Juergen Krauss's blog
Paul Hollywood's Apricot Couronne
The other evening I was watching the sweet dough episode of The Great British Bakeoff and when it got to the technical challenge (a product which the contestants don't know in advance and only basic directions are given) - Paul Hollywood's Apricot Couronne - my wife said: I WANT THAT.
This morning I downloaded the recipe
http://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/paul-hollywoods-apricot-couronne-technical-challenge/
and made it.
Hanseata's Cecilienhof Challenge - My Take
My "Quick" breads
Quite often - especially during holiday times - spending time with my family can interfere with the optimal sourdough build schedules.
If we then run out of bread I usually make some improvisations based on Dan DiMuzio's Pain De Campagne (90% bread flour, 10% medium rye, 68% water, 2% salt, 0.3% instant yeast, from memory).
These breads are quick because they are same-day breads; but they still take about 5 hours from start to finish.
Two of these variations have been especially popular with my family:
The Treasure Island Bake
Last Saturday was the "Treasure Island" summer fair at my son Benjanin's school, "Lewes New School", and as reported previously he volunteered me for a bread stall. The idea was that the children should make a major contribution to the fair, and I came to the conclusion, that I would let them bake bread from the Treasure Island times, and sell it at the fair.
By the way, the title photo is not "period bread", but my special take on Bo Friberg's Vanilla Butter Biscuits.
Back to the bread making.
GF Experiments #3
Yay, That's It! Or so.
/* Update: Photos of the finished panned loaf at the end */
This is the crumb I am looking for! Quinoa sourdough bread, gluten free!
Unfortunately -
closer to the centre of the bread I get this crumb:
The gummy bit near the bottom tells me that something is wrong with my baking. Right now I have another Quinoa loaf in the oven, panned, on a lower heat. We'll see what happens.
But first about the bread above.
GF Experiments #2
In my quest to make nice Gluten Free bread I was able to take another few steps forward.
I concentrated on developing a good starter and had some interesting experiences along the way.
The flours of choice were Sorghum, Buckwheat, Brown Rice and Qinoa.
The starters were set up from scratch. With Quinoa I also used Rye sour for inoculation.
Some GF Experiments
Warning - this contains lots of photos
I outlined the experiments I wanted to undertake with regards to GF baking in a previous post and here is a brief personal log of the first steps.
I baked gluten free breads with a mix of tapioca flour, potato flour and five other flours using instant yeast as rising agent and psyllium husk as gelling agent.
The psyllium husks have been soaked with 20g water per g Psyllium.
My Current Projects: Gluten Free / Bread for a "Treasure Island" fair
At the moment I am pursuing two totally different themes in my baking: Gluten Free bread and bread for a school summer fair themed "Treasure Island".
This blog post is intended as a journal for my thoughts and ideas, nothing is final yet.
The photo above is my take on "Pease Bread", the 18th century wheat-free alternative. See below.
Let's start with Gluten Free (GF) bread:
Sleepy vol-au-vents
I shouldn't be baking when I am too tired, especially not something new:
I did only enough turns for croissants, getting 32 layers. Butter everywhere!
The next try was much better, with 256 layers:
But this time I think the problem is the oven. Fan only, and the door seems to loose a lot of heat.