bread

Whole Wheat Bread

For the longest time, I’ve been struggling to eat bread from the shop, since after a couple of days it gets too hard and with my braces, I just can’t chew it. So after attending Marte Marie Forsberg’s workshop in England, I got hooked on no-knead bread. No need to tell you that it was such an eye-opener that I started experimenting with other types of bread- don’t get me wrong, I’ve been baking bread occasionally before, but now I’m talking about baking every other day or so. But hey, when the result is this good and the effort is minimal, why the hell not?

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Recipe for two hearty breads

2 breads made i 2 liters’ forms or baked round on a parchment paper

500 g wheat flour
450 g whole wheat flour
200 g rye flour
1 ½ tea spoon salt
50 g linseeds
1 bag of yeast, dry or fresh
8 dl water, around 30 degrees C

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Mix the dry ingredients in a large baking bowl. If you use fresh yeast, you can crumble it in the mixture as well. Add the water and set the mixer on its lowest speed. Knead the bread for 15-18 minutes. (I’ve done it by hand, even though I have a Kitchen Aid, and it worked just fine. I must have kneaded it for 5 minutes all together, I’m an efficient mother f*. haha!)

Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rest for about an hour, until it doubles its size. If you have a silicon form like me, just sprinkle it with flower, if you have the classic metal one, butter them with oil or butter.

Use some flour on your baking table and knead the dough once, then divide it into two parts. Roll them into bread and place them into the forms, making sure you stretch them to fit as good as possible. Let them rest for 40 more minutes, covered in a towel, until the dough rises over the edge of the form.

Bake for 45-50 minutes at 180 degrees C, until the temperature inside is 98-99 degrees C. Take the bread out of the form and let them rest under a towel.

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Bon appetit!

 

The Future is Now

I’m in a good place in my life- I feel loved and I love him back, with a peace of mind only possible in adulthood, not at all reminiscing of the exhausting experiences in my early twenties, when I was losing sleep and energy over a phone that didn’t ring or a date that was 3 hours late. If you haven’t experienced that, you should consider yourself lucky, I for one have been through it all- reciprocated love, unrequited love, hate, addiction, Platonic love, you name it. But not anymore. Now I love the way I probably should have from the beginning had I only known how. One of my earliest memories of not being like everybody else was when I kept wondering how it was possible for the parents of one class mate to love him as long as he had spectacles. I mean, I was probably 7 and that was what was going through my head, how you had to be perfect in order to be loved. :-/ Anyways.

Although I don’t feel particularly professionally accomplished (I know you’ve heard that before!), I’m investing time and money in my hobbies, I’m traveling and I’m reading like never before, I feel the world at my feet, the only thing I have to do is grab it by the tail! And that I am, every day is sort of an adventure, a small adventure, that is, ’cause I still need my naps, but these days I’ve been driving outside town with a friend for props- a marble board and old wooden boards- popped by thrift stores for antiques and styled my own little “tableaux”, with more or less luck. And today I’ve baked bread, not that I hadn’t done that before, but the kind of old-fashioned round bread, the no knead one. And boy, was it lovely!

 

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A Sunday Well-Spent

Saturday it snowed all day, it was grey and gloomy and a perfect day for baking. I and Sam didn’t do that much, we made some cinnamon rolls and then snuggled up indoors. But I’d promised him a walk in the woods on Sunday and, to our luck, the weather proved amazing just for that! I’d thought about going around lake Songsvann, just the two of us, since F was working all weekend, but then I remembered Gordana lives by another lake- Nøklevann- and there’s both forest and a café and all that, so why not ask her if she wants to join?  When I called her she was baking bread, so I said we’d be there around the time the bread is ready to be taken out of the oven. 😉 _mg_0284 Continue reading →

Foccacia

I´ve been making focaccia for a while with the occasional tapas, but it was never the real deal until I checked out this recipe. For my Norwegian followers I recommend this blog: www.frumaela.no

1084151_10151526253081711_102203333_oFor my English-speaking readers here it goes:

1kg flour
1 small bag of dried yeast
2 spoons of honey
1-2 spoons of sugar
1-2 spoons of salt
7-9 dl finger-warm water

It´s important to sift the flour and the yeast twice, so the dough gets more fluffy.
Assuming that you´ve baked before, I go straight ahead. You make the dough, you put it on the washing machine and wash some clothes while you´re at it, close the door so the cat doesn´t get curious and then leave it for an hour to rise.

Meanwhile mix some olive oil with rosemary, oregano, thyme and basil. You can also chop some sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese or olives if you´d like the focaccia to be more consistent. Have a glass of Prosecco for the best result!;-)

Before putting it in the oven, make some pits with your fingers and pour in the olive oil and herbs. If you add some tomatoes, olives or cheese, be sure to stick them into the dough. Cut the foccacia then into square chunks. Use a sheet of baking paper under and let the dough rest a while. Bake at 220 degrees C for 15 minutes, then take it out and let it rest for 15 min again. Voilà!

Organic weekend

After depriving my body of nutrients as well as good flavours, I felt it was about time I should do something about that. So I managed to use the first window of opportunity to check out the organic marked in Stortorvet. I started doing that last year, enticed by the colours, smells and the jovial chatter the ´farmers´met one with. 2 kg apples, 1 bag of golden chanterelles and 3 corn cobs later, I was heading home with the promises of a real feast.

Chanterelles/halvtomtglass.blogspot.no

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