Brötchen

After my exploits ;) in French cuisine in January, this month I'm diving into German cooking. The most worthy of my efforts so far have been these small bread rolls, which I've already made three times, always with great success.

I took the recipe from Thomas kocht and of all brötchen recipes out there this is probably the easiest and simplest to follow.

Ingredients:

• 500 g flour
• 300 g cold water
• 20 g olive oil
• 10 g salt
• 2 g dry yeast (he suggests 0.5 g, but I usually put more)
  

The whole trick with this recipe is that you let time do the work for you. Just mix the ingredients the night before and let the dough stay at room temperature for at least 12 hours. It will rise and be ready for baking the next morning.

The other important trick for achieving the soft inside and crispy outside of the rolls is the combination of water vapour and high temperature. Once you've made the rolls and let them proof again, you preheat the oven at 250C and right before you put the rolls to be baked in the oven, you sprinkle them with water and add hot water to a metal bowl inside the oven, so that the oven fills in with vapour. The resulting brötchen are really amazing and super delicious.

Cinnamon Buns

A small recipe I'm adding to my collection, as these proved easy to make and very delicious with the morning coffee (or milk) (or tea).

I always associate cinnamon buns or rolls with Karlsson, who lived on the roof, and when making the buns I smiled remembering his note to Miss Rogg about the insufficient quantity of cinnamon in the buns. So I tried to add enough :)

Ingredients for the dough:
3 1/2 cups flour
7 g dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp soft butter
1 tsp salt
1 large egg

Ingredients for the filling
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp soft butter

I made the dough in the mixer and then left it to rise in the oven at 40C for about an hour. Then I spread the dough into a rectangle approx. 70 x 25 cm, spread soft butter on top and sprinkled with the mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. Then I rolled the dough, cut it into small slices and arranged them in the baking tin. I put the tin back in the oven for another half hour at 40C for the buns to rise and then baked them at 180C for 20 min.

Baking

Yesterday I had already made some rice pudding for dessert, when I read the recipe for banana cup-cakes Kepanie published on Knitspiring Odyssey.

Wow, these cup-cakes are something! So airy, so fluffy and they just melt in the mouth, and the taste of bananas is so strong. This is the first time I'm using milk with vinegar and I admit I had to ask in my favourite cooking forum if the recipe was OK, as I had never encountered this method of rising the patty.

The recipe yields two dozens of cup-cakes. My modifications - I used dairy butter instead of shortening and I added less that a full second cup of flour - I stopped adding the flour when the texture of the patty was dense enough, so my flour was about 1/3 of the second cup less that the recipe stipulates. If you're a cup-cake fan, definitely go check that recipe :)

And today I made these Japanese rolls with butter. The original recipe was published in a Japanese cooking site, I saw it interpreted in my favourite Bulgarian cooking forum - labrex is my cooking guru again. However I deviated a bit from the recipe, adding milk and egg to the dough for richer taste and omitting the garlic, as I have a very strong aversion to it (though I'm sure I'm not a vampire lol :))
Ingredients: 400 g flour, 100 ml milk, 150 ml water, 1 egg, 20 ml olive oil with rosemary, 7 g dry yeast, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, dry savory and dry basil.

Mix the ingredients and make dough. Cut and form into 8 rolls. Place on a baking tin, cover with a cloth and let the dough rise.

After the rolls have doubled their volume, make a cut in each roll and place a strip of butter (if you like garlic, you can use garlic flavoured butter).

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C. Serve warm with cheese and tomato salad, butter and mixed spices or any other way you prefer fresh bread.

I must start jogging or something, I'm gaining weight with all that baking :)))