the garden is making progress….and sweeter ‘corn’ bread

Posted on 25 July, 2013 by saskia

Finally the garden is in bloom, the peas, the capers, the rocket, the lettuce ! crazy everything is growing. I think it’s great to have the opportunity to use ingredients from the garden sthraigt on bread or make spread of it. A nice spread asks for a nice bread.
And we bought 25 kilograms of corn flour, but OMG it’s hard to make bread with corn flour, next time we have to read more about it. The problem is corn flour doesn’t raise so much. So after a lot of disasters and very miserables bread. I have now the perfect combination. So Allard here is your perfect bread and sweeter as normal, just follow the recipe and never throw in more dried yeast, the bread will raise to much….but you know already 🙂 And now bake evry day a bread like this so the flour will be empty at last

Ingredients for a sweeter ‘corn’ bread…
250 gram of spelt flour
100 gram of all purpose flour
150 gram of corn flour
1 tablespoon of dried yeast
a dash of salt
2 cups of luke warm water
a hand full of pumkinseeds for on top
+/-4 tablespoons of flaxseeds for in the bread
2 tablespoons of oil

Kitchentools
A food processor with dough hook
a tablespoon
a cake-pan

Lets make the bread………..
I would say mix all the flours together, time to poor in the dried yeast, salt and flaxseeds. Mix very well so everything is equal!
While mixing, poor in the water and oil very slowly, now you see it’s getting like dough. It must be a little sticky, not wet (you cannot make a ball of the dough) and not too dry (it will fall apart)
Get the cake pan and with a brush you oil the cake pan, so the bread will get out easy after baking!
Put in the dough so the whole bottom is covered and sprinkle on top the pumpkin seeds, set aside on a warm place and let the dough raise for 1 hour or more.The dough must be doubled when it’s ready for baking.
Bake the bread for 20-30 minutes on 200 degrees Celsius.
Open the door of the oven and knock on the bread, when it sounds hollow it’s ready. Cool down before getting it out of the cake pan……..

Taste your delicious bread enjoy your breakfast or lunch with home made bread

no memory…..and easy garlic breads to remember

Posted on 8 May, 2013 by saskia

Last I saw a documentary about a men (called Henry Molaison) without a memory, they cut away a part of the brain when he was at the age of 27. He couldn’t tell what he ate in the morning or what he just did, he always saw things for the first time! Very interesting how the brain works, it is not my speciality. But nice to learn new things!
His brains are now in research, he died at the age of 82, they cut the brains in very thin layers and put them between glass. For me really a miracle, the science of body and brain.
So enough about science, let’s talk about food…The garlic bread to remember, nice as a side-dish for the soup. Easy to make……

Ingredients for the garlic bread (2 persons)
A French baguette
8 cloves of garlic cut in 1mm or tinier pieces
oil like 1/2 cup (if it’s used, poor some oil extra)
some dashes of Himalayan salt and 4 seasons pepper
3 teaspoons of dried thyme or you like rosemary more?
fresh chopped chive for garnish

Kitchentools
an oven
a oven dish for dipping the bread in

Let’s get started!
Cut the baguette in slices (like 1 cm)
In the oven dish you mix the oil and the garlic/thyme/salt/ pepper together. Get the slices of bread and one by one you dip them in the oil (both sides). You will have a slices with oil, garlic and herbs on it.

Every slice you put on the griddle, the griddle has on top some baking paper!
Put the oven at 200 degrees Celsius and bake for 10 minutes.
When you open the door the bread must smell like garlic and it must look golden brown.
A child can do the laundry we say in the Netherlands!

Eet smakelijk/bon appetit

Muse…and some raisin bread

Posted on 19 December, 2012 by saskia

Whoopie, great, amazing ,wow what a great concert of Muse last monday (finally after many years I knew about the ticket selling on time, it was sold out after 30 minutes or something like that time) . I really enjoyed the show, amazing visuals, beautiful lights, nice audience and great music. And me as a lightoperator (ok ex one at the moment) really like the kind of stuff lighting/visually things.
I never been into the Ziggo dome in Amsterdam, it can host 17000 people, what a big hall, I was getting a little seasick when I was on the second ring, it was so steep on the balcony, I was thinking immediately, when you are drunk you can fall really bad like many meters down (it must be a great and exciting stage/balcony dive ;)), of course there was a barrier but still!
Anyway the concert again was great, singing out loud the music, clapping in the hands, dancing.I would say check out on youtube.
MUSE – Unsustainable/Supremacy

