Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Egg in Cradle

This is the last month of BYOB’s Featured Bread Blog. As you know, we visited MC of Farine. And again there was so much to choose from, did you see her Focaccia made with homemade squash flour? 
Maybe an idea for the 20 pumpkins in our living room. Some friends had a field full of about 3000 of these nice orange and white “Japanese” pumpkins. I don’t know if they are Japanese, but this is how I call them. I love to roast these pumpkins with some herbs, salt and pepper and toss the slices over a salad. Or just eat roasted. There are also nice Thai desserts with pumpkin. And we like pumpkin with tofu and Thai basil. And maybe I even try to make homemade squash flour, like MC. 

But, enough Pumpkin-talk. I fell in love with MC’s Egg in Cradle
It looks cute and it is delicious! Of course I should have baked her rolls, but…… I didn’t. I have no chestnut flour and have no idea where to get it. We did see fresh chestnuts. Along the most Northern Thai border with Myanmar, at Mae Sai, they sell chestnuts all year round. I thought of using these, but they are roasted. So, I’m not sure if I can use these. But, I’ll keep searching.

For now I used the great Potato rolls with Lievito Madre as a cradle. 
I hollowed out the rolls, poured two spoon full of homemade yoghurt, MC uses crème fraîche. Add salt and pepper, chives and break the egg open into the hole. 
Top with grated Parmesan cheese and bake for 10 minutes at 200°C. 

Egg Eruption
Before it was time, I was seduced by the delicious smell of melted cheese. Peter and I  shared 3 rolls; all that was left from our breakfast. Even though normally 1 egg is enough for me, I could have had another egg in a cradle (and probably another!) It’s a great evening meal with a nice salad, but also a nice breakfast meal and we would eat it for lunch too.

MC, next time I bake your rolls too, but for now: Thanks for sharing these amazingly delicious eggs in cradles.  


I send this to Susan’s YeastSpotting and to Bake Your Own Bread

What did you bake this month? Don’t forget to show it. 

Potato rolls with Lievito Madre

This month Stefanie of Hefe und Mehr is the lovely host for Bread Baking Day 54. She came up with the theme: overnight. She had fun baking several overnight rolls and loaves. And so did I.

I’ve baked overnight loaves before. I placed the dough in my refrigerator (also known as retarder-proofer) and baked the loaf the next morning for breakfast. Retarded proofing changes the flavor in bread and provide a crusty crust. Often the acidity will increase.
Before I had a look at my long list of “breads to bake” I had a look at Stefanie’s overnight rolls. I immediately loved her potato rolls with Lievito Madre. I had to find out what ‘Lievito Madre’ is: it’s an Italian sourdough.

When I started with sourdough I had to start from scratch and for days I was ‘collecting’ natural yeast and bacterial spores from the air. In the beginning I was very impressed by sourdough and especially starting my own starter. There are so many ‘instructions’ on how to collect your own and how to start and many ‘do’s and don’ts’. After days of collecting I had a bucket with bad smelling stuff and after several attempts I tried to convince Peter that the last one smelled not so bad. He just said: ‘it smells like vomit’. And again our compost pile grew a bit. Finally I succeeded with Peter Reinhardt’s pineapple sourdough starter. This is 2 years ago and I’m still using it!  I even have some dried for an “emergency”. 

I tell you this because I used a little bit of my sourdough starter to get the Lievito Madre going. Why? because I wanted to eat the rolls as soon as possible. Next time I’ll start the Lievito Madre from scratch like Stefanie did.

As said before, often acidity will increase with retarded proofing, but using Lievito Madre gave the rolls no extra acidity. The rolls smelled a bit sweet. When I placed the rolls in the oven I too enjoyed the moment of great oven spring. These rolls are in the top 3 of “our favorite rolls”. The crust is good, not too thick and the crumb is open and the flavor is slightly sweet. 


We had some for breakfast with our favorite Dutch cheese. You have to get up early (I started at 06.00 AM) to prepare but we had delicious warm rolls for breakfast! 

Thanks Stefanie.



Sunday, November 11, 2012

Middle Eastern Flatbread; Man’ouche with za’atar and Baba Ganoush

We found some nice eggplants at the market and I had a good recipe for Baba ganouch somewhere in my brain. I found a nice recipe for flat bread from the Middle East; man’ouche with za’atar.

