Tastes like FREEDOM! I always end up having friends from USA, wherever I am, so every year I have to celebrate the 4th of July. This year I made vegan cupcakes with a flag inspired frosting.

Recipe:

Mix

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup coffee
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 (- 6 pieces) bar of chocolate, melted
1 1/2 cup flour
3 tsp baking powder

together to form a dough. Fill cupcake forms half with dough. Place

1strawberry
1 piece of chocolate

in the middle. Fill the cupcakes form to 2/3rd with the rest of the dough. Bake for 25 min at 180°C. Let cool.

For the icing:

Blend
80 gr margarine
4 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp Vanilla sugar
2 tbsp oil

until creamy. Top the cupcakes with them (when they have cooled). Decorate with a strawberry and blue star sprinkles.

Eat.



Other vegan adventures of mine:
self-made oatmilk
toast and granary cob
marzipan cake

I finally perfected the two bread recipes for my microbakery. Fitting for a German bakery, which is called Öfchen (oven) they are called Hänsel and Gretel.



The sourdough starter and sourdough follow the recipe from this site. I use the progressively colder temperature method after Pöt.

Hänsel
1 1/2 cups rye sourdough
1 1/3 cups wholemeal rye flour
1/3rd cup wholemeal wheat flour
3 boiled and mashed small potatoes
2/3 cups of water mixed with potatoes

mix together in a bowl, stir well with a spoon (dough is too soft to knead)
let rest for 30 min in a warm place



1 1/3 cups white wheat flour
1 tbsp salt
1tsp bread spices (I use cumin and cilantro)

knead well until soft and elastic (2 - 5 min)
let rest for 30 min

form and put in a form to let rise with the seams up (I use a tupperware box)
let rest for 2 to 3 hours (until double in bulk)

preheat the oven to 250°C
carefully turn out on a baking sheet, tuck the edges under
bake 15 min on 250°C then reduce to 180°C and bake 45 min more

put the bread on a wire rack to cool
don't cut it til at least 5 hours have past (rye bread needs to settle to develop the full taste)

Gretel
cover 1/3rd cup of seeds with 2/3rd cup of water, let stand over night

1 1/2 cups wheat sourdough
1 cup white wheat flour
1/3 cup wholemeal wheat flour
1/3 cup wholemeal rye flour

mix well with a spoon (mixture is too wet to knead)
let rest for 30 min



1 tbsp salt
1/3 cup white wheat flour

stir the dough with a spoon (it is too wet to knead) at least 5 min, it should become elastic
turn out into a bread form

let rest for 2 to 3 hours (until double in bulk)
sprinkle with leftover seeds or anything else you like

preheat the oven to 250°C
bake 15 min on 250°C then reduce to 180°C and bake 45 min more

put the bread on a wire rack to cool

I want to start selling bread again. In Reykjavík (and I guess Iceland) there is one bakery which sells good bread. It is called Sandholt and is a french-style bakery, selling french-style bread. I adore french sourdough (in Chile it was the style of bread I made and sold), but as a German I miss the taste of rye sourdough bread.

The sourdough starter and sourdough follow the recipe from this site. I use the progressively colder temperature method after Pöt.

The bread recipe:
4 cups sourdough
4 cups rye flour
1 cup wholemeal wheat flour
2 cups water
-- mix and let rest in a warm place for 30 min (dough is too wet to knead)
2 tbsp salt
1 tsp bread spices (cumin and coriander)
3 cups white wheat flour
-- knead until a smooth dough, let rest in a warm place for 30 min (this is to let the sour develop, it should not rise yet)
-- divide in two, form and put in two well floured bread forms seams up (I use tupperware boxes)
-- let rest for 2+ hours (until double in bulk)
-- preheat the oven to 250°C
-- carefully turn out on a baking sheet, you can shape it a bit, but don't knock it back
-- bake 15 min on 250°C then reduce to 180°C and bake for 45 min
-- put it on a wire rack to cool and let it rest for a few hours (rye bread need to mature a bit to reach the full flavour)

For the next bread I will provide pictures of the process. I will try to add potatoes.

I'm not a vegan. But my flatmate is and in her honour I had decided that when I start my micro-bakery (9 loafs every Sunday, starting in summer) I will only offer vegan bread. For my sourdoughs, this is easy, they were vegan to begin with, but some of my special bread recipes use eggs, butter or milk.

So did my Ciabtta recipe from my ever trusty book "The bread bakers bible". It uses milk and olive oil to get the soft crust. I decided to try and replace the three table spoons of milk with two spoons of applesauce (for the acid) and one spoon of olive oil (for the fat). The bread turned out yummy, one could not taste the applesauce at all and my colleague made the mistake of leaving hers (the recipe makes 3) out in the break room. It was half gone when we came to retrieve it. The crumb was a bit denser than I would have liked, but I think this was due to using half wholemeal flour and half white (rather than white - white).

Want bigger holes!

As I had a lot of applesauce left I decided to try vegan pancakes and use this as an excuse to make my own oat milk. It is really easy:

1 cup of oatmeal
1 cup of hot water
some sugar

Let sit for 15 minutes (like porridge).
Put in food processor.
Add 2 cups of water.
Mix.
Sieve.
Done.
Update: To make cappuccino: bring to almost boiling temperature and whisk vigorously.



By then I felt really confident in my vegan food skills, so I immediately went on to making pancakes. I used the leftovers from making oat milk and the leftover applesauce, added water, flour, baking powder, sugar and apples. It looked ok, but then I started frying them and this happened:

Not pancakes

I adjusted the heat a bit and turned them really carefully, but the consistency was more omletty than pancaky. Maybe I'm not a vegan cooking genius after all.

I was excited to make bread yesterday, for three reasons:

1. I was making really nice bread, Pain Polka, after a recipe from "The Bread Bakers Bible" ISBN: 9781843094135. It uses old Baguette dough (which I had made last week) as a starter and is one of the closest one can get to a french-style sourdough when cheating with yeast.


2. Steffi had given me a kitchen timer, which means I can finally keep track of rising and baking time, as not doing so (because I was busy showing a friend how to bake and was distracted by explaining stuff) had made a bread turn out bad enough to make me sad.




my tools, I feel almost professional



3. I had found really good wholemeal flour, which was even cheaper than the Icelandic one, one gets in Bónus. Bónus is not always the cheapest, in this case Nettó was. It is ground roughly and has bits of wheat grain in it




Sorry Kornax (Icelandic flour producer) but this is how wholemeal flour is supposed to look like

Everything went well, rising times were measured correctly, the wholemeal flour made it almost feel like it had seeds in it, I formed it into a pretty form, put it in the oven, set the time and sprayed some water into it in the first 10 minutes, according to the recipe. Then the lights went out. I was a bit confused by how that had happened, I was only using the oven in the kitchen. I turned the oven on and we put the switch back in. Lights out again. Then I noticed that our extension cord was located right under the oven. By spraying the oven with water I had sprayed water into the plugs of the extension cord.

Endangering the life of my flatmates by baking

We exchanged it with a dry one and I finished baking the bread. It turned out great, the oven must have still been hot enough when the lights went out.

So proud

¬