Here I am again... with Broad Beans!

Poah, that's been a long absence... Now I'm definitely happily married and will be writing more about our second go once I've got the photos - let me just just say it was w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l! (Meanwhile you can read about our first wedding here.)

After a long but oh-it-seemed-so-short stay, we had to kiss our families and friends good-bye and were off to Sydney. While living in this preparing-for-and-then-getting-married-bubble, one could forget that elsewhere life goes on, you're just too busy to notice. That's also true for the food blogging world - I've had a lot of catching up to do! Always amongst the first to check is Nora's Life's Smorgasbord. I had already eyed her lavender shortbread - full of envy, of course, as I always forget to look out for culinary lavender - no matter how often I've longingly read blog posts about the creative use of this herb.

This time I read loads of stuff about broad beans that sounded utterly appetizing. What's more, Nora said that the season for broad beans is almost over! That's why I decided to do something about it now instead of saving the recipe for later (which usually means much, much later) . Off I went to the shops to buy broad beans, mint, and pecorino, and made myself a simply wonderful dinner. Granted, the whole shelling business does take a while but on the other hand it lifted my spirits to do something elaborate just for myself. With my new/old husband away on a business trip, dinners aren't such an enjoyable thing - however, these broad beans totally made my evening!


PS: Nora provided three different recipes so no need for me to type it down again (I chose Maggie Beers' version with some lemon juice added and some garlic rubbed onto the sourdough bread after toasting - lovely!). I'd rather tell you about the sourdough bread that was just baking away when I read about how to use it for dinner..;-)

Light Rye Sourdough Bread

The ingredients

250g water
360g white sourdough, 100% hydration
300g bread flour
100g rye flour
100g wholewheat flour
1.5 tsp salt (or a little more than that)
1 tbsp whole caraway seeds

1
I used my breadmaker for mixing the dough and letting it rise. The first rising was about 3 hours (the bread maker provided some warmth during the first hour). At the end of the rising time, the dough had a bit more than doubled.

2
Take the dough out of the bread maker and turn onto a lightly floured work surface. I treated it to a round of stretch&fold (for a stronger texture) and then shaped it into a round loaf.

3
Place the loaf seam side-up into a floured proofing basket (or a bowl lined with a floured tea towel). Cover and let rise until well doubled in size. This took roughly 2.5 hours. To be sure, make a light dent into to the surface of the loaf. As soon as the dough doesn't spring back completely and still shows a little dent, the loaf is ready for baking.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven with a baking sheet or pizza stone to 220 degrees Celsius (I usually use the highest setting available as I will always lose some heat during steaming).

4
Carefully unmold the loaf onto a bread peel or an upturned baking sheet (covered with parchment paper or sprinkled with cornmeal). Slash in a criss-cross pattern.
Let the loaf glide onto the hot baking sheet/pizza stone and quickly shut the door. Open once more and splash a cup of water onto the bottom of the oven - be aware of the hot steam! Again, quickly shut the door to keep heat and moisture in.

5
Bake at 220 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. Then change to 200 degrees fan-bake for a further 15 minutes. The fan will get the remaining moisture out of the oven for a crisper crust. If you want a thicker crust, bake a little longer at 220 degrees before changing to fan-bake.

6
Let the loaf cool completely on a rack before slicing.

The source
Inspired by Dan Lepard's Barley and Rye Bread

Starting allover again...

It´s all so quiet around here... The reason for this is the fact that I will remember 2008 as "the big wedding year"... About ten days ago, I´ve arrived in Germany, went straight to another friend´s wedding and have been preparing my own, second wedding since then. After the first, rather home-made affair in Australia - this is going to be the full shebang with church, lots of family and friends, and - of course - loads of food and wine!

Luckily, most of the preparations have been taken care of by my parents - thank goodness - so things aren´t quite as crazy around here as one might imagine otherwise. Still, there´s plenty of stuff to do and I won´t be blogging very much until it´s all over. Well, who would have thought...

To top it all off, my husband and I will be attending another friend´s wedding before finally heading home again. And we haven´t even been able to go to all the weddings in Australia and Germany we have been invited to this year!