If you never been to a concert of Muse, you really must go and see!
So Anyway today I made a raisin bread what I really wanted to share with you, it’s a little sweet and something else then the uncommon brown bread.
Get ready for the ingredients

The ingredients for one round raisin bread (10 inch spring)
300 grams of spelt flour
100 gram of wheat flour sifted
3/4 cup of sunflower seeds
1 tablespoon of dried yeast
1 tablespoon of date syrup
3/4 cup of raisins
2 cups of lukewarm water
1 tablespoon of oil
some oat flakes, spelled flakes or like that as garnish

Kitchentools
a bowl
a machine with a dough hook to mix the dough
an oven

The beginning…..
I would say heat up some water to the cooking point and put off and lets stand aside, while you are preparing the mixture of the dough.
First get all the dry ingredients, the flour, sunflowerseeds, raisins, and yeast. Mix this together!
The after the mixture you put in the oil, date syrup and the now lukewarm water (not all at once, but pour it in the mixture slowly) and let the machine turn and turn while you pour in the wet ingredients.
Now the mixture is ready (it must be a sticky dough) put in the spring (the bottom must be all covered) on top you do some garnish (the flakes) and let stand for 1 hour in a warm place, like the living room covered with a towel.
This is the time the bread will get bigger!

After 1 hour you heat up the oven like 200 degrees Celsius ( I think it’s like this temperature, because my oven is gas and old and I don’t know the exact temperature)
Put in the bread, and after 20 minutes you low down the heat to the lowest point of the oven for another 5-10 minutes.
Now put the gas off, let the bread inside the oven and cool down a little bit. (you must see that the bread is having a brown tinted crust and when you knock on it it must make a hollow sound, then it’s perfect)

At the end…..
You have a beautiful tasty bread, and the perfect spread on it is hazelnut spread (not the chocolate but the real stuff) mixed with raisins!
Anyway try some other nuts or seeds inside the bread or more nuts/seeds. It will make a little change!

Enjoy your day, at least I do….and eet smakelijk

old bread….do not throw away!

Posted on 21 November, 2012 by saskia

We all know, some day you eat a lot of bread and the other day you almost don’t eat any!
And yes you always have some leftovers from your bread. I hate to throw food away and I know sometimes, you have to throw food away….but if you can ‘recycle’ it, why not!
So I know some solutions for old bread to make the old bread nice and new 😉

first solution
if you fill a little layer of water in a cooking pan and you put the old bread in a colander. And just steam it for some minutes, the old hard bread become soft! So here you are a fresh eatable bread!

second solution
You can make also croutons of old bread, Croutons you can put in soup, it’s a nice crunchy bite in the soup!

So what do you need?
some old bread cut in little squares
some oil (maybe surround 1/2 cup)
some dried herbs (like oregano, basil, thyme, chive, parsley and so on we call in it in the Netherlands Italian herb-mixture)

Kitchentools
an oven
some baking paper
a bowl

Yes let’s make the croutons!
So you cutted the bread in little 2 cm squares? put them in the bowl, poor over the bread some oil, and some herbs (this I always do on looks and taste) mix it all carefully with a spoon. The bread must be a little oiled, but not that the oil is dripping of the bread. The herbs it’s the same, it must be not overwhelming on 1 pieces of bread.
Now get the baking paper and put the bread on this paper, put them in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius, wait for 10 minutes, and you have some nice crunchy bites for in the soup!

Solution 3
Make some French toast,
this recipe I put earlier on my blog so this is a copy of the blog-page

The recipe for 8 little bread-slices or 4 big ones.

150 ml/1/2 cup of oat milk
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon grinded flaxseeds and 3 tablespoons of water (mixed together)
1 teaspoon vanilla aroma
1 tablespoon brown sugar (maybe you can try some syrup instead of sugar because sugar is not the healthiest ingredient)
4 big slices of bread or 8 little bread-slices_
some vegan margarine or oil to bake the toasts in
(some banana-slices to put on the toast, or some syrup, or powdered sugar, or strawberries or…or..just what you like)

Kitchentools
a baking pan
a spatel
a plate
a mortar
a bowl

Lets begin to make the old bread delicious and brand new!
Originally you cut of the crust of the bread, I don’t do this I am too lazy…
So get the mortar, and grind the flaxseeds and put the water together with the flaxseeds (it’s instead of an egg, so you can maybe use 1 tbsp of egg-replacer if you don’t have flaxseeds)
Then mix this mixture togrther (in a bowl) with all the other ingredients, only not the margarine. Mix it very well.
Get the pan and put this on fire, let the margarine melt and then get the bread-slices, dip in the mixture and directly after they are soaked full of the mixture and are totally wet, put them in the pan and bake them till they are dark brown on both sides (not black please, it’s disgusting to taste and very unhealthy)

Make the bread slices all like this example! Then decorate it nice on a plate with some bananas and syrup, or whatever you like!

