Baking to Survive!

My experience with new breads

2010-09-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

One of the great things i´d learned during my expeditions with breads, is about how many cultural aspects from all the world´s corner we can have.
One of the best breads i´d baked was Barbari from Iran. This bread have the curious format flattened and with a brush of mixed flour water and baking soda wich gave a nice golden color on top. Black sesame seeds sprinkled then,completed the fashion of this delicious bread. Barbari, is one of most adored breads at Iran and it was introduced there during the invasion of Barbarians from Afeghanistan.

Pizzas are another bread i love a lot, specially thin ones. I promise to post here a delicious recipe of thin pizza plus bread crumbs on top, i love so much.I prefer the thin pizzas, but theres a lot of people who loves the Chicago style deep dish pizza with lots of fillings inside.

I love Calzones and i´ll post a nice delicious Calzone´s recipe soon.

Another good choice on flatten breads are Kebabs or wrapped breads, with some butter on dough. I love the wrapped sandwiches and it´s filling variations.

Italian bread with it´s crusty external layer is another masterpiece and always a chalenge, even to experienced bakers like me.

Challah with it´s enriched dough is a Jewish bread dough i love a lot, with it´s versatilyty to be workable, accepting lots of variations. With Challah dough i make Pain aux Chocolat,Peanut butter breads, Pumpkin raisins breads, plus another delicious braideds.

Here i list some variations i have in my list of breads:

Croissant, Brioche, Provence, Pita, Whole Grains breads, sweet braided breads, a Stollen, originally, from Dresdner, Pan de Muerto ( Mexican ), Pão de Queijo from my Brazil, Polar Bread from Nordic countries, plus lots of othersssss

We will share all our experiences here during next years.
I´ll be more effective and active here in this blog.

Good news are coming!

History of my Jewish Strudel

2010-09-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

I´ll tell you the curious story of one of my best breads the famous Jewish Strudel.

I was baking breads as an invited member in a Germanic Festival here in my city. One of the breads i was baking was a creation where i used the Challah dough with it´s rich components such lots of eggs, sugar, malt, honey, sunflower oil and filled and folded like an original Germanic Strudel. It was a success in that 2009 june. At that time, i called that bread Duo Dulce, but people and customers always asked me if that bread was a Strudel due to it´s similarity with that sweet delicious Germanic dish.

Then i tought...-why do not name that delicious creation as Jewish Strudel. In one simple bread, a combination of 2 essentials in Jewish bakers and Germanic pastries? Why do not put together 2 opposed cultures in one simple bread?

Since then, the success with that original bread increased substantially. I decided to send the recipe to P.J.Hamel from King Arthur and she replied with quickly feedback. She posted the recipe with some own modifications and that simple bread turned onto a famous, world famous one.

You could view the recipe here:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2010/05/02/lets-hear-it-for-cinnapineapanana/

And here you could view my original version, with only one step of filling, not completely sealed at extremities and with none slashes on top. I used to fill it with diced bananas, or apple chunks over a layer of cinnamon sugar with golden raisins and walnuts. It´s superb, delicious. I recommend it with with heavy cream on top, as a dessert with another walnuts sprinkled on top.

My Goat Cheese / Milk Buns

2010-02-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

'Goats are not common in my city. But there are someone who have lots of them. And they produce milk and of course, cheese.
Edson come one day to my bakery and gave me some milk and cheeses from his dairy production. Petrópolis is a city with many good farmer´s producers lots of organic yards with vegetable, fruits, etc.. Our city had been colonized by Germanic settlers who loved a lot sausages. Then, we have lots of small handcrafted sausages home producers. I have a friend of mine who own a small industry of good sausages, named Capriata. www.capriata.com.br
Rodrigo is his name. He got me some samplers of the sausages he produces and asked me to try a recipe of bread to make nice sandwich with the sausages.
Then, i remember my Ricotta bread. It´s delicious. I replaced some ingredients and with little adaptations i create another bread recipe with that goat´s milk /cheese.
It turns on softly delicious, nice buns.
I´d promised the recipe to you.