Manakiche (plural for man’ouche) are aten rolled or folded over to taste with: labne (thick yoghurt),mint leaves, black olives, spring onion, cucumber and tomato. We ate the manakiche with Baba Ganouch (recipe below).

You can bake the man'ouche in the oven, but I had fun baking them on the bottom of my  wok. They're done in a few minutes and don't you love the big bubbles too?

I heard the people in the Middle East have man'ouche for breakfast and when they buy them early in the morning, they're still wearing their pajama's. When we go to the market in our village (in Thailand) early in the morning of lot of Thai people are wearing their pajama's as well. It looks cosy.

I baked the man'ouche fully dressed.

Friday, November 9, 2012

More than 36 hours Sourdough Baguette

We love baguettes. We love the shape, it's easy to eat, has a lot of crusty crust and a nice tasty crumb. It goes well with soup, garlic butter, guacamole, with cheese, salami, as a side dish with pizza or pasta or in the evening as a main dish. It goes well with almost everything. You understand we love baguettes. 

I've tried a few different baguette recipes and they all taste slightly different. I haven't posted them all because most didn't look like baguettes. As you know, baking ciabatta can be difficult if you are not experienced enough. But the same goes for shaping baguettes. Everything goes well with the dough until you reach the moment of shaping. In the Netherlands we have a saying: "experience comes with age". Of course its true, but luckily when you want to bake baguettes it also helps if you do it often enough. My baguettes aren't close to perfection yet. But, I keep on trying. 

A while back I saw beautiful baguettes. Nicely shaped, scored as it should, good color, good appearance and full of nice holes. Of course I had to try. There are people who will try new things in life only when they are sure they will succeed. I'm not like that. That's a good thing, otherwise I wouldn't speak one word of Thai in public. Thai is a tonal language and Dutch isn't. There's a big chance that you don't pronounce the word correctly, even after six years in Thailand. Fortunately, I am not so worried about it and a smile brings you every where.

Those beautiful baguettes I tried this time, are baked by TX Farmer: " She puts everything she knows in this bread". 

Today is a day for challenge. Today is the day I start and tomorrow we’ll see. The whole process looks more about waiting and gentle handling than about kneading, feeling, seeing, smelling, you know the 'normal' process. 

It all starts with combining flour and water and a fridge. The next day it's about adding mature starter and salt, combining them by hand, waiting and a fridge. The day after it looks like a normal day for a baguette. Dividing, resting, very gently shaping, resting, pre-heating, steaming and baking. And then it’s time to see, smell and taste.

My conclusion: it’s a great baguette; it’s full of flavor and holes. It’s a great baguette if you know how to handle 70% wet dough. I’ve baked it twice since and it’s very high on my list of delicious breads. My next challenge is to bake it again with a better appearance.


Thank you TX Farmer for sharing your knowledge on this delicious baguette.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Soul of Bread; a movie

We saw this Taiwanese movie about bread; the soul of bread. It’s a nice romantic movie for people who love bread and baking bread.

I hope you enjoy the movie as we did.

I send this to BYOB 


Friday, November 2, 2012

It's time to link your baked breads of November to BYOB - Bake Your Own Bread


Before we share last months breads we have a question for you:
We are looking for a home baker who like to fill the bread basket on her or his blog in 2013. Do you want to host BYOB? Please send an e-mail (mydiscoveryofbread at gmail dot com). 

UPDATE: We found a new host already for next year: Roxana of Roxana's Home Baking. Thanks Roxana; we're all glad BYOB has a new host and we all keep sharing our home baked breads.  

Many of you know where to find BYOB and every month more are sharing home baked breads at BYOB. We are so happy to see the great amount of breads you all send to BYOB to share. There were 67 ! loaves of bread, buns, flat bread, pie, cakes, artisan and many more bread related submissions.  

Featured Blog: last month we picked MC's Farine. MC has baked a lot of breads and other delicious  treats. Have a look at her recipes, there are so many. I baked her Meteorites and they were delicious! even if one looked like a comet and the last one like the actual meteorite. If you didn't baked with us from this featured blog you have another month; go and have a look at her blog. 

There’s a big breadbasket to be filled with homemade breads baked in November. We have a few full baskets already from the previous months; go and see and be inspired. 
Come and join us all in filling the November basket. All the breads you bake during this month are more than welcome. But, there’s more. Also if you want to share knowledge on baking bread, have a bread book review or have bread based recipes you want to tell us all.

