This is a dish that my mother was doing a lot when I was a child. It is an autumn dish. The quince it is a symbol of the autumn.
As strange as it might look, although the quince is a fruit, this dish is not a dessert but rather a dish in itself that you can eat with bread or a side dish near some meat.
Every time I see quinces in a shop my mind go straight to this dish. As it is December, I was very lucky to still find them. In Belgium, these fruits are not very common and I needed to chase them in Turkish shops. And I am wondering why ... in Romania, my grand mother had a quince tree in the middle of her yard. When the autumn was coming, the parfum of the quince was all over the place.
I also remember my grandma's dog who was eating the quinces when they were falling down from the tree.
As a child, I hated to wash the fuzzy quinces. We were eating them after cutting them in slices as they were too hard to bite. My relatives were making this dish or jam from them. I did not appreciated them so much back then, but now I miss them so much ...

There are 2 ingredients in this bread that I have not tried before: barley malt and gluten powder. A dear friend of mine, not only recommended me these but also brought them to me as a present. I didn't have the chance to try them so far, so I have felt that this was the appropriate moment.

The first ingredient, the barley malt, you can find it in 2 shapes: as syrup or as powder. In this bread I have used the powder. This is a well known ingredient for bakers as it gives an improved fermentation. For commercial bakers is a secret as it also decrease the proofing time while increasing the volume. Even more, after baking the bread, it increases the life of the bread. No wander that is seen as a secret for bakers. The barley malt also darkens the color of the crumb and makes it more soften. It also gives a "malty" taste. But on top of this, this is a 100% natural ingredient.
I remember when I have opened the bag of barley malt powder it smelled strongly as coffee.  I checked again the package to be sure I was not mixing something else, but it was the right one. I was wondering at that moment if this would have not give a coffee aroma to my bread as well, which would have been a total failure as I am not a coffee fan. But it didn't. The final taste and aroma had nothing to do with coffee.

The second ingredient, was the gluten powder. Well, if you are gluten intolerant, forget about it. But I am not, and none of my family members is. This one is exactly what the name indicates: just gluten powder. If your wheat is weak in gluten, add a teaspoon to your bread and it will make miracles. Also, if you are making a bread with special flours that are not so reach in gluten / proteins, use it. Mine was whole wheat flour predominant so I have decided to try it. Again a natural ingredient, so no worry.

The result you can see it with your eyes: a nicely raised bread with lovely ears.

I start becoming exotic with my baking and try some non-European spices in my breads. Last time was cardamom. This time is curry powder. They are both excellent breads but let me express my preference for this one. The curry powder gives more color and taste. In combination with sunflower seeds the entire bread becomes a wow!

This is one of the most simple and known recipe of autumn salads. I remember my mother doing it very often when I was a child and it was always a pleasure to find it ready in the fridge. This salad is a mix of vegetables and fruits. The apples gives a sweet and sour taste to the salad. The carrots are also giving sweetness and celery comes with aroma. The mayonnaise I keep it to the minimum to avoid that fruits and vegetable change their color.
I made a big salad, so if you want smaller quantities, just divide.
The recipe is also very permissive, meaning that you can adapt it as you want, on your own taste. You can put more apples, or carrots or celery. If you like more mayonnaise put more. I don't.

There has been a while since my last homemade yogurt. As I was quite tired, I wanted to make the simplest recipe of home made yogurt, near the natural one that I do every time. Adding some jam to an almost normal yogurt was my best option. But not any kind of jam ... a raspberry jam made by my mother with love with fruits harvested from her own garden.

Do you have sourdough to discard? Well do not get rid of it, it can be reused. You can keep this one in a big jar in the fridge and at least once a month do something with it. You can do pancakes, or waffles or pizza or even bread. This is what happened to me, I wanted to reuse the sourdough but not to make anything else special than simple bread. To this particular bread, the sourdough is not the main raising agent but the yeast. The sourdough comes with its specific taste and enriches the bread. The 20g of yeast will definitely work much fasten than the sourdough.
This is an exotic bread I would call it. It is durum but with cardamom flavor. Have you ever tried it? Is a specific spice that can give interesting taste even to your cofee. The 2 taspoons of cardamom will give a very light taste. If you want a stronger flavor double the quantity of cardamom.

The resulting dough was very easy to work with and in the oven gave me a lot of nice surprises. IT opened the bread so beautifully and created ears to all my 3 bread.

There has been 4 weeks since my last post and my last home made bread. I was missing my baking hobby. Really. But on the other side, I have traveled a lot, I have seen dear family and close fiends. I had also participated to a sad event, the funeral of my grandmother. A simple woman, full of energy during her life who passed over great challenges in her time. I miss you, grandma, rest in peace. Please let me dedicate this bread to you.

Coming back home, I searched my pantry for things that need to be consumed. I have found some millet flakes that were special for babies to make porridge. I simply couldn't throw away them even if my daughter doesn't like them anymore, so I used them in a bread. They are very light, so 50g fills more than a big soup bowl. If you do not have this ingredient (which is probably the case), it can be easily replaced by 50g of flour.

I need to recognize that after so much time not baking any bread I was a bit nervous to restart. I even went for tins to not fail. But everything went well and I've got 3 nice breads of which I am proud. Nice taste and nice texture. Somehow, baking bread is like riding bicycles... once learned you cannot fail. Bellow is the recipe...