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.

Crispbread

Baking and eating cookies was great fun, but now it is enough. I ate a lot of delicious food during the festive days, and I still feel full and stuffed. I really need some days without sweets and rich food!

Fortunately the new cookery and baking books I got for Christmas are very inspiring. We will somehow have to make space for them in our bookshelves (same problem as every year), but they will provide me with plenty recipes and ideas.

For a start, I wanted to make this crispbread, which sounded very healthy and simple. I also thought it would be a good way to find out if the recipes in my new book on baking bread would work or not. You can only find out by trying, can´t you?

When preparing the batter, I seriously doubted this recipe. It said that you should spread the batter onto the baking parchment. My batter was almost liquid, more like a soup than a batter! I was about to add more flour, but decided to stick to the recipe. It was good that I did. The flour soon thickened, and I could follow the instructions easily.

The crispbread tastes fantastic! It is crunchy and grainy, great with dips or as a quick snack. The book on baking bread has definitely passed the test. I have even already baked the next bread – Graham rolls. More about those soon!

Ingredients:
1 cup (120 g) spelt flour (I took spelt flour 1050, which is a rather dark flour)
1⅔ cups (120 g) rolled oats
⅔ (100 g) sunflower seeds
⅓ cup (50 g) sesame
¼ cup (50 g) linseed (=flaxseed)
½ tsp. salt
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cups plus 3 tbsp. (500 ml) water

Preheat the oven to 340° F 170° C (convection oven) or 375° F (190° C) (conventional oven).

Cover two baking sheets with baking parchment.

Put spelt flour, rolled oats, sunflower seeds, sesame, linseed, salt and olive oil into a big mixing bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon. Add the water and stir again. The mixture will be very liquid initially, but will thicken within a minute or two. Stir until this has happened.

Stir the thickened mixture once more, then pour half of the mixture on each baking sheet. Spread evenly so that the batter is very thin.

Bake for about 15 minutes, then remove from the oven and cut into small squares or rectangles. This has to be done now because when the crispbread is done, it will be so hard that it will be impossible to cut it.

Put the baking sheets into the oven again and bake for about 40 minutes.

Do not store the crispbread in an airtight tin, but in the open! This way it will stay crunchy.

 

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