Swabian Potato Bread (Schwäbisches Kartoffelbrot)

 

This bread has fast become one of our favorites!

As the bread baker of the family, I always like to be inspired to try new bread recipes or methods, and there is so much inspiration on the web! Rarely do breads however come out the way they are supposed to - even for a seasoned bread baker like myself!

This one, however, was a success from the very first time I tried it! I didn’t alter the recipe very much - it works fine as it is!

There is something so utterly delicious about fresh baked bread, and this potato bread does not disappoint in aroma, texture or flavor!

 

When you read through the recipe, it may seem like a lot of work, but really it isn’t, especially once you get into the grove of it. Since I usually prepare some type of dough for my bread in the evening before baking, making the 3 different batches was different but not really more work!

And on baking day itself, things go pretty swiftly too!

This bread is so delicious right out of the oven, with that wonderful crackling of the crust when you cut that first slice!

However, unlike many other loaves, this bread still has a delicious and moist crumb, days later.

In fact, it’s still great even over a week later, as we found out this week!

We all came down with a stomach virus and were off bread for a few days, yet the bread was still great, with a chewy crust and a moist interior. There is a slight note of sourdough, but it is not pronounced.

 

It’s an all around good bread that goes with savory as well as sweet! The crust is quite tender too, which my currently somewhat toothless children really appreciate!

 

I reminds me of the bread I grew up with! But better, somehow! This one doesn’t go stale as quickly and is so flavorful!

And even though it is called “potato bread”, it really has very little potato in it. Just one small one for the whole loaf. However, it seems to do amazing things to the crumb!

 

So, here are the step-by-step instructions for this delectable bread!

I am doing this recipe in grams, as it is just so much more accurate and ensures baking success, especially with bread. So, please get out your kitchen scales!

 

Swabian Potato Bread

 

The Night before:

SOURDOUGH
135 g  Rye flour
135 g  Water
13g  Sourdough starter 100% Hydration -(freshly fed)

---> COMBINE IN A BOWL, LOSELY COVER AND LET IT SIT ON THE COUNTER TOP OVERNIGHT(12-16 hrs.)

PRE-DOUGH

100g  Unbleached Wheat Flour
90 g  Water
1/8 tsp Granulated yeast   

---> COMBINE IN A BOWL OR JAR, LET IT SIT AT ROOM TEMPERATURE FOR 2 HRS, THEN PLACE IN THE REFRIGERATOR OVER NIGHT (12-16 hrs.)

   
SOAKER
40 g  Bread Crumbs (Any will work, I have even done it with some gluten-free bread crumbs that needed using up!)
75 g Water

---> COMBINE IN A BOWL OR JAR AND LET SIT IN THE REFRIGERATOR OVER NIGHT.

On Baking Day:

MAIN DOUGH:

150 g  Potatoes (cooked, peeled and mashed with a fork)

415 g Unbleached Wheat Flour

120 g Water

3  g   Granulated Yeast

16  g Salt (I use Pink Himalayan Sea Salt)

10 g Oil, Ghee, Lard or Palm Shortening

Preparation:

Prepare the Soaker, Sourdough and Pre-dough as instructed above.

On baking day, combine the ingredients of the main dough with all the other ingredients and knead with the dough hook attachment on low for 4 minutes in a stand mixer.

The dough should be slightly sticky and not coming off the sides of the bowl. If necessary, add a little more water.

Turn the speed up to medium and knead the dough for a further 5 minutes.

Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover and let rise for one hour.

Shape the loaf  by gently folding the sides inwards a few times, without kneading it too much. We want to preserve some of that rise! Place into a floured proofing basket.

Let the dough rise for another hour or so. It should almost be fully proofed.

Heat a pizza or baking stone in the oven at 480 F. Once it reaches temperature, let it heat up for a further 15 minutes.

While it is heating, turn the proofed loaf onto a baking peel sprinkled with corn flour or semolina, or onto a sheet of baking parchment (that’s what I use.)

Brush off the excess flour and slash the loaf 2-3 times, depending on the shape of your loaf.

 

 

Transfer the loaf onto the baking stone and just before closing the oven door, pour a cup or so of water in the bottom of the oven. Quickly close the oven door, so as little steam as possible escapes.

