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

I love cooking when it rains!

The rainy season is here and what I love to do most in the weekend in cook.
I love spending cold Sunday mornings reading new recipes, browsing for 'how to make macarons' on the internet and trying out new things in my kitchen.

Lately we have been changing our diet a little bit, we are eating more healthy grains and vegetables and less white pasta and rice.
I have been making bread with spelt and raisins or with rolled oats and sunflower seeds.
We eat quinoa with courgette, black cabbage, nuts and dried apricots or wholewheat couscous with caramelized unions and grilled pumpkin. All very tasty I must say and it makes you feel really good about what you eat.
Our bodies seem to like it as well as it gives it lot's of slow energy to keep going for longer.

I was inspired by a few of my favorite new cookbooks:

'Veg' by Hugh Fearlney-Whittingstall

'Ottolenghi' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

I've been a great fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for a few years now. He has a great tv-series called 'River Cottage' and several restaurants and cooking schools throughout England.

I love his real look on food, meat and vegetables and how he tries to help us eat more healthy and understand where food really comes from.

Now, you might fear that I might have given up on my love for baking cakes...on the contrary!

I baked my first 'fancy' cake yesterday. A four-layered Schwartzwalder Kirschtorte by a recipe from Linda Lomelino. I loved the pictures in her book about cakes and therefore bought it.

It is not only a beautiful book but also has a great amount of recipes in it  for stunning birthday/wedding/anniversary cakes.

This was the result after my first attempt:

layers

Macarons attempt

La Bella (but most of all Buona) Sicilia

Finally we managed to go. After years of wanting and months of planning, we went to Sicily!
We landed late in Palermo and were picked up by the bed and breakfast we booked there.
Our first culinary experience of the Island was an Arancina (a deep-fried ball of risotto filled with sticky cheese), it wasn't what we had hoped for, but we were too hungry to even notice the disappointment of our stomachs.
The next day we went out to discover the disordered beauty of Palermo, it's great Opera house and many, many of it's delicious treats. We had lunch at the harbor with Swordfish Caponata and polpette di pesce, followed by Pasta con le sarde e finochietto. Then on our way we tried some mini Canoli, this is the typical sweet of the island. It's a crunchy deep-fried rolled dough filled with ricotta and chocolate. Delicious!
Then in the evening we met up with three Sicilian friends who showed us a traditional Sicilian restaurant in the heart of the city called 'Ferro di Cavallo'. We took a big mix of antipasti; caponata, panelle, prosciutto crudo con ricotta and so on...This was followed by fresh swordfish, filled squid, and more fishy delights. We simply couldn't fit in any dessert otherwise I would obviously have had one.
What a feast it was!

The next day on our way to rent a car, we stopped over for a very much needed cappuccino in a very fancy pasticceria. We discovered these amazing biscuits there called 'I Toto Siciliani' that my Love is now crazy about so I had a go at copying them. They don't taste exactly the same, but they turned out yummy anyway.

We drove towards Trapani, our next stop and had a lunch break in Scopello. A cute tiny village right at the sea. I had an amazing pasta with fresh seafood, the best I've ever had!

We moved on to Trapani where we knew we couldn't leave before having tried the Couscous with fish and so we did in a very charming and elegant restaurant called 'Serisso 47'. The owner made us try several mouthwatering starters followed by the famous, and extremely delicious, Couscous.

The following morning we visited Trapani's harbor and for coffee and more sweets we went to a place called 'Evangelista', this is where we took about half a kilo of almond biscuits as a souvenir (already finished unfortunately...).

We decided to head back to meet our friend in Scopello and finally have our long longed for dive into the blue sea.
That evening I had an (again, I know this is getting boring) amazing pasta with gamberi e pistacchio. I really need to try this at home soon as it was too good to be true.

When we woke up the sun was smiling at us in the blue sky, it was 27 degrees on the 2nd of November.
After a delicious breakfast with homemade crostata we took our little Fiat 500 to the 'Riserva dello Zingaro' A big nature reserve right at the coast. This is where our friend took us to the most beautiful beach I've ever seen. I though I was in the Caribbean or some other tropical place.

