new favourite bread recipe

Every week I bake bread, at least. It's ridiculously easy and really quick if you look at the preparation time. It's only the rising that takes a bit longer. If you've never done it before it's really worth giving it a try.

Last week I tried something new and it's my favourite recipe till now...And I've baked a lot of different types of bread. I tried French baguette and ficelle (smaller thin baguette) and Pain de Campagne from the amazing Larousse bread book. I made brioche and even did an attempt to make fresh croissants (which failed as I wasn't patient enough with the last rise).

I mixed all sorts of flours in different quantities like wholewheat, rye, buckwheat, corn and plain white flour. All great breads I must say but adding this secret ingredient just made it that much better.

Oatmeal, the stuff we use to make our everyday breakfast porridge. In the morning we cook it with water and Jamie Olivers Granola Dust, from his new book Everyday Superfoods. We sweeten it with honey or maple syrup and fresh banana. Yum, and so healthy!

I had no idea it would work so well in bread. 

Making this bread recipe will take you two and a half hours (2,5) all in all, so including weighing, kneading, rising and baking. The actual work takes about 10 minutes (if using a Kitchen Aid) to 30 minutes (if kneading by hand).

Ingredients:

350 grams of wholewheat flour

150 grams of cut oatmeal (you can use whole rolled oats if you like)

10 grams of salt

25 grams of fresh yeast or 7 grams of dried yeast.

350 ml lukewarm water

3 tablespoons of olive oil (optional)

Mix your flour, oatmeal and salt in the machine or in a bowl by hand. Mix the water and yeast till dissolved. Add the water and yeast and olive oil to the flour mixture and start kneading, keep kneading for about 10 minuted until you have a soft elastic dough that is not too compact and dry but also does not stick too much to your hands.

Make into ball and cover the bowl with a damp cloth. Leave for an hour in a warm place.

After an hour, when the dough has risen to double its size, beat the air out of the dough and re-knead for a minute. Shape into a ball or put into a bread tin. Cover with the cloth and leave to rise for another 15 minutes in a warm place while you preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Bake the bread for 50 minutes until cooked through and golden brown.

Eat immediately with cheese and hot soup! "To die for, how will I ever buy bread again." I quote my friend.

Oatmeal bread

French baguette

Swedish Kanelsnurre, cinnamon rolls pre-baking

Grissini

Buckwheat bread

Easter Bunnies

Dutch filled spice biscuit

A few life changing events have pulled me away from blogging over the last year and a half....
We got married and had our beautiful son!
Both fairly time consuming, life changing, wonderful, big things that, in combination with a fulltime job, left me with no time to blog. I am trying to pick up my creative activities, combining it with being a mom...a challenge I can tell you, but the most wonderful one I can imagine.

This is the second time I've made this biscuit, and it's again a big success. A very traditional recipe we make (or buy) around Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Thanksgiving basically.
On the 5th of December Santaclaus: Sinterklaas, together with his helpers, comes to bring us presents and candy and we all drink hot chocolate and eat erwtensoup.

See Wikipedia for a better explenation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

It's a spicy, cinnamon, full-christmas-flavoured biscuit filled with rich almond goodness.

makes 30 pcs

Ingredients:

for the dough:

200gr flower (any type you like)

100 gr sugar

2 tablespoons of mixed christmas spice (speculaaskruiden) *

a pinch of salt

150 gr cold butter in cubes

2 tablespoons of milk

for the filling:

150 gr of peeled almonds

150 gr cane sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1 egg

for the finishing:

1 egg

30 peeled almonds

* To mix your own Speculaaskruiden mix:

4 tsp Cinnamon

2 tsp ground cardemom

2 tsp ground coriander ( ketoembar)

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground clove

To convert grams into other units: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions/grams/grams-to-cups-conversions

Start making the filling two days in advance (preferably). grind the almonds with the sugar and the lemon zest till it sticks together and is a fairly fine structure, you can add a bit of water to make it more sticky. Make into a ball and put in the fridge for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Then for the dough you mix all dry ingredients, the add the butter and mix till it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the milk and quickly combine to create a smooth ball of dough. Leave in the fridge for half an hour.

Take you filling and let it get to room temperature. Mix in the egg until smooth.

Roll out half the dough to a rectangle of about 20 by 25 cm and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Put the filling on top in the centre so it doesn't leak to the edges.

Roll out the other half of the dough to the same size and carefully place on top.

Now press down the edges and seal with a fork.

finish with one layer of egg wash, then the almonds in straight lines and another layer of egg wash.

Bake the biscuit for 40 minutes until lovely dark golden brown with cracks.

Let it cool slightly and cut into squares with one almond in the middle.

Best with a hot chocolate in the month of December...

just out of the oven

cut into squares