We’re going to bake this loaf with  sliding temperature and several injections of steam for a total of 1 hour.

After you put the loaf on the stone and injected your first steam, leave it to bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 445 F and let it bake for a further 15 minutes. Reduce to 400 F, toss another cup of water on the bottom of your oven and let it bake another 15 minutes. Reduce to 350 F and let it bake for another 15-20 minutes.

 

 

Should the top of your bread get too dark, cover it loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil.

Let the bread cool completely before cutting into it!

 

 

Letting it cool before tearing into it, is pretty much the hardest part around here. The family is swarming the kitchen and checking the oven usually half an hour before it comes out because the smell of fresh crusty bread is all over the house - and it is irresistible!

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Quick And Easy Homemade, Grass-Fed Ghee

Ghee is so delicious, don’t you think?

What is Ghee, you ask?

Ghee is basically butter with the milk protein and lactose taken out, leaving pure butter fat. Ghee is not only very flavorful, but it also has a higher burning point, meaning you can cook at much higher temperatures than butter without it burning.

This means that you can have the rich flavor of butter, without worrying about it smoking or burning at a low temperature, quite unlike butter!

While I am very sensitive to dairy, I find that I can consume ghee without any issues. Many dairy sensitive people find that they do well with ghee since it is casein and lactose free, when  prepared correctly! However, ghee can also be quite expensive, especially the grass-fed kind, which holds the most benefits.

So, I’ve been making my own ghee from the Kerry Gold Butter we get at Costco. Initially I thought this was out, as they only carry the salted kind at our Costco, but I soon found out, that the salt seems to attach itself to the protein, which is what we’re filtering out. So, the resulting Ghee is actually unsalted - and as far as I’m concerned - utterly heavenly!

I’m not only entranced by the flavor, but even more so by the smell this homemade goody produces. I have been known to just take the lid off my homemade ghee, so I can take a little sniff at the utter deliciousness! It makes me happy! And I put it on everything. On warm bread, on waffles, on my vegetables ...

My children even prefer it to butter of late!

Anyway, if you think producing Ghee is a long and laborious process that is very prone to failure - I’m here to tell you it isn’t so!

It’s actually quite easy and relatively quick. It generally takes me just 20 minutes to turn 3 blocks of Kerry Gold Butter into Ghee.

You will need:
Grass-Fed Butter
Unbleached organic cotton fabric/cloth
Fine mesh metal strainer
Large Saucepan
Jar( s) with lid

Turn the stove to medium and melt the butter in the saucepan. The temperature will stay at medium the entire time.

It really doesn’t matter how much butter you use at the time, as the process will be the same. If you’re using only one stick of butter the whole thing will of course happen faster than if you are using five.

Just make sure your saucepan is large enough to accommodate the rising foam later!

Once the butter is melted, it will fairly soon start to bubble like this. That’s the water cooking out. The bubbles will be relatively large and well defined, popping away and there will be steam. Stand away from the stove a little, just in case!

There will be some foam, but the most prominent thing will be the increasingly big bubbles.

After a few minutes, the volume will be somewhat less in the saucepan. You will be able to see this on the pot, where the melted butter formed a ring.

After a while you will see the larger bubbles disappearing and tiny little, foamy bubbles will start to appear instead.

Usually that’s when the laborious process of ghee making starts. You’re supposed to skim off all the foam. And it just keeps on coming, so you keep on skimming. I don’t.

That’s why we chose a large saucepan! We let the foam do it’s thing.

And it will! It will rise and rise. And there will be lots of foam.

If you have chosen a big enough saucepan, there’s no problem!

This is not a process you can walk away from. It’s not laborious, but you need to be standing there so you can gauge when it’s time to take it off the heat. When that moment arrives, you have to be ready and be quick!

However, up until this point, the butter is just doing it’s thing and you don’t really need to do much.

So, get your bowl, strainer and cloth ready.

A word on the cloth. Cheese cloth, even several layers of it, doesn’t do a good enough job in my opinion. Some of the casein always escapes and that is what we’re trying to filter out.

If you don’t have a cloth, you can use a dedicated white dish towel, or even unbleached coffee filters. The coffee filters take longer, but they do an excellent job!

Back to the butter. The foam will really be rising now. Tiny little bubbles all over the place, rising up!

