johannesenbergur's blog

Ingredients:

• Whole grain
• 150g whole grains
• Feel free to combine different sorts: wheat, rye, barley, spelt
• Dough
• 450 g water
• 150g sourdough
• 5g fresh yeast
• 10g honey
• 10g malt syrup
• Seeds and the alike
• Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds
  Just a small handful
• 150g stale bread
• 25g salt
• 600g flour
• 300g rye
• 50g semolina or durum
• 250 other flour
• Graham
• Spelt
• Wheat

I know this is the Fresh Loaf and this isn't a bread, but I just want to share this recipe with you.

The souffle, one of the world's most feared desserts.

You'll need:

Rhubarb compote:

• 100g of rhubarbs (frozen are great), cut into centimetre chunks.
• 25g sugar
• A splash of water

• 100g of good quality white chocolate
• 2 eggs, seperated yolks from whites
• 60g sugar

• Unsalted butter
• Sugar

Butter the inside of your ramekin and refrigerate it.

Make the rhubarb compote: Put the ingredients into a pot, heat it up and let it simmer until it get a somewhat smooth consistency, don't worry if it has a few chunks. Set it to cool.

Melt the chocolate in a water bath, get some water boiling in a pot and place a bowl on top of the pot and place the chocolate in the bowl and wait for it to melt completely. Take the bowl off and let it cool a little.

Whisk the eggwhites with the sugar until they become somewhat stiff, not really stiff, but certainly full of air.

Add the eggyolks and rhubarb compote to the melted chocolate. Make sure the chocolate isn't too hot, so the yolks cook.

By this time you should butter your ramekin again, so it has two layers of butter. Put it back in the fridge.

Carefully mix the eggwhites with the chocolate/rhubarb mix. Gently turn the whites in without knocking any air out of the mixture, little by little.

When all has come together, take out your cool ramekin and pour some sugar into the bowl and pour all the excess sugar out.

Gently spoon the souffle dough into the bowl, make sure not to get any dough on the edges or knocking any air out. Fill up the bowl all the way up and use a knife to make the surface completely even. Use the tip of your thumb to clean the edges of the bowl, so the souffle has no resistance at all when rising.

Your oven should at this point be at exactly 200 degrees celcius. Place the souffle on a low rack. It is very delicate, so keep an eye on it at all times, it should take about 6-8 minutes for the souffle to rise to it's desirable glory. Watch it.

By the time it's finished it should have risen 1-1½ centimetres over the top of the ramekin and still have a gooey centre.

Bon appetit!

This recipe is inspired by quite a few recipes I've read the past few months. In my opinion this makes an excellent rye loaf.

Ingredients:

• 300 g Cold water
• 100 g 5-grain
• 100 g Stale rye bread
• 100 g Sourdough (click for my recipe)
• 5 g Fresh active yeast
• 10 g Sea salt
• 200 g Whole rye flour
• 200 g Graham flour

Here's my take on sourdough, it as worked for me.

Ingredients:

• 3 dl Cold water
• 75 g Rye flour
• 75 g Graham flour
• 150 g Wheat baking flour
• A small handful of raisins

Ingredients:

• 1 dl (100g) lukewarm to warm water
• ½ dl (50g) plain naturel yogurt
• 15g fresh active yeast
• 8 g honey
  (pref. liquid)
• 10 g sea salt
• 10 g olive oil
  (this is a minimum, feel free to use more, I reckon 25g would be ideal)
• 250g various types of flour, I used and recommend:
  30g Graham flour
  70g semolina flour
  150g wheat baking flour
• Poppy or sesame seeds or for sprinkle

This recipe is very small, the smallest I've ever made. Usually I double the ingredients mentioned, except for the yeast, the dough rises just fine with 15g.