How a book can take over my life, at the moment……and sweet-oldbread-toast

Posted on 1 October, 2012 by saskia

Imagine, you go to the library. You just take a book , part 1 of the 18, you just borrow part 1 just to see if you like it. You read it, you have been taken by the story, you need more parts. Next day you go immediately to the library, and take a lot of parts from that serie, so when you finished reading one part, you can start with the next one, so I thought yes…..I can do my junky thing, just read on and on and get into the story all day (without interruption). Till you finish part 3 and discover you don’t have part 4… yes I did…I went again to the library, it was not in the bookcase….ooh lalala I went immediately to some guy who was working in the library, just with a smile on my face because I was so confident , that I was just looking wrong…the guy searched in the computer, he said there are no part 4’s here in the library, maybe he is lost…I was thinking NONONO please…..: ( But then he said ooh there is one but someone has it now you can make a reservation so you get a message when he is back in the library…I thought NO but ok I payed 1 Euro to make a reservation (it’s against my principles, because always when I want to borrow my books longer someone made a reservation and I still must go on the bike to the library, I always curse those persons, now I am one too, to curse), now I wait and wait. But I found another serie from the same writer and it’s great too! It’s manga from Naoki Urasawa the 20th century boys, and monster I will wait for it with smart! So hurry up guy or girl…..:)!

Anyway this night before reading I made some nice ‘French toast” (google translate said it, but now I don’t belief it’s the right translation) I think it must be sweet- old bread- toast..
It’s made out of old bread and it has the sweetness like pancakes, so if you like sweet just make this recipe!

The recipe for 8 little bread slices or 4 big ones.

150 ml/1/2 cup of oat milk
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon grinded flaxseeds and 3 tablespoons of water (mixed together)
1 teaspoon vanilla aroma
1 tablespoon brown sugar (maybe you can try some syrup instead of sugar because sugar is not the healthiest ingredient)
4 big slices of bread or 8 little bread-slices_
some vegan margarine to bake the toasts in
(some banana-slices to put on the toast, or some syrup, or powdered sugar, or strawberries or…or..just what you like)
Kitchentools
a baking pan
a spatel
a plate
a mortar
a bowl

Lets begin to make the old bread delicious and brand new!
Originally you cut of the crust of the bread, I don’t do this I am too lazy…
So get the mortar, and grind the flax seeds and put the water together with the flaxseed (it’s instead of an egg, so you can maybe use 1 tbsp of egg-replacer if you don’t have flaxseeds)
Then mix this mixture together (in a bowl) with all the other ingredients, only not the margarine. Mix it very well.
Get the pan and put this on fire, let the margarine melt and then get the bread slices, dip in the mixture and directly after they are soaked full of the mixture and are totally wet, put them in the pan and bake them till they are dark brown on both sides (not black please, it’s disgusting to taste and very unhealthy)

Make the bread slices all like this example! Then decorate it nice on a plate with some bananas and syrup, or whatever you like!
Have a nice sweet meal/eet smakelijk

easy, healthy and delicious………….great lunch

Posted on 27 June, 2012 by saskia

shopping is always nice and finding new shoes even better! Today it was an easy going day, just waking up making breakfast and going to the shopping mall in the North of Amsterdam, walking in the sunshine without sorrows.
Bought some leopard pumps, time to be a lady again……and of course no leather in the shoes! People always look strange, when you ask :’do you have shoes without leather?’
Anyway it,s my choice of wearing no dead animal fur/skin, and I have to say, there are beautiful fake stuff so…. it’s even not necessary to wear real animals and pay a lot for a second-hand skin.
Ok enough writing, lets go and talk about the lunch, because walking and shopping makes you hungry!
I like to make an healthy lunch, especially with home-made bread and with vegetables picked up straight from our own garden

So how can you make a nice healthy, delicious lunch without cheese and meat.
I just say think colourful and your bread will look and taste awesome.
Anyway after the hummus on bread, I just right down an easy solution for a nice lunch and maybe not special for a lot of people but I wanted to put this on my blog just again forgetting some ideas!.