And then there will be that point of change. It will be subtle, but unmistakable.

First of all, the smell will change. It will go from a melted butter smell to an unmistakably nutty smell.

The foam will no longer want to rise up, but rather go down now and certain areas in the foam will turn from yellow to a light golden brown.

And then little golden brown flecks start floating on the foam.

That is the point when you spring into action. You pull the pan off the stove straight away and you slowly pour it into your set up bowl with the strainer and cloth/coffee filter.

There will be quite a bit of browned casein visible at the bottom and the sides of your saucepan, once all the butter and foam is out.

Just soak that in a bit of hot water and washing up liquid and it will wash right off!

The cloth/coffee filter will be doing it’s thing.

When you get to the end, give the cloth a quick twist and press with a spoon to get all the remaining butter fat out.

What will be left in the cloth is this:

Now, to enhance the nutty flavor, you can let the ghee go a little longer, which will make for darker residue and a darker ghee. I have done both, both is very flavorful, but personally, I prefer it right about at this stage.

If you’re doing it for the first time, go by these visuals and see how it works for you. After you are a more seasoned ghee maker you will develop your own preferences!

Once you are done with filtering, you will have perfectly wonderful ghee. It’s still hot though, so be careful while handling it!

If you didn’t filter straight into a jar, decant the ghee and close the lid.

Let it cool down a little bit at room temperature, then place in the fridge.

I find that it has a creamier texture when it’s fully cooled in the fridge.

I generally keep my ghee in the refrigerator when not in use. Strictly speaking this is not necessary, as ghee is shelf stable at room temperature, but I prefer it from the refrigerator. Since it’s quite warm around here, it gets soft at room temperature fairly quickly, so using it while too hard is rarely an issue!

Once it cools and hardens a bit, it has this lovely deep yellow color and beautiful aroma and flavor! Yes,  I totally love the stuff!

So, there you have it! Lovely ghee!

And if you would rather not make your own, this is the ghee I use and recommend when I don’t make my own!

Purity farms ghee is organic and certified cassein and lactose free!

Vitacost seems to have far the best price on it and has fast shipping, be it the flat rate shipping or the free shipping for purchases over $49!  If you haven’t signed up for Vitacost yet, do it now through my link and receive $10 off your first purchase of $30 or more!

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Homemade Bread - Swabian Potato Bread

This is what came out of the oven a mere 30 minutes ago!

I will write about the recipe and method of this particular bread at a later date, since it requires a post all on it’s own! But until then, I wanted to share a picture with you!

Have a happy weekend everyone!

 

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Of Faces, Textures And “Terrible” Art

So, I haven’t shared much of my art recently. It’s not because there hasn’t been any. It’s more that I am at that awkward stage (again,) where I’m learning something new, where I can’t match what’s in my head with what I put on paper/canvas, where I have so many different projects going, where I practice more than I finish ...

You know that stage? Yes, not exactly the kind of thing you feel inspired to share with the world at large.

There has been a lot of frustration, but also a lot of joy as I seem to be “getting” something, even just the smallest thing. For me, faces (or any other detailed extremities/body parts) are such a challenge! The proportions, the shading - it just doesn’t come naturally to me - at all!

Every once in a while I think “By George, she’s got it!” only to find that it was an isolated incident!

For example, remember this face?

Yes, I was so pleased with this one, I didn’t even bother to finish that canvas for quite some time, going straight to the next face and everything that just simply flowed in the last canvas, just went nowhere. *sigh*

So, I went back to finish that one and I just realized this morning that I never shared the finished product with you! Once again it is hard to photograph because of all the reflective shimmer paints on the canvas as well as the wire flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, for the last few weeks, I’ve been doing faces. Big ones, small ones, sketched ones, scribbled ones, with pretty much every medium I have. And I’m still working on faces! They are all works in progress! Here are a few of them:

 

 

 

And the journey continues!

Kari, an Artist friend of mine, wrote a pretty great blog post on “The Value Of Terrible Art” the other day.  And the quote by  Ira Glass bears repeating and remembering!

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

 

So, I guess that’s where I am. And it seems that it’s not just once that you hit that stage. It seems you hit it in an overall fashion, AND every time you learn something new and leave your comfort zone!