Here we go.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups of sifted unbleached flour ( regular )
150 g. or 2/3 cup of goat cheese
20 g of instant yeast ( 2 small packages )
30 g. unsalted butter melted
1 egg
1 yolk
220 ml. of warm goat milk
2 tablespoons of sifted granulated sugar
12 g of marine salt
3 tablespoons of dried parsley

How to make:

In a bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Flour, sugar, yeast, parsley then add salt and mix again.
In a separated bowl mix the 1/2 of warm milk, the butter and the egg until all well combined.
Then add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients. Add the rest of milk slowly, mixing the bath until the dough turns softly but not so wet.
Flour a surface and turns the dough to knead it for 10 minutes.
Rest the dough after you shaped it like a ball covered with plastic wrap for at least an hour at warm temperature. The dough will double in size.
Deflate dough after floured it´s surface lightly. Divide it in 20 small buns. Grease a surface of a baking sheet with corn oil and set the buns inside to rest for another 20 minutes. Meanwhile you could beat the egg yolk with little iced water and brush the surfaces of buns with it!
Pre-heat oven to 200 Celsius for 15 to 20 minutes. Bake the buns for 25 minutes to 35 minutes, or until they´re surface are lightly golden brown.
Take off from the oven and let the breads resting over a rack for 25 minutes before use them!

I´d made these breds to use in the sandwich i´d mentioned in my last post.
They were superb, softly, lightly, perfects with little crisp crust at bottom side!
Try them, and TELL me BEFORE!!

Best Sandwich of World

2010-02-14T16:24:00.001-08:00

One of best things we could do in our life is to eat...well!

I have a friend who produce Goat milk and Goat Cheese of superior quality.
Then i decided to make, to create a soft bread with those dairy goat products that supported a fill inside of sausage, eggplant relish and Dijon Mustard. I was decided to create the better sandwich i ever ate in all my life!

Why not Goat milk /cheese bread with dried Parsley, Calabrese sausages, Eggplant relish as a base and French original mustard Dijon?

I created the bread with my ricotta bread recipe, replacing ricotta by those goat dairy products.
The work gone well, very well and of course, one of the best sandwich i had tasted in all my life!!

The delicious is at picture and the Goat milk/cheese bread recipe i´ll post in next days!

Why Baking to Survive?

2010-02-11T18:43:00.001-08:00

Why Baking to Survive? Well in my case, the baking art begun by necessity. I´d had a pet-shop in my city Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In one night of intense weather torments the river flood invaded my pet-shop and all my family´s work of 23 long years was destroyed , just in one night!!! I´d suffered great economic losses and for lots of years ahead i have had only lots of bills and those terrific years almost caused me a depression, an illness, because i´d nothing to do, no perspectives for my new life, my new way of life! With no moneys and uncertain future. Well, selling things, specially pet goods was the only thing i could do at that time!! How could i follow? How could i Survive? Recently, after 5 years of that river flood, after my divorce from my wife, i´d known my actually woman Patricia. She was a woman who worked well with handcrafted goods, specially wood homemade appliances and kitchen wares and sets. She always have had good hands to handcrafted goods. I loved the way that woman worked painting those wood pieces with her nice performance hands. Then i passionated by that woman. We have had a baby, called Renzo, but my economic situation not permitted me to have the life i had planned for us. In June, 2008, the situation went worse than never. Both of us unemployeds, our home pay rental was delayed, our life´s perspectives were not good. For me, was terrible the situation that i needed some coins to buy my daily breads on bakery, and i had nothing, just only hope for better days... ...That situation of no money for daily breads caused me sadly crisis, i suffered a lot. But , the crisis is good opportunity to solve that kind of problem. Then i had an idea. Why no BAKE MY OWN BREADS? Why no BAKING BREADS TO SURVIVE?? I´d bought 1 small bag of wheat flour, plus another small amount of whole wheat flour, a pinch of marine salt, a bottle of mineral water, some yeast and flax seeds. I´d researched a new recipe of bread. I found a revolutionary recipe of no-knead bread method, a baker from New York was teaching. Jim Lahey was his name and his revolutionary method was the fact that the bread recipe never asks to knead the dough. Just only to mix all the dry ingredients, add water and after whisk that wet dough, then put the dough to rest for longer term. 12 to 18 hours at warm temperature. Then, after that time, pre-heat oven, put dough inside panand bake it for 45 minutes or until golden brown on crust. The result of this bread recipe was fantastic! With that little amount of flour i´d baked 3 fantastic loaves of flax seed whole wheat breads. Healthy for me and my family, the breads solved my necessity for daily breads. But from the necessity i got new idea!! If that bread was good for me and my family, why not bake another loaves to sell to neighborhoods, friends, parents???? I done that!! The results?? Superb. I sold out all my artisan bread productions daily and never had lost any loaf of bread since that first one!! From that times until now, i´m improving my skills about breads and now my chart surplus 200 goods between breads, cakes and biscuits. We could say, Miracle of Breads Multiplications!

After that i had gone to one of best Tv shows in Brazil, where i told my history of life´s changes, than a Tv reporter asked me: Can we name this bread loaf your Salvation´s Bread, Ricardo? Then i told him: Of course, my Salvation´s bread!!
From that time until now i sell all of my flax seed´s breads with name: Salvation Bread!