Archive for September 2007
Another spelt failure
Today was a special day, says The Central Marketing-Society of German Agrarian Economy – couldn’t they have chosen a less obvious name? – ‘Tag des Deutschen Butterbrotes’ or ‘Day of the German sandwich’.
Allegedly it did not quite qualify for a national holiday, although I would be all for it, and I do not know what the statutes of a sandwich-day are. It seems, about 5,000 bakeries in the country joined the CMA in their quest to promote German grain. The pdf file (link to file no longer valid) lists only about 2,000 bakeries and many of them appear without names – for a second, it looked like I was onto something here.
The toughest of them all
The pepper harvest was meager this year. I neglected my ten habanero plants. What can I say? What could have been 100 healthy habanero peppers narrowed down to a whopping 1, by not-so-natural selection. It is sad to think what the little fellow went through to make it to the end.
Pain au levain with walnuts and hemp seeds
The warning message on the bag was clear enough: It is illegal to plant hemp seeds. But is it okay to eat them? Yes. Although hemp is another name for cannabis, its seeds have no intoxicating effects. They are available in most “Bio-Supermarkets” and sometimes find their way into breads and cereals.
They are rich in unsaturated fats, which are considered healthy, and crack sharply when bitten into. The taste of hemp seeds (or hemp nuts) reminds me of sunflower and sesame seeds, but without the oily, almost rancid aftertaste of the latter that keeps me from eating sesame often. I added the hemp nuts with some chopped walnuts to a pain au levain dough. I used a recipe from the newly acquired “Local Breads” by Daniel Leader.
Just the pics…
No respectable blog without a gallery. Since I bake more than I feel like writing about, the gallery will include more breads than I blogged about. There is almost always time to snap a pic. Going to add laconic commentary and the source of the recipe, of course. Gallery additions start with last Sunday’s bread – Baguettes after a recipe by Daniel Leader – but will include archived pics eventually.
Local breads, local reviews (Upd. 11 Jan 2008)
A new baking book arrived a while ago: “Daniel Leader. Local Breads. Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers”. It looks like collection of very good recipes and I hope I will bake from it often.
