Bread with Walnuts and Carrots

Last weekend was weird. I had had enough cakes, cookies and jelly donuts for a while, so I did not feel like baking anything sweet. I still wanted to bake, but did not know what.

One reason for my frustration with sweets was that my last attempts at baking did not work out. Friday I wanted to bake Chocolate-Peanutbutter-Whoopies. Instead of pretty round whoopies, I created rock-like lumps. They got bigger in your mouth if you tried to eat them – not good. I must admit that I cannot blame the recipe, but only myself. I had been distracted when making the batter and had made a mistake – oops, my own fault.

The next day, Saturday, I made marble cake. I thought I could fight the Whoopies-frustration this way, and I also needed something to post on my blog. Well, the cake turned out great, but the frosting did not really go with it. No blog post. Frustrating again.

So Sunday I was running back and forth between my kitchen and my baking books. I wanted to bake, but what?

The solution was baking bread. I would be able to roam about the kitchen, and the result would not be sweet (we still had to eat the marble cake, which was more than enough sweet stuff for the weekend). Also, not much could go wrong. Fresh bread smells and tastes incredible, especially if it still slightly warm. Each bite is pure pleasure.

There are so many recipes in this book that I always find something I am curious to try – this time light yeast bread with walnuts and carrots. As with carrot cake, the carrots make the bread moist, but do not make the bread taste like carrots.

The bread saved my baking-weekend and (partially) brought back my belief in my baking skills. I had already started to doubt those.

Ingredients:
1 ¾ cups (200 g) flour
¾ cup (100 g) spelt flour, light
1 ¾ cups (200 g) whole wheat flour
1 package (7 g) active dry yeast
1 egg, room temperature
½ cup (⅛ l) milk, lactose-free, lukewarm
½ cup (⅛ l) water, lukewarm
1 teaspoon salt
50 g walnuts, coarsely chopped
100 g carrots, finely grated

Preparation:
In a big mixing bowl, combine flour, spelt flour and whole wheat flour, salt and dry yeast. Add lukewarm milk, water and eggs. Knead to a smooth dough with the kitchen machine, using the dough hook. Add the carrots and the walnuts and knead for about five minutes. Cover with a kitchen towel. Let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size. This will take about an hour.

Cover a baking sheet with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 355° F (180° C) (conventional oven).

Thoroughly knead the dough once more. Separate into two equal halves. Form each half into a longish bread. Place the two loaves onto the baking sheet, cover with a kitchen towel and let them rise for about 30 minutes.

Having risen for the second time: off to the oven!

Sprinkle the bread with water, or slightly brush it with water. Bake for about 30 minutes. The bread will be done if a knock against the bottom sounds hollow.

From: Ager, B. (2010). Lass dich verführen 3. Hall in Tirol, Wien: Berenkamp.

Graham Rolls

Who doesn´t like the smell of home-made bread in the house? Biting into a warm, fresh, crisp roll? I love that. I am always overjoyed when I have the chance to eat home-made bread.

Recently I came upon a book on baking bread. There were lots of wonderful recipes in it, so I immediately bought the book . It was worth it. If you ask me, spending money on good-quality, inspiring cookbooks and baking books always is! I found myself drooling over the pictures and recipes while looking through the book.

Here is the recipe for graham rolls. Don´t worry about making yeast dough. I always make yeast dough using active dry yeast: I just knead all the ingredients together and let the dough rise in a warm place. It always works.

Ingredients:

10 oz. (280 g) water, lukewarm
7 g (= 1 bag) active dry yeast
2 cups plus 1 tbsp. (250 g) plain flour
2 cups plus 1 tbsp. (250 g) whole wheat flour
3 tbsp. (25 g) oat bran or wheat bran
1 ½ tsp. (10 g) salt
1 tsp. (5 g) sugar
2 tbsp. (20 g) vegetable oil

Cover a baking sheet with baking parchment.

Put all the ingredients into a big bowl. Either use a kitchen machine with a dough hook, or knead by hand until the dough is soft and silky. With a kitchen machine, this will take about five minutes.

Cover the bowl with a clean cloth or kitchen towel. Let the dough rest at a warm place for about 40 minutes. It should now have risen and be notably bigger and fluffier than before.

Knead the dough again, either using a kitchen machine or by hand. This will remove the air from the dough.

Form a kind of „sausage“ and cut it into six pieces of about the same size. With a rolling pin, roll each piece into a thin oval sheet.

Roll each oval sheet into a graham roll, starting with the narrow side. Put the six graham rolls onto the baking sheet, with the seam at the bottom. Cover the rolls with a moist cloth or kitchen towel and let them rest for 35 minutes.

While the rolls are rising, preheat the oven to 390° F (200° C; conventional oven).

Bake for about 20 minutes.

From: Ager, B. (2010). Lass dich verführen 3. Hall in Tirol, Wien: Berenkamp.