oven doesn't have a proper working temperature sensor so I always guess the precise temperature. Most of the time I bake on the highest temperature and this works for most of my loaves. 

nice crumb

tasty krusti's 

They taste good!

Millers loaves by Bourke Street Bakery

I've a happy sourdough starter that is waiting in the refrigerator for a nice bread. This recipe is easy and the bread has good taste. 

I've baked it often. Here is the recipe

I hope you enjoy it as much as we do

Sourdough Walnut Raisin Bread

I was happy to see it’s time for Zorra’s Bread Baking Day. This is the 72^nd time and the host is Tanja of Greenway36.Tanja came up with the great theme: Nuts.

I found a nice recipe for sourdough bread with walnut and raisins. I used my Dutch oven and it came out looking very nice and smelling even better. It was a bit denser than I had anticipated but still a very nice tasting and smelling loaf. We ate it with cheese, homemade jams and tahini. And it’s also very nice by itself.

I can’t wait to see all the other Nutty loaves.