Carneros Spelt Loaves

Carneros Spelt Loaves 

As I'm writing this I'm eating a slice of the bread with sharp shedder cheese and a cup of coffee (since it's early in the day. It would be wonderful with a glass of red wine too.) The crust is a little crispy and the inside soft and chewy. The spelt flour gives the bread it's character. My picky husband also liked it, which is a good sign! I baked it with my dinner plans in mind. I'm going to make a salmon dish for dinner; with orange/lemon aioli, the bread is going to be a side dish, along with a green salad. I had to try the bread myself before serving guests of course…I've never baked this bread before, I made up the recipe as I mixed the dough. It is worth trying. I'm making it again, soon. It takes a total of 2hours and 15min to make it. It's a long time, but out of that time the dough is resting 2*40mins and the baking in the oven is 25min. The recipe is easy and not complicated at all. I exercised a horse during the first resting period and fed the baby/edited pictures during the second resting period. It's a low maintenance bread and you can do other stuff while the bread takes care of itself. 

The recipe is for 2 loaves of bread.

2 cups organic spelt flour

2,5 cups organic all purpose flour

3/4 oz active dry yeast

2tsp salt

Combine with a fork in a big bowl.

Add 1,5 cup cold water and 2 cups boiling water (then the mixture will have the right temperature.) Beat the dough in a machine for 3min or 5min by hand. Add 0,5 cup all purpose flour during the process, and mix until you have a smooth dough. Knead the dough by hand (take some flour on your hands,) on a table for a couple minutes. 

Cover the dough and let it rise for 40min (it almost double it's size in room temperature.)

..after 40min

Place the dough on a floured surface, cut into two pieces. Form the pieces into loaves. (Pat the dough to 12*6 rectangle and roll up tightly.)

Place your loaves on parchment paper and cover again. Let the dough rest there for another 40min.

(For extra stylish bread, use a sharp knife and make some diagonal slashes across the bread before baking.) If you want a crispy outside brush some water on the loaves before baking. I didn't do it, but they turned out pretty crispy anyway. 

Bake the bread in the lower part of your oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 25-30min. 

Let the bread cool down covered, on the baking pan.

Enjoy!

Grandma' Agnes Fudge Cookies

I've admired my Grandma' Agnes as long as I can remember. She was a cool Lady, something extraordinary and I'm not saying that just because she was my Grandma. She traveled around the world until she was 80 years old, because she loved it. Of course she wasn't 80 years old if you asked her…she was 19 years old all her life. I have so many great memories having fun with her. One time I had to bribe a guy that rented out surf boards so that he wouldn't rent her any, she was 78 at the time. She didn't have any limits what so ever. Another time she slapped me in the face for not introducing her as my girl friend, when we met some new people on a cruising ship. We traveled all over Southern Europe, Hawaii, Alaska and many other states together. She was the one giving me my first camera when I was 5 years old. Agnes was, believe it or not, an incredible baker. 

Today I'm sharing her Fudge Cookies. That's one of my favorite recipe's, for many reasons. They taste absolutely wonderful, but they are so sweet that your tongue kind of curls and you only want one cookie. I like that too. I rather have one awesome cookie than ten cookies that are so and so. Grandma' Agnes Fudge Cookies are also very easy to make AND it only takes 20 mins (altogether, mixing and baking in the oven.) The perfect quick fix that you can't go wrong with. My son learned to bake them by himself at age four. So far I haven't met anyone that doesn't like them. They are easy to make, like with all cookies it's very important to not over bake them. I think that's the only thing that possibly could go wrong. They are suppose to be baked for EXACTLY 12 mins.

Grandma' Agnes Fudge Cookies

4oz Butter

1/2 Cup Sugar

2tbs Maple Syrup

Cut the cold butter into pieces

Cut the butter in pieces and mix the ingredients. I mix them by hand with a fork. 

Mix 1,5 Cup All Purpose Flour and 1/2 tbs Baking Powder separately.

Mix all the ingredients together. I usually put them all on a table and mix them with my hands. That's how Grandma' did. If you want to you can add some vanilla extract. It gives them a nice touch, but it's not necessarily. Mix the dough with your hands until it's smooth and there's no big chunks of butter left.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces.

Two equal pieces of dough, rolled into strings
 and placed on parchment paper. 

Roll them to long strings and place them on parchment paper. Use your hands and put a little pressure on the strings. 

Bake them in the lower part of your oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 minutes.

When they are done they are still soft, but only for less than a minute. Cut them into desired pieces at once. Leave them on the baking sheet to cool down, for at least 10 minutes.

I prefer to have one cookie to my coffee, the Swedish way. What do you like to drink to your cookies? 

Muesli Rolls

Muesli Rolls

Today my plan was to share a recipe of sweet fudge cookies, that my grandmother in Sweden taught me to bake when I was a little girl. I started to take out all the ingredients and when there was only flour left…there was no white flour in my cabinets! The look on my face must have been a funny one, my 5months old daughter started to laugh out loud.

Well, well..since I had many other kinds of flour I decided to bake something else instead. Funny how that works out, when I for once decide to do something a little less healthy the Universe steps in and say it's clear NO.

I opened all my cabinets to see what I  have in there and what ingredients that possibly would be a good match. My "whitest" flour was a spelt flour, that's a given choice. I love spelt bread. I didn't feel like baking my regular spelt bread though. My eyes lands on my jar of muesli that I have on my greek yoghurt in the mornings. I finally decide to make a bread with whole wheat flour, spelt flour and muesli. I often add muesli in my recipes. I never have the same muesli (I always mix the favorite grains/dried fruit I have for the moment), which gives the bread some variety. 

This is the bread I made tonight.

Muesli Rolls

Mix with a fork in a big bowl:

1,5 cup Whole Wheat Flour

1 cup Muesli (your choice)

1 cup Spelt Flour

1,5 oz dry yeast

a pinch of salt

Heat up 2 cups of milk. Heat until just before the first bubble. Add 1/3 cup maple syrup and 2/3 cup olive oil. Pour over the dry ingredients that you mixed. Stir with a wooden spoon, slowly until mixed. Add 1,5 cup spelt flour and knead by hand for 3mins. I prefer to not use a machine when I bake with Spelt Flour. Spelt Flour have a fragile kind of gluten, if you knead it too hard, too long, the elasticity in the dough will be effected. If you knead it too little your bread will be hard/heavy. This dough is extremely smooth and a pleasure to work with.

Let you dough rest under cover for 30min.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Turn the pieces into big rolls and place them on parchment paper. Let them rest there under cover for another 30min.

Bake your Muesli Rolls 12min in the middle of the oven at 430 degrees Fahrenheit.

Feel free to freeze the rolls your not planning on eating today. They are good in the freezer for 3months.

Enjoy!

Quinoa and Cranberry Bread, part 2

When I woke up at 6am this morning I took my dough out of the fridge
 and poured it into a square shaped baking form.

I ended up baking it for 40 min at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

After baking the bread I let it cool down for one hour before cutting it into  sandwich size pieces.
This is what the bread looks like on the inside. The bread is very juicy and soft,
with a little crisp from the olive oil on the outside.

This is my brunch sandwich: Quinoa and Cranberry Bread with turkey, mozzarella and lots of avocado.

Quinoa and Cranberry Bread, Part 1

Tonight I made some exciting experimenting in my kitchen! I decided to put together a recipe for a Quinoa bread with Cranberries. I figured that have to be a great success! The nutty, full flavor of Quinoa combined with Cranberries would make for a soft, savory, healthy, yummy bread right?

I don't know if I'm right yet, because I decided to make a dough, put it in the fridge over night and bake it in the morning. I am however bold enough to gee you the recipe now. Try it now if you're brave, or wait until tomorrow when you'll get the results documented and tried out. How brave are you?

This is how I did it~

I mixed these ingredients with a fork in a big bowl:

 2 cups All Purpose Flour

2,5 cups Quinoa Flour

1,5 OZ Dry Yeast

A pinch of Salt

After mixing the ingredients above thouroghly, I added:

3 cups milk, about 100 degrees Fahrenheit

1 cup Olive Oil

14 OZ Cranberry Sauce (1 can)

I mixed all the ingredients by hand for 5min. It's OK to use a machine too.

After mixing them I sealed the bowl with plastic film and put it in the fridge over night. I'm very excited to see what it looks like tomorrow!

My plan is to simply put it in a square shaped baking form and bake it in the oven for about 30 min at 350 degrees. voila! Breakfast is served! I'll get back to you tomorrow with the results. 

This is what my dough looks like in the fridge right now.

Good Night!