 

Having said all that though, I have also really enjoyed myself with art in the last few weeks! I am still slightly obsessed with textured canvases, following the Gesso Stenciling method. And those pale, shimmering, shabby-chic kind of colors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven’t decided what to do with them yet, but something will set off that spark of inspiration at some point!

 

What have you been inspired by, obsessed with, frustrated or amazed by in your art?

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Homemade Bread - 100% Sprouted Spelt Sandwich Loaf

 

This loaf was another experiment with sprouted spelt. The loaf is made with 100% sprouted spelt, but in 3 different forms. I used freshly sprouted organic spelt berries (whole), organic whole sprouted spelt flour and organic sifted, sprouted spelt flour.

This is also the first time I used liquid Levian (which is a form of quite runny sourdough) as a flavor, rather than a method of leavening the bread. No overnight rising for this bread either, the added granulated yeast did all the rising. It was done in a total of 4 hours!

Incidentally, this bread dough came together surprisingly easy and hardly needed any kneading. I gave it a couple of rounds of folding, but that’s about it.

I have to say that the flavor of this bread is amazing! Most fresh bread is pretty good, but the aroma that was filling the house when this was baking was very different and very enticing!

The flavor of the bread is a little on the sweet side, the crumb is moist and a little dense (in a good way.) Next time I want to get a much lighter crust, as this one got a little too dark and I might increase the proofing time to even longer than the two hours it got today. The burst crust on top would indicate, that it wasn’t quite done with the final proofing. 

And I think I might use a loaf pan next time around, rather than this small, but long free-form loaf, so it will be more of a sandwich slice shape!

Other than that however, I think this could be a very good, fully sprouted sandwich bread and a regular go-to for us!

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Homemade Coconut Milk Shampoo And Clarifying Rinse

In my effort to go all natural and mostly organic in terms of food, the next logical step for me seemed to be to go back to making my own beauty products. Prior to getting married and having children, I was making my own soap and many other beauty products.

All that came to a screeching halt when the twins arrived and somehow I never quite got back into it. Don’t get me wrong, we were using the natural and organic stuff, but even those still have many undesirable ingredients.

Since the pregnancy, or since my move to Phoenix, I have had increasingly worse trouble with eczema on my scalp. Oddly enough, my hair remained strong and thick and healthy, but my scalp has been terrible. Itchy, raw, open, and forever flaking.

I’ve tried so many things, even the medicated shampoos which made matters worse really.

Then I went shampoo-less for many years, only using tea tree conditioners to wash my hair. This made things a tad better, but not all that much.

Three weeks ago I decided I had enough and I was going to give my homemade shampoo/hair treatments another go.

I don’t even know why it took me so long to go back to this!

Within just a few washes, my scalp felt significantly more healed of the sores!

Within a week, the flakes were practically gone.

In the two weeks since then, the itching has gone from I-want-to-tear-my-scalp-off-it-itches-so-much-bad to barely moderate!

I still have some residual issues, but it has only been such a short time and I am hopeful that over time, those issues may disappear too!

And my hair has acquired that certain shine and extra luster that I had been missing for a while!

However, having said all of the above, often there will be an adjustment period of two to four weeks when switching from commercial shampoos. Your hair may become frizzy or oily as it adjusts to the no-sulfate and other nasties routine, but eventually everything will level out and you will reap the benefits of the new hair routine!

Coconut Milk Shampoo

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of  Dr. Bronners Organic Castile Liquid Soap, Peppermint (or Tea Tree, Lavender or Unscented)
1/3 cup organic coconut milk
2 tsp. Burdock oil (or organic virgin Coconut Oil, or Hemp Seed Oil)
10 drops rosemary essential oil
8 drops lavender essential oil
6 drops sage essential oil (or chamomile essential oil)

Preparation:
Mix all the ingredients well and decant into a shower save bottle. If the coconut oil isn’t runny by itself, warm it a little to get it to a liquid state before mixing.
I have not had an issue with the shampoo separating, but if it does, just shake it up before use!
Less is more with this shampoo. I have medium short hair, but it’s thick and I have a lot of it and I have never needed more than about 2 tsp.

This shampoo works best if you follow it up with a clarifying rinse.