This month we've picked a fellow home baker and bread blogger and now we all meet her. The Featured Bread Blog of NOVEMBER is: FARINE 
MC has baked a lot of breads and other delicious treats. MC loves to visit bakers and mills and post about it. Have a look at her recipes there are so many, it must be easy to choose one or more to bake this month. I know what to bake this month, do you?

How do you participate?
1.    Bake bread in any form (use your own recipe or use one of MC's)
2.    Post about it on your blog and make a manual back link to BYOB (name BYOB in your post) or by using the BYOB button in your post (you find the button here otherwise the Linky tool doesn’t work!)
3.    Click here to fill the basket of November.  When you are linking a post that was inspired by the BYOB - Featured Bread Blog of the month; Farine, please put in your blog name - FBB name of the bread.  Typing 'FBB' identifies you as a featured blog poster.

Are you new to BYOB? Have a look at this for more informationDo you have questions? Send an e-mail 

Heather of Girlichef started to fill the breadbasket in 2012 and since July Michelle of Delectable Musings and I, Connie, are helping her. On all these blogs, when you see the BYOB logo, you can add your bread and it will be linked to the big breadbasket.

Let the filling of the November bread basket begin! 

1. Almost New York Bagels
2. Marble Chocolate Wheel Bread
3. Soft Pretzels
4. Dried Longan Wholemeal Pai Bao - Jessie
5. Tomato, Onion & Herb Rolls with Sage Leaves
6. Roasted Pepper and Chile Focaccia
7. Pumpernickel Braid . . . and a Story
8. Pine Nuts Spelt-Rye Sourdough Bread
9. Flatbreads with Sprouted Kamut
10. Apple Bread Ring
11. Yam Buns
12. Movie: the soul of Bread
13. Kitchen Flavours - Briarpatch Herb Bread
14. My Discovery of Bread - More than 36 hours Sourdough Baguette
15. Freezer Buttermilk Biscuits with Honey Cinnamon Butter
16. girlichef - Apple Cheddar Beer Bread
17. Pumpernickel, Sunflower Seed Rye, and Stollen
18. Flax Seed Rye Sourdough
19. Rachels Cinnamon Swirl Sourdough= French Toast Casserole
20. Stellas Cinnamon Raisin Buns
21. Kitchen Flavours - Orange Oatmeal Bread
22. Sourdough Apple Bread - Karens Kitchen Stories
23. My discovery of Bread - Middle Eastern Flatbread: Manouche with zaatar
24. Whole Wheat Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
25. Green Onion Sesame Rolls
26. Elizabeths Pocketbook Rolls (BBB)
27. Natashyas Pocketbook Rolls
28. Kitchen Flavours - Onion Lovers Bread
29. Molasses Honey Whole Wheat Bread via x2babies. com
30. Mixed Fruit and Chocolate Chip Bread Wreath
31. Garlic crescents
32. Chocolate Rolls with Coffee Icing
33. Pumpkin Eggnog Bread
34. Pan de Muerto - Bread of the Dead
35. Kitchen Flavours - Dinner Rolls
36. Ultimate Banana Bread
37. Gluten-free & Vegan Yeasted Buckwheat Muffins
38. Potato rolls with Lievito Madre
39. Egg in Cradle
40. Spiced chocolate loaf - Blue Kitchen Bakes
41. English Lincolnshire Plum Bread
42. Chocolate Kugelhopf
43. Semolina Sourdough Boule
44. Sweet and Thats it - Fat reduced & Filled Pocketbook Rolls
45. Brittany Cooks: Cranberry Orange Pumpkin Muffins
46. Italian Braided Herb Bread
47. girlichef - Buttery Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls
48. Welsh Bara Brith
49. Over-the-Top Banana Bread
50. French Bread in a Baguette Pan
51. Mini Herbal "Hoagie" Rolls
52. Lemon-Streusel Oatmeal Muffins
53. Chickpeas flour focaccia with rosemary and garlic
54. Kitchen Flavours - Naan Bread
55. Blue Kitchen Bakes - Spicy & smoky 8 strand plaited loaf
56. Natashyas Light Multigrain Sandwich Buns

This linky list is now closed.