Ingredients
Some tempeh
2 tomatoes cut in thin slices
some thin slices of cucumber
sprouts what you have made and is on the windowsill ( I had reddish and alfalfa)
some mustard to use as butter on your bread
some salt and pepper
Caraway seeds as a garnish
Fresh lettuce different colours straight from the garden!
some coconut oil for baking/frying the tempeh
A nice and fresh baked bread

kitchentools
a plate
a cutting board
a knife
a baking pan

So lets start…
get the tempeh and cut the tempeh in triangles so you can put it on your bread easy, anyway you can make also squares, the same size as your slice of bread! Bake the tempeh in the frying pan till they are golden brown set aside, and cut the slices from the tomato and cucumber.
Take some bread and put some mustard on the top of the bread, upon the mustard you can put some lettuce. On top of the lettuce some tomato, cucumber and tempeh, the finishing touch is to put the sprouts on top and some pepper, salt and caraway seeds! Voila an easy lunch and if you have avocado you can put this also on your bread or leave away the tomato. Just fun to make this bread, you can make it the way you want and what you like……..just delicious!

Eet smakelijk and enjoy your day

sourdoughbread and some sunshine while waiting………..

Posted on 27 May, 2012 by saskia

Finally the sun is coming through here in Amsterdam, a couple of days its above 25 degrees Celsius, YOOHOO I like. Getting a tan,my belly is still growing (1,5 week to go)and my son is playing in the water in the beautiful growing vegetable garden.
Mmm and I am really addicted for reading now and especially nowadays I am experimenting with bread. (from the library I lent the bread bible from Christine Ingram and Jennie Shapter so they helped me to make this delicious sour-dough bread)
A couple of weeks ago we bought so many flour (75 kilogram) at some windmill in Klarenbeek ( a place in the Netherlands) it’s all organic and we are very happy we bought it, we can make so many breads now!!
And of course today I made my own sourdoughbread, jammie it worked thank you Jennie and Christine!

It takes a couple of days to make it, but after you can use every-time some dough of the bread for the next bread! It reminds me of the friendship dough we had when we were younger, you make a bread and get some dough-restovers for your friends so they can make a bread to! It called Herman in the Netherlands.
So here let’s start to make the pre-dough in google translate it’s called brew….

Ingredients of the first brew
115 gram of spelt flour
0,75 decilitre lukewarm-water

Ingredients of the second brew
1,2 deciliter of lukewarm water
175 gram of spelt flour

Ingredients for the final bread part
1,5-1,75 dl of lukewarm water
350 gram of 5 cereals flour
2 teaspoons of salt
a tablespoon of olive oil
maybe some sesame seed,poppy seed for decoration

kitchentools
just a wooden spoon
some plastic foil
a ceramic bowl
a moist towel

How to begin
It takes a couple of days so don’t make this when you want a bread immediately!
So mix the spelt flour together with the water, till you get a ball! Put the ball in the bowl (twice as big as the ball) and cover with the plastic foil. Let stand this brew for 2-3 days!
After the 2-3 days you will see the brew has a grey crust (it looks a little strange but the smell must be sweet and little sour), take of the crust and use the brew and mix together with the ingredients of the second brew (1,2 dl water and 175 gram of flour)
And again cover the ball with foil in the bowl and let’s stand for 1 or 2 more days it will grow now!.
Now you can make a sour dough bread! Yippie finally!

so get the brew and mix all the ingredients together for the final bread part. So 1,5-1,75 dl lukewarm water, salt and 5 cereal flour. Make a ball and put some olive oil on the top of the bread mixture of it and let’s stand for 1-2 hours, covered with a moist towel in a bowl not of metal and twice as big as the dough.
After you wait you get 120 gram of the dough and put them aside in a little bowl in the fridge, you can use this for the next bread!
The rest of the dough you give a massage, mix again and cover again with the moist towel in a bowl and set aside for 2-3 hours (you can put some poppy seeds or something else on the bread for decoration now it’s the time!), yes I know it takes a long time but you can read some interesting books,play some chess or get a tan in the sun 😉
And now finally you can put the bread in the oven, don’t knead it. The oven must be preheated and must be on 230 degrees of Celsius when you put the bread in the oven. Bake the bread for 20-30 minutes it’s ready when you knock on the bread and it’s sounds hollow

So bon appetit and enjoy the taste of this bread!

sourdoughbread is made with help of the breadbible written by Christine Inagram and Jennie Shapter

a normal seeded bread…..

