Our passion is great bread!
The theme for December for the HBinFive Baking Group is Family Traditions. I have lot’s of family traditions, and, as you can imagine, a lot of those traditions involve baking. Baking Cookies I’ve always loved to bake. My mom and my sisters and I used to bake cookies and quick breads during the Holidays and I’ve continued that tradition with my sons. For years, we
In my previous post on 66 Percent Sourdough Rye, I mentioned that I would be making a unique Christmas Bread using leftover bread cubes. Here it is! It’s called Hutzelbrot. Hutzelbrot is a dense, freestanding bread served in Germany usually during Christmastime. It contains dried fruit, but no sugar. This version utilizes a mash of wheat and rye flours combined with an altus made with
The method outlined in this post can be used to create a rye sourdough starter completely from scratch by mixing a portion of rye flour and water for 6-10 days. This method can also be used to convert an existing mature starter (created with all-purpose, bread, or whole wheat flour) to a sourdough rye starter. This is what I did. I had been using my
It took me awhile, but I’m becoming a fan of rye, particularly rye breads made with sourdough. There are many advantages to using sourdough in rye breads. Besides providing good leavening ability, sourdough provides the benefits of good eating quality, increased nutrition, and good keeping quality. What’s not to like about that! I didn’t have an appreciation for the complexity of rye until recently. Rye
I made Vanocka for a Christmas party this weekend. This was a gathering of some really neat folks so I wanted to bring something special. Vanocka (pronounced Van-otch-kah) is a beautifully shaped Czech Christmas Braid filled with candied fruits and nuts. Beautifully shaped and scrumptious, Vanocka is one of the great breads of the world. Vanocka is similar to other Eastern European egg twist breads,
