Sonntag, 2. Oktober 2011

Stuff of Life: Sweet Bread (sunwheel) and Apple Flan

Every year, there is a festival in the park where we live. It is a wonderful celebration of the community we have. Yesterday was glorious, such a warm and sunlit day! There always is a breadmaking competition, because the park used to be the site of a bakery, and though my spelt sunwheel did not win, I am posting the recipe, plus the cakes we made for the Residents' Association Cafe.

The bread is based on Ingrid Früchtel´s Grosses Vollkorn Backbuch. She never uses sugar, though, but I don´t like to bake with honey, as I believe it is not good to heat honey too much (Ayurveda). And of course I mess around with the recipes... But this is what I did.

Sweet Spelt Bread

3 tsp dried active yeast
200ml lukewarm milk
150g soft butter
100g sugar
1 egg
grated zest of 1 lemon, or 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
250g wholemeal spelt flour (I love to grind spelt freshly in my kitchen mill, but spelt grain is hard to come by in this country)
250g plain or strong white flour

Mix dry ingredients including yeast. Add milk, butter and beaten egg. Knead into a dough. Actually, I did follow the recommendation and put it in the fridge overnight. This lets the dough rise ever so slowly, resulting in a nice, fine-pored dough that is easy to manage. Whatever way you do it, once it is risen, form into whatever shapes you fancy. The book has some really nice ideas for ancient bread-shapes. Bread magick!



These were the sunwheels and yulebread we made for christmas last year. I`ll supply a drawing of the sunwheel at some point...

Brush with a little beaten eggyolk mixed with 1 tbsp water and drizzle with slithered almonds or poppy seeds if you fancy. Oh, and bake at 200 degrees in a preheated oven for 35 to 45 minutes or until lightly browned on top and sounding hollow if tapped underneath.

The Apple Flan is based on a recipe from the same book. Roughly.

Apple Flan
150g plain flour
100g porridge oats
100g coarsely ground hazelnuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
100g cold butter
170g sugar (demara for a fancier taste)
600g cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely sliced
300g quark, fromage frais or curd cheese
2 eggs
grated zest of 1 lemon plus 2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp ground vanilla (or use 1/2 tsp essence)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Grease a deep baking sheet (dripping pan).
Mix Flour, oats, nuts, 100g of the sugar and cinnamon. Put the butter in flakes over this mix and knead in quickly with cold hands or two spoons. The mix should be a proper crumble consistency. Chill crumbles until ready to use. Arrange the apples neatly or randomly in the baking sheet. Mix the quark with the eggs, the remaining 70g sugar, lemon zest and juice and vanilla. Pour over the apples then arrange crumble mix on top. Bake for about 35 mins.

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