Recipe:

(Work: 20 mins - 1st rise: 30 mins - work: 5 mins - 2nd rise: 35 mins - bake: 30 mins)
Estimated time from start to finish: 2 hours 

Mix the warm water and yogurt, so you get a tepid mixture. Add the yeast and stir till dissolved. Add salt and honey and dissolve. Add the flour to the mixture, I ususally add 100g, mix and add then add more.

Knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes, put it into an oiled container, cover it with a hot teatowel and leave it to rise for 30 mins or so, can be more or less, usually more means better and less means less good.

Should be doubled after half an hour and shape it into a loaf. Place the loaf onto your baking surface of choice. Pat the bread with milk and sprinkle the seeds on top of it. Cover it again with a warm towel and let it rise for 30-60 minutes; Afterwards put the loaf into your oven.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and it makes that hollow sound you know so well, when you knock on the bottom of it.

Enjoy.

So... time to try something new and the pictures of the pita breads on the right side of TFL has always appealed to me.

Being European, I had to use some other measurements and didn't bother getting the exactly like the recipe, so here's what I did, inspired by http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/pitabread.

Ingredients: (Made 8 pita breads á 50g)

• 1 dl tepid water
• 15g fresh yeast
• ½ dl plain natural yogurt (I can't seem to stop using this in my creations)
• 5g sea salt
• 5g honey
• 10g olive oil
• 50g durum/semolina flour
• 150g regular wheat baking flour + some for dusting and adding as nessecary.
• Optional: Spices (I used a tiny bit of ground chilli, smoked paprika and ground cilantro)

Mix the yeast with the water, add the yogurt, oil, salt and honey, mix well with a fork, till it's a greyish, oilish mixture.
Add the flour, a little at a time (100g) and stir with the fork as long as it makes sense.

Knead for around 10 mins or so. Let it rise under a luke warm tea towel in a warm place for 30 mins.

Carefully fold and strech the dough, and make a sausage. Cut the dough-sausage into appropriate size lumps, I weighed them and made them 50g. Let the pieces rest and rise for 5 mins.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough and hopefully you'll succeed in making them circular as well. Just make it really thin, not paper thin, but 3-5mm thick.

By this time your oven should be really hot (max. heat) and if you have a baking stone (which helps), it should be hot as well. Place the pancake lookalike dough onto the stone and bake them for 3 mins in 200°C or to taste. The breads should blow up like balloons.

Cut them up sidewise and enjoy your pitas.

Filling suggestion:
Garlic and herb roasted shoulder of lamb, sweet corn, tomato, cucumber, salad leaves and hot salsa.

...I'm going to quit blogging now and eat some more...

Been experimenting a little lately, and so far this is the recipe I'm most satisfied with. Baked it twice already and it's been amazing both times.

200g wheat flour
200g durum/semolina flour
40g wheat flour - for dusting and adding if it's too sticky.
15g fresh yeast
200g water
15g sugar
5g sea salt
100g plain natural yogurt
25g oil (preferably olive)
40g carrots.

Peel the skin off the carrots and use your peeler to finely slice bits of the carrot. Chop the carrot slices to reasonable pieces, quite small.

Mix the yeast with the tepid water as usual, add the sugar and salt and mix everything. Add the yogurt, make sure it's about room temperature, if it's too cold, microwave it for a few seconds, add the oil as well.

Get your flour in the bowl, add around 100g at a time and mix with a fork for as long as it makes sense. Get your hands in and start the kneading. The entire dough needs to be kneaded for approximately 10 minutes. While kneading add the carrots, little by little, so they get into the dough.

Get the dough into a bowl and let the dough rise for 6 hours (should quadruple). Get the dough out and handle it really carefully, shape it into loaves or rolls and let it rise under a moist lukewarm clean towel for around 2 hours.

Get your oven to maximum temperature, place the bread in and turn the heat down to 200°C. Bake it to taste or until golden brown. If possible spray milk on the loaf/rolls every once in a while. If possible, use steam while baking.

Expect incredibly light, fluffy and tasty bread.

*They are not supposed to be this burned