Posted on 12 September, 2011 by saskia

No big stories today, just recovering from a busy weekend full of nice moments. Saturday I went for the first time to the Peppel in Zeist, it’s a popvenue. The atmosphere was cosy and a little of squat feeling there. The festival was full of different kinds of bands, from metal to folk to electronic music!
The next day I walked through my old city Amersfoort and there was open monuments day, so I saw a very old Jewish cemetery and the nice garden from an old building, in the garden you felt you were in the middle age, all kind of old activities, I really enjoyed it, also the fashion show what was given in the garden was awesome!

Today made my last bread for this week I think, because the dough hook from the food processor is some kind of broke, it’s a pity ; ( And I am too lazy to do without.
So here is one of my normal seeded bread recipe, I think this you can call my basic bread recipe, you can make a lot of variation with it, take different flours for example or different seeds…..be creative!

Ingredients for 1 seeded bread

250 gram of spelt flour
150 gram of whole wheat flour
circa 1 1/2 cup of water
9 gram of dried yeast
3/4 cup of sunflower seeds and flax seeds
4 tablespoons of sunflower oil or olive oil

Kitchen tools

a bowl
a little wet towel
a food processor with dough hook
an oven

So lets start

make it with love and the bread becomes better ; )

Mix the flours together in the food processor, stir in the yeast and seeds.
Then slowly poor in the oil and after a while slowly the water.
Now if it’s right the dough will become like a ball, if it isn’t like this look and feel the dough.
Is it too wet poor some more flour in it, if it’s too wet poor some water in it. The right structure of the bread is like bubblegum al little sticky on your hands but you can easy get it from your hands.

Now put the dough in the bowl and wait 30 minutes, and cover it with a wet towel
After the 30 minutes you can knead the dough again just with your hands (you can going wild on the dough hit it, give a rough massage…and roll)
Put aside another 60 minutes…if you don’t have much time you can also take a shorter time.

Now it’s time to put the oven on 200 degrees Celsius, put the bread in (I made a shape of a big fat pancake) and put your timer at 20 minutes. After 20 minutes feel if the bread is a little hardened and make a hollow sound. If this isn’t the case put it 5-10 minutes more in the oven….
So time to have breakfast I think maybe with some home made spread?

the smell of fresh baked bread ………

Posted on 13 August, 2011 by saskia

Really the smell of fresh baked bread, makes people laugh, makes you forget all the problems, makes you hungry………..I am drooling at the moment I smell my own baked bread, it’s a bread at italian style….Can’t wait till it’s ready to eat. Just wait 10 more minutes before ready…
In the meanwhile, I am listening to and dancing on some nice music, that’s what I really like about facebook, I just post “I need some happy music” and then people recommend this music (katchafire, fat freddy’s domino, katzenjammer), thanks el Ron and Chrystal..So my discovering to some new music has started….
but still 8 minutes to wait ; ) to discover the taste of the bread…….”sigh”

The Italian bread what makes you drool

the ingredients

200 grams of speltflour
100 grams of wheatflower
100 grams of all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano
5 sundried tomatoes (in oil) cut in tiny pieces
A pinch of salt
7-10 grams of dried yeast
1,5 cup of water
2 cloves of garlic (cut in little pieces)

the tools

a food processor with dough hook of your own hands
a wooden spoon
an oven at ca.180 degrees celsius (because my oven is gas and I don’t have temperature on it : ) )
a spring approx 24 inch (you can also use something else but I like the round bread)
a bowl

What to do to make you hungry

Just put all the dry ingredients together and mix, then poor all the wet ingredients (except the water) together. So now the easy job to put everything together in the food processor and mix well with the dough hook and slowly poor the water in the mixture, you will see there is going to be a dough step by step..when you have a mixture like a ball and it’s not too sticky then it’s perfect!!
If it’s too sticky just put a little more all-purpose flour in it, when it’s too dry just some water!

Now put the ball in a bowl and let stand for 30 minutes, you will see the dough is getting bigger : ), o yes for i forget cover it with a towel..
Ready to knead the ball again? Give the bread a little massage and afterwards you put it again in the bowl and cover it again and let stand for 30 minutes again…..

Now get the spring and put the dough in the spring and put some rosemary on the top for garnish. Now put your dough in the oven at ca.180 degrees celcius ( I never preheat the oven, because I know my oven the best and I bake on gas) and put the timer on 20 minutes, It must be 30 minutes in the oven but I always check if the bread is not burning or if there is something wrong you never know.

So the bread is ready when the sound of the bread is hollow (when you knock on the top of the bread).

godere/ enjoy

Funky Bytes

Written with love and appetite

Tag Archives: bread