I wish you all a great time and hope to return to blogging as soon as normal life kicks in again!

BBD#12 - Small Breads

No, I did not throw my wildly growing sprouts into these bread rolls. Although I admit that I was mightily tempted..;-) However, with friends coming over for dinner the other night, I didn't reckon that I should subject them to an experiment with - at best - questionable outcome.

Oh well, I will come up with something eventually. But this time, I decided to rather go with the recipe of a trustworthy blogger. Having seen intricately shaped sacaduros ages ago at Chili&Ciabatta (and always wanting to make them) plus another deadline coming up all to soon - I was set for another installment of Zorra's Bread Baking Day: Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen had chosen "Small Breads" as her topic. Bread Rolls is something I make far too rarely, so I was pretty happy about this theme!

Alas, as you can see, they don't quite look like Petra's. Due to work, I needed to make the rolls the evening before and rewarm them right before dinner. That's why I decided to leave out the crucial ingredient, stupid me.

When shaping sacaduros, you put a cube of butter with a little flaky salt into the middle and fold thin strips of dough over it. While baking these strips partly unfold and get all nice and crispy, thus revealing their buttery innards. However, I was afraid that it would get all soggy when rewarmed and decided to leave out the butter. Without it, the sacaduros unfortunately turned out rather flat.

On the positive side, I was really pleased with my combination of bread flour and 70 grams of spelt flour for a hearty but still refined flavour.

And in case you're interested, that's what we were using the bread rolls for: mopping up the juices from salmon and vegetable parchment parcels. Made with lemon juice and white wine, there was a lot of nice broth to mop up!


PS: As you know by now, blogging deadlines are not my forte (probably because all my energy is used up meeting professional deadlines...ok, no more excuses). Anyway, today is the national day of Switzerland, and Zorra, missing her homeland, has asked to cook something red, white, or Swiss to celebrate the day. Dutifully, I made rice pudding with canned cherries this week - and took horrible photos of the rather nice rice pudding. That's why I'm posting an old and never published photo of an equally tasty but ultimately more photogenic rice pudding. Enjoy, Zorra!

Sprouting out of Control

Help! A foreign life-form is taking over my fridge! It might be only a matter of days until it bursts out of the container and decides to invade the next shelf. I don't know what to do with these little critters but still can't make myself throw away something that looks so decidedly alive. Didn't dare opening the lid though - you never know what you might unleash...

It all started with Zorra's Bread Baking Day #11 which made us sprout seeds or grains. At first, I wasn't sure if my rye berries would sprout at all. Then I forgot about the deadline of the event and suddenly these little critters looked like this. I suspected they had started to get mouldy but when inspecting the photos a bit more thoroughly, it just looked like little hairs growing along the sprouts.

With a lot of work looming on the horizon and no idea if the sprouts were still edible or not, I just put them back into the fridge. Being a freelance journalist, I was so busy preparing for and then writing about World Youth Day in Sydney that I again forgot about this little project (sadly, this seems to be a reoccurring theme these days). Now, the last pilgrims have left Australia and these sprouts are still inhabiting my fridge. And I'm still at a loss what to do with them...

Sprouted Rye Berries or how to forget about a deadline

Sorry - I know this photo is anything but mouth-watering... However, it shows my first ever attempt at sprouting grains. Thanks to this helpful fellow food blogger, I got some much needed advise on this topic. Unfortunately, due to a work project I completely forgot about the little buggers - until they looked like that.

Having first worried about my rye berries not wanting to sprout at all, they obviously proved me wrong about their ability to jump to life when watered. Little did I know that they would even continue to sprout when placed in a dry container in the fridge. By then, the deadline to this food blog event was almost over and I wasn't sure at all if these little guys were still edible. Frankly, this whole sprouting business is still a bit of a mystery to me... However, if you want to learn more about it, have a look at this!

In the end, I decided to give last month's Bread Baking Day a miss - sorry Zorra - but do check all the truly brave bakers who conquered the topic, sprouting and all! I'll be back with the July edition that doesn't scare me half as much as the last one! Maybe I'll finally learn how to bake perfectly crusty bread rolls!