Nearly at the end of our trip we found an olive oil factory just outside Scopello. We arrived at peak time as all the local farmers came around to have their freshly picked olives squeezed into delicious olive oil.
We wanted a taste of that and decided to bring home a 3 liter can to dress our salads with or, even better, soak some fresh bread in, Mmm!

I haven't really experienced home sickness to a holiday place before, I always found the though of going back home, sleeping in our own bed comforting. But Sicily has changed that.
I want to go back as soon as I can! Eat the great food, drink the good wine. Soak up the warm sun and bathe in the blue sea. It seems to good to be true!

I've even started a trial and error phase of copying the almond biscuits, the raisin bread and this week I'll start on the challenging Caponata...

Caponata di pesce spada

Harbor of Palermo

Outrageous cakes!

Canoli Siciliani

Flower power Cappuccio

Pasta al mare in Scopello

Le Saline with wild Flamingo's 

Trapani

Trapani

Breakfast view in Scopello

Riserva dello Zingaro beach

Freshly picked olives at the Oleificio

Oleificio Scopello

Back at home with a souvenir

Home made Sicilian sweets

Pane con uvette e semi di finocchio

A fine Fall

Fall is here again, I can't believe how fast seasons change, they're back before you know it!

Weather wise I'm not the biggest fa of fall but when it comes to nature's beauty it's maybe the best out of the four of them. It's in serious competition with spring I'd say.

As I have a new phone that takes great pictures I snap around as much as I can. On a lunch break stroll around the office, or on a rainy day in the weekend, like today, when we went to visit a small village at Lake Como called Torno.

Here I saw the most beautiful leaves and berries that made a stunning still life against a stone, mossy wall. I hope I'm not the only person walking there enjoying this extraordinary beauty, as it makes me feel so happy to be able to be surrounded by all this.

Bright!

Bamboo at work

Hungry snails

Weddingdress inspiration

Fluffy mushroom

Monte Generoso

Happy leaves

I love nature!

Cookbook project

Dear Reader,

It's been a few months since my last post, a lot happened lately...

My brother's amazing (!) Wedding end of august for which I had to prepare an outfit or two.
Of course I ended up making my own dress as I had some pastel colored silk lying around, which was perfect considering the theme of the wedding was Pastels. And I collected some silk flowers at a vintage shop in Amsterdam to fix a matching headpiece.

Then, as the sister of the groom, you should come up with a reasonably acceptable present, best made or bought from the heart.
After a bit of brainstorming I came to the idea of making them a personal cooking book.
The book includes all my favorite recipes that I have been perfecting throughout the years. As you can imagine it includes lots of desserts and cakes, but also a tutorial on 'how to make bread' and many other simple but delicious savory recipes.
I realized that making a cookbook takes quite some time and effort, it took me just over six months to complete the project. It starts with the writing of recipes, then the cooking, then I realized food photography is a whole new challenge to be taken on. Then putting everything together so it looks nice is another one...And choosing what goes in and what stays out. Phew!
But I must say I'm pretty pleased with the result and I more than profoundly enjoyed the whole process.

I'm working on a new and improved version now that will hopefully, one day, end up in some people's kitchen (other than my own and my mothers...).
To give you a sneak preview I added some example pages below. In case you are interested in one of the recipes, just let me know and I'll translate it in my next post!

copyright Lisa Weinberg

Peas soup copyright Lisa Weinberg

copyright Lisa Weinberg

Fig salad copyright Lisa Weinberg

                                   

Crostata copyright Lisa Weinberg
    

Headpiece

Cuore di bue

I just wanted to let you know about another favorite summer food I have.

It's the Cuore di Bue.

Isn't it a lovely name as well. Bull's heart in English.

We use the as the heart of our daily salad, in the sugo di pomodoro with pasta, as a pre-dinner snack...

Tricked tomato