What a challenge! After making son many breads and being obsessed with my sourdough, this 2011 I decided to finish the year making il Panettone. Of course, with natural sweet sourdough starter, the traditional way. Not only that, but I decided to sell them (If they worked out well of course) as now I am also selling my bread each week with pâtés, cheese, marmalades and home-made things. Anyway, lots of nerves. I started Wednesday to convert a portion of my liquid 100% hydration sourdough starter into a stiff one (50% hydration). Y finished baking on Sunday, 9 kgs of panettone, which ended up being 16 panettone. They were soft, spongy, and really tasty. Of course I have some critiques of my own and would like to improve some things for next time -> January, that way, next year I’m an expert Are you ready for a fully detailed recipe???

Ok. But first, I’d like to tell you my favorite story about where this delicious sweet bread came from. There are many, this one is my favorite: It’s Christmas eve, and the 1500’s. Duke Ludovico, known also for the “Lord of Milán” is hosting a huge party. Time for dessert is coming, but turns out the cake is ruined. However, Antonio one of the dishwashers took some leftover fruits from the party and was baking a sweet bread for him and his family. The kitchen smelled so nice, the cook decided to serve his bread as dessert. The Duke liked it so much, he entered the kitchen asking for the cook that had made the dessert. …’Antonio’, ‘il pane di Toni’, and so today we know it for ‘Panettone‘.

It is very important that you manage well your time. You will be needing a 2-day early start to get your sourdough ready and ‘sweet’ (no acid).

The result was a very spongy soft crumb. Maybe next time I’ll add a bit more starter and I will feed it longer to get it more active. I feel the fact it took so long was this one. I’ll let you know!! They were really amazing and tasty. Great experience. Giving it a second one in January for sure.

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T. spelta is part of the wheat family  (Triticum). This grain started to be grown in southern Germany since the year 4000 bc, but there is evidence that it started to be grown in Asia from 7000 bc. Today, it is popular in northern Europe, specially Germany, Switzerland and France.

Spelt is characterized by having high amounts of protein (17%), a moderatelly strong gluten quality but not so elastic. It is usually recommende to mix the spelt flour with normal wheat (T. aestivus) or other wheats that give a strong gluten if you’d like to have as a result a bread with a non-compact structure.

Comparing it to common wheat, spelt has a higher carbohydrate, protein, fibre, vitamin B1 and B2, plus a higher amount of minerals and aminoacid content. It provides a sweet and nutty taste to bread. It is highly soluble in water and easy to digest.

A special property is that the grain has a very strong skin, dificult to eliminate providing a high resistance to plagues and diseases, making it an ideal cereal for ecological growth, due to its natural resistance without the need to use transgenic seeds or pesticides.

Spelt is therefore the most ancient wheat grain, with no genetic modifications since its use, a high resistance to plagues, perfect for ecological growth, with excellent nutritional properties and which also provides a unique taste to bread.

So, what are you waiting for? Go buy it and bake this delicious bread. It goes really well with strong cheeses with umami taste and honey and sweet marmalades. This bread has to sourdoughs, common wheat flour (95), rye flour (9%) and 82% spelt flour. This flour I bought in August in Copenhague. It comes from an ecological growth and the grain comes from the recovery of ancient grains since 1994 that have returned from Switzerland to the biodynamic and organic farmers in Denmark. A bread whose taste makes us travel in time.

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My roomate loves to make them home-made, so after a few movie-hamburguer nights here in Berlin, I decided that the next one was going to be an Oscar Winner! I prepared this bread, these special potatoes from Teresita and a classical cole-slaw salad. Believe me when I say that there’s nothing more delicious that eating a hamburguer with everything natural.

I leave you some more pictures of our latest hamburguer night in Berlin with my roomates. Clovis prepared hamburguers with soya sauce, some really nice cocktails and then we watched a horror movie with some beer. Great evening!!!

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Brainstorming for picnic: sandwiches, fruit, cold pies, beer, pallets, cards, picnic basket, fun straws, bucket, squared blankets, muffins, etc. So I decided to try doing my own sandwich loaf and from there 4 different kinds of sandwichs (easy but ‘gourmet’ style). I also made a leek quiche (recipe coming up soon!), some fruit in different presentations and other Picnic stuff.

The sandwich loaf was a complete success. It came out so lovely that I only thought about singing outloud when I got it out of the oven and saw its crumb. So I made 3 of those for the sandwichs. Unfortunately everything could not be perfect and Saturday was a rainy rainy day. But we never give up (specially me!) so we celebrated the Picnic as an Indoor Picnic. That way we have the perfect excuse to make an outdoor one a.s.a.p!

So here’s the recipe for my sandwich loaf and 4 different kinds of sandwiches that I prepared and that are perfect for this type of occasion: birthday parties for you or your kids, for grownups, indoors, outdoors, wherever. The first two are typically present in Perú b-day parties, the other are new ideas! Piece of cake (you can buy a good bread if you don’t want to do it) and very very nice.

I manage to make like 200 sandwiches and there were so delicious they were all finished in half an hour!!!

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I managed to get effort, dedication and wit all together and supplied myself with rye flour, a pretty old scale (decent enough) and time, organized time. My sourdough almost died on a trip to the beach but with expert help I managed to save it. That’s how I got my first sourdough 100% rye. And that’s how I got my apple-bread.

The wheat flour I used came from the supermarket, one that has not much gluten and does not provide the usual elasticity in a bread. This came along with a positive surprise: bread can be made with any flour. The flavour was special and very nice, perhaps somewhat acid for my taste. I understand this is due to the fact that my sourdough was ‘young’ and that I gave her one overnight feed only. With this I learned that sourdough has to be fed more time in order to eliminate the acidity, increasing yeast, reducing bacteria. Love this micro-world! More things, working on kneading (a looot), fermentation and shaping. Still got 999  left to do!

More pics here!

Sourdough.

Day 1. 21:00 p.m.

50 grs de rye flour  + 50grs de sink water.

Mix well and leave closed and away from wind currents at room temperature.

Day 2. 21:00 p.m.

Take 50 grs of yesterday’s mix and add 25 grs water. Mix well and add 25 grs rye flour. There should be no lumps. Leave closed and away from wind currents at room temperature.

Day 3. 21:00 p.m.

Repeat the same procedure. Don’t get scared with the smell! It will be very acid at this point because acid bacteria start working. In fact, take it as a good sign.

Day 4. 21:00 p.m.

100 grs of day’s 3 mixture + 75 gr sink water. Mix well and add 75 gr rye flour.

Once the sourdoough has finished feeding herself you’ll have 250 grs of sourdourgh ready to be used for bread. If by any chance you leave it too much time on the sun as it happened to me, don’t go carzy just feed it again and you’ll see how it survives perfectly!

Changing rye sourdough to other flour sourdoughs.

Once you have this sourdough starter you can also take 20 grs and start feeding it with other flours, for example normal white wheat flour and your sourdough will convert itself after a few feeds in a white bread sourdough.

Apple bread.

The post Yes! My sourdough and apple bread! first appeared on Monitouille.

We tried it on sunday night and monday early in the morning I went to the market and prepared this delicious brunch (very easy!).

Finally with the two apples and a lime prepare an apple juice.

Try and serve everything at once and enjoy the brunch!

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