Clarifying Hair Rinse

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of organic apple cider vinegar

3  cups or so of water

5-8  drops of essential oil (rosemary, peppermint, chamomile (will lighten blond hair), lavender, sage, lemon balm are all good options) - optional

You can also use fresh herbs in place of the essential oils, but steep them in water with a splash of the organic cider vinegar for a few days prior to use.

As you can see above, I currently have a bottle of  rosemary and mint  from my herb garden sitting on my shower shelf and I decant from that and refill right there in the shower. The herbs stay good in there for about a week, imparting their goodness!

To Use:

After you rinsed off all shampoo and/or conditioners, pour the vinegar rinse all over your hair. Cold water is best as it allows the cuticles to close, which will decrease frizz and add shine, but warm is ok too.

I use it cold straight out of the bottle, but it’s hot around here, so cold feels quite good!

Wring out your hair out as much as you can.

That’s it, you don’t rinse it out!

Then towel dry and proceed as normal.

There will be a faint odor of vinegar, don’t worry about that, it dissipates once your hair is dry! And your hair will be so soft and shiny!

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Homemade Bread

Today’s loaf is gluten-free. I wanted to experiment with a gluten free loaf that is rich in fiber but not gummy, or sawdust, for that matter! And I wanted a crispy crust!

 

 

It turned out pretty well, even though I do want to tweak the recipe further just a little bit!

I baked it in the Romertopf as a free-form loaf. The flavor was very good, and I even got a nice little oven spring out of it! Especially for a gluten free loaf, which is a bit of a beast when it comes to bread baking! Nice crust too, and the bread isn’t too dense either. Much like a 100% whole wheat loaf, really!

But I would like to work on the texture a little more. I think the dough could have stood being even wetter than it was to maybe get even more of a rise out of it, which would make it just a tad lighter!

Experiments will continue!

 

For now I’m enjoying a toasted slice with some homemade ghee slathered on it!

 

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Quick Peach Upside-Down Cake (Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free)

I don’t tend to use commercial bake mixes much. But there are some crazy busy days, when I really appreciate the quick and easy factor and that’s when the occasional bake mix gets used around here.

For this recipe I use a cake mix  that only contains the flours, sugar and the baking soda and everything else can be added, which was perfect, as it allows me to doctor it to my liking!

Since I had a lot of peaches and some not-perfectly-ripe ones made it into the pile, I thought they would lend themselves perfectly to this quick and delicious dessert!

You can, of course, use other fruit too to make this cake. I have used this recipe with other fruits successfully, especially pineapple upside down cake (minus the almond extract) and it never disappoints!

 

 

Ingredients:

4-5 fresh medium sized, organic peaches (Not quite at the peak of their ripeness is ideal for this!)

1/2 cup of grass-fed ghee, divided (I make my own)

1/2 cup dark brown sugar (or raw cane sugar)

1/4 cup organic palm shortening or Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil

1 cup almond creamer (recipe here)

2 large,  organic eggs

1 tsp  Butter Vanilla Bakery Emulsion

1 tsp Buttery Sweet Dough Bakery Emulsion

1/2 tsp Almond Bakery Emulsion

1 pack of Hodgson Mill Gluten Free Yellow Cake Mix

 

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Melt 1/4 cup of ghee in a pie plate.  Use some of the melted ghee to grease the sides of the pie plate.

Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the melted ghee on the bottom of the pie plate.

Slice the peaches over the ghee/sugar layer. About 12 slices per peach or so. Since our peaches were organic, I didn’t even peel them. You can arrange the peaches in a pretty pattern. As you can see, I didn’t bother and just added them randomly by slicing out a segment from the whole peach, then just slicing around the stone, dropping the slices into the pie plate as I go.

Set aside.

In a bowl, mix the remaining ghee, the palm shortening, the eggs, emulsions/extracts and almond creamer with the cake mix. Incorporate well with a whisk.

Pour the cake batter over the peaches and place pie plate on a cookie sheet (to catch any bubbles and drips.)

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the pie plate for about 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges to loosen them. Next,  invert the cake onto a large plate or serving platter!

Enjoy!

 

It turned out delicious and moist. The peaches were definitely the star, with an intensely fruity fresh flavor, beautifully supported by the crunchy, slightly caramelized edges and the soft, moist cake center! Definitely a favorite around here!

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