When I put myself on autopilot because I just need bread for our family I go for a recipe that I know it works. This doesn't mean that it has to be boring. Adding seeds at the lamination step may change the game. Depending on the type of seeds you add, the flavour is enriched with a nutty-specific taste from the seeds.

My next 3 posts will be about the same recipe but each time I change the seeds. This first one is with chia seeds. Chia seeds are super thirsty, you do not want to add them as such in your bread. You'll need then to keep them in water to become moist. Do this the evening before or at least when your mixer combines the flour with water, in the morning.

Adding seeds to bread not only enriches the taste but also adds nutritional value to the loaves. As you might already know, chia seeds are a very healthy ingredient, so I can only see advantages in adding them to the dough.

What do you think? Does it worth a try?

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Making artisan sourdough bread is not simple and I recognise it. It took me years to experiment, learn,  note, understand and progress. The pandemic time made sourdough a star... it became so popular that everybody wanted to do it. Many made their own starter, others borrowed starter. Many launched themself into baking, some got the sourdough "virus" and continued to bake, and others slowly slowly dropped making it due to less time or they were not very satisfied with the results and finally, their starter died somewhere in the fridge.

But there is a huge mass of people hearing about sourdough who never tried or, tried once, failed and easily gave up. Do you recognise yourself in one of the categories above?

I find myself in the category of people starting to bake bread with sourdough years before the pandemic, intensifying and learning much more during those 2 years and continuing to experiment nowadays. Learning about sourdough is a subject that I'll probably do my whole life as you never feel you know enough.

But for those newbies and for those busy persons who never have time to make 15 steps to put a loaf on the table I made a recipe that simplifies the entire process:

In the video, I compare bread made in a simple way with one made in a complex way. When time and experience are not at stake, I know the winner recipe. But if you do not have time, to buy bread with 22 ingredients inside that were industrially risen in an hour, compared to putting 15-20 minutes of effort to make this bread, I would personally advise trying the second option. It is much healthy and at least you know what you are eating.

Needless to say that this is not my favourite bread recipe but becomes my favourite one when I am absorbed by other activities.

What about you? What do you think? Would you like to try it?

This holiday season was the perfect occasion to make them again. I was excited for my daughter to taste them for the first time. At least this is what I thought. When she saw them she said... mommy, you made the Mimosa Eggs! I had no clue that they were called like that as I always knew them as staffed eggs. But we learn every day something new, as well as I learned that my daughter also prepared them when being in a scouts camp.

That creamy yolk-mustard-mayonnaise combination is dropped from heaven. Some like to add herbs to this cream but I like them better without. It is such a simple and delicious aperitive for the New Year's celebration!

Happy New Year!

I was so not in the mood of baking a cake yesterday but my daughter asked for one and I simply couldn't refuse her. Being tired, I didn't want to go for a super fancy recipe so I picked a combination of my previous cakes that I was sure would work and be quick. Festive cakes usually take a lot of time to prepare and decorate, I love to launch myself into discovering them but when my mood is not there I pick something simple.

This cake although looks fancy is not difficult to make. It is a classic sponge cake (takes max 30 mins of preparation) with white chocolate ganache (takes 10mins to melt and 5mins to whisk) and covered in whipped cream (30 min to assemble and decorate).

I made the sponge cake and the ganache in the morning and late evening I assembled the New Year's cake with my daughter's assistance.

Here it is... 

I almost forgot about this dish since last year when a good friend of mine (who is a fantastic chef) offered me a bowl of this traditional dish and it was so good that it imprinted well in my mind and triggered a desire to try to make it myself. Throughout the year I brainstormed about where I should buy the right ingredients for it. Recently, when visiting a Romanian shop, I saw what I needed: pork ears. You can imagine that I bought and bring them home with great motivation to launch myself in making this dish.

Pork ears and pork legs are perfect but I only had pork ears for my test. It worked very well with only pork ears too. There is a reason why this dish can be made from ears, legs or skin of pork: the natural gelatin. This is the key to create the jelly aspect that transforms it from a normal soup. The turkey is added only for having a meat addition inside the jelly. It exists a version exclusively made from turkey or chicken but you need to add extra gelatin as these birds do not have enough to solidify the soup.

There is a lot of garlic in this recipe (2 heads) as it is one of its main tastes. You can play with how strong you want the garlic taste to be by leaving the garlic in or straining it out. It is a personal choice. I chose to strain it but I feel that keeping the garlic inside could have been a better choice.

This dish is served cold, that's why the original name "racituri" means "cold things".

The Instant Pot helps a great deal with this recipe because it cooks the meat in 45 minutes so well that it detaches itself from the bones. Without an Instant Pot, the second boil takes 2-3 hours on low heat.

This is a version of dough where the rising agent is the baking powder. There is nothing wrong with baking powder, I do many cakes based on baking powder. The only thing that I do not like is that after baking, most of these cakes/sweets shrink a bit. It is the case for these doughnuts too.

Making doughnuts with this recipe has a big advantage: it is very quick! The baking takes time but the way I manage is to set an alarm every 3 minutes and 45 seconds and I take out the doughnuts and scoop another batch. During the baking, I do plenty of other things, like cleaning the kitchen or putting dishes on the cupboard so I do not waste too much time.

I like this version better than the ones I baked and published on my blog so far. (see Baked doughnuts and Baked doughnuts (version 2) )

There is however a version that I never tried before and tempts me so much.... wait for my next post.

I've also had a quest in perfecting recipes based on baking powder but I found a few disadvantages that almost made me give up. 

The first is the fact that all rely on the chemical reaction in the oven. There is no way to guess its behaviour in the oven only by looking at the dough before. Will it rise enough? Will it crack? Will it be soft inside? With sourdough, the dough is already well-risen when the dough is put into the oven and this gives a good prediction about what you'll gonna get.

The second thing that I do not like is that the baking powder-based cakes deflate slightly when taken out from the oven. This never happens visibly when the dough is based on sourdough.

There are disadvantages to baking with sourdough too: it takes time and you may get it sour!  Unlike bread dough, where you need to perform a series of steps, this dough is mixed, let to rest for 30 minutes, and then left alone to rise overnight in a warm place. The used starter is not a liquid one but a stiff one. Although you can quickly transform a liquid starter into a stiff starter in only one step this is not enough. There is a reason why pasta made is used for sweet dough: it reduces acidity. Pasta made has its own preparation steps in order to get it right for the dough and this actually takes one day: start with a sourdough bath, to reduce the acids, then feed it 3 times at shorter intervals (kept at warm temperature) to get it very active.

This was my first trial to get it properly done (in line with the indications) and I did my best to align. The ph of the starter I did not get it right during the feeds, I'll need to tinker with some methods/temperatures to get it perfect next time.

Analysing the cake, here are my thoughts: the rise was good but I believe there is a place for better; the taste was interesting and nice but I detected a bit of sourness that shouldn't be there. The cause is still related to the power of the starter to rise the dough and temperature.

If you want to know the original recipe, I invite you to check the book "Coffret Traité de boulangerie au levain" by Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. I have the French version but I understood there is an English version too. Please note that this book is not for beginners... it's about the science of baking and there are a few recipes presented too. But if you are a sourdough geek, I can only recommend this book(s). No hidden publicity here, just my honest opinion as a homemaker with a passion.

I will test more recipes with sweet sourdough in the future although clearly not as often as I'll do for bread. For this recipe, I'd make a few more adjustments to make it perfect but I have to tell you that my kids loved it as such. Here is the recipe: