Orange bread

Guests are coming, so I was wondering what to try. I found some nice dried orange peel, and recalled a nice bread I once made with fresh orange and lime peel.

 So, found the recipe, and substituted the fresh with dried orange peel (organic). Especially with citrus I don't want to use the rind from not organic limes, I decided to substitute the lime with lemon verbena syrup.
This late summer I made a larger batch of lemon verbena syrup, had a lot of leaves to start with and also a nice recipe for a shake with blueberries, the syrup and sparkling water. SO good.

The first bread I made... did not fly, so to say. Bricks don't do that. I think the yeast might not be fresh enough, or the salt and citrus peel hinder the yeast, or I had just too little liquid in it.
So... second try a bit more water... and it came out quite delicious. Best, with a bit of fresh butter, though almond butter and cream cheese are pretty good with it, too. Nice, dark and soft crust, delicate, very slightly moist crumb. Won't last long....

Onion-Bacon-Wheat Bread

Just a quick one:

Wheat (full), some cut up center-cut bacon, one small chopped onion, water, yeast.
Mix, stand, knead, let rise, bake. Prepared yesterday, baked this morning. Very decent outcome :-) , not too salty, moist but no yeasty flavor.

Sourdough

Sourdough tastes great - and not sour at all. But the bread has a great flavor, much more complex than other bread, and 1000 x better than store-bought.

We had the other half while it was still warm from the oven...

Some years ago I tried, not too great success then, but this is my 3rd bread in the last 2 months, and it came out pretty good. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, and good taste. My last one was a bit darker and had a very different taste, but I like the lighter kind.

Sweet Snails

Called 'Schnecken' in German, these are really good!
Came out a little dry and dark, have to watch this next time.

Cookies!

Started dinner with empanadas, with some filling out of pork, peas, onion, carot, some sauces. Tasted good, but filling was to hot and wet and some of the empanandas broke while making them. And I still don't have a brush for the eggwash, got to get one!

And then I made som 16 heidesand, some German cookies (guess who loves them?). Chino helped me make them pretty much. I could not restrain myself and had two and a half :-)

Nice to be out, nice to be home again

That were nice 2 weeks off, but I am glad to be home again. And it smelled of sweet Christmas tree when we came in.
Today I made a sweet bread, German recipe. Changed half of the flour to full grain wheat, and that actually tastes a lot better even. We ate half (!) of the bread right away, still warm, with some butter and a bit apricot jelly. Hmmm. Like it. First a slightly yeasty scent, then more and more we could smell the full wheat in it, this is so rich, a little nutty. I'll make it again soon, for sure!