Bauernbrot mit Sauerteig (Farmer's Bread with Sourdough)

I have blogged about making bread from Italy, from France, from the Netherlands but I never posted about baking a bread where our neighbours should be proud of: a typical German farmer's bread, made with sourdough and almost no yeast. To make this wonderful tasting bread takes some time, but it doesn't need much work: most of the time the dough is developing in the refrigerator. I used my own rye-based sourdough, which I keep alive now for more than two years. You can find information about starting a rye-based sourdough culture in one of my previous posts. Two days before baking I've made a poolish in the evening:

Poolish:
- 100 g flour
- 15 g rye flour
- 115 g water
- a teaspoon sourdough

Mix the ingredients in a mixing bowl until a slurry mass forms. Cover the bowl (I use a transparent plastic pedal bin liner for this) and let it develop at room temperature during the night. The next morning the poolish is ready for preparing the final dough.

Dough:
- 300 g flour
- 40 g rye flour
- 150 g water
- 8 g salt
- 1 g dry yeast
- a teaspoon honey

Mix the flour with the salt and the dry yeast and add it to the poolish. Dissolve the honey in the water and add it to the dough. Mix it with a rubber spatula and take it out for kneading. This dough needs a lot of kneading! At least 15 or 20 minutes. In my post about making Sourdough Bread with Spelt you can find a detailed explanation of my favourite way of kneading.
When the dough is smooth and not sticking anymore to the working surface, transfer it to the mixing bowl, cover it with plastic and put the bowl in the fridge for 24 hours.
The next morning the dough must have almost doubled in volume. Take it out of the fridge and let it come to temperature in the kitchen for about two hours or longer (until it has doubled in size). Take the dough out, knead and fold it a few times and form a nice batard (or another shape, depending on the form of your banneton). Let the dough proof until doubled in size. This may take a few hours (I put the dough on a rack on the warming plate of my Aga and it takes 3 to 4 hours before it is ready for baking). Score the bread with a razor blade.
Create steam in your oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes on the floor of the roasting oven (240°C). I posted several times how to bake a bread in an Aga: I use a tile of Chinese hard stone for it on the oven floor. When the bread is brown enough to your wishes, place it on a rack high in the baking oven (180°C) for another 20 to 25 minutes.
Guten Appetit!

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.

Focaccia

Focaccia is a flat Italian bread which is usually seasoned with olive oil and some herbs, sometimes topped with onion, cheese and meat. The dough is similar in style and texture to pizza dough. The recipe of the focaccia I made I got from Ana y Blanca, who is mastering a fantastic Spanish foodblog: Juego de Sabores (Game of Flavors). Use 'the Blogs & Sites I like' for visiting her website. Ana uses a starter before making the final dough, which she allows only 15 minutes to develop. That's new to me, but I followed her in doing so. The result was great. Find my AGA way of making her focaccia below.

A few hours before making the focaccia prepare the olive oil: mix 30 to 50 ml of olive oil with a few crushed cloves of garlic and the leaves of one or two branches of rosemary.

Starter:
- 100 g flour
- 80 g water
- 2 g dry yeast
- a teaspoon sugar

In a medium bowl, whisk together the hand warm water, the yeast and the sugar. Add the flour and mix it until a smooth dough forms. Cover the bowl with plastic and place it on a rack on the warming plate of the Aga for about 15 minutes.

Dough:
- 400 g flour
- 200 g water
- 3 g dry yeast
- 10 g salt
- most of the olive oil (garlic and rosemary taken out for later use)

Add the hand warm water and the yeast to the starter and mix it well. Also add the olive oil. Then add the flour and the salt and stir until the flour has absorbed the fluid, using a rubber spatula. Now transfer the dough to the working surface. Don't dust it with flour and start kneading the dough the Bertinet way. This way of kneading is actually a constant stretching and folding the dough, using your fingertips. Check my post about Sourdough Bread with Spelt for a more detailed explanation. After 10 to 15 minutes of kneading the dough is ready for its first proofing. Put it back in the bowl and cover it with plastic (I always use a transparent plastic pedal bin liner for this). Let the dough proof on a rack on the warming plate for about an hour. It has to double in size.

Take out the dough, knead it and fold it a few times, flatten it and form a flat focaccia on the lightly floured working surface, using your hands. Transfer the focaccia to a sheet of baking paper and put this in a large baking tin. Grease the surface with the remaining olive oil and spread the crushed garlic and the rosemary leaves over it. Make holes in the surface by pressing the dough almost to the bottom using a fingertip. Cover the tin with plastic and let the dough proof until doubled in thickness on a rack on the warming plate of the Aga (it takes about an hour).

Prepare the roasting oven by putting a small baking tray containing some hot water on a rack high in the oven. Because baking bread means creating steam. Now transfer the tin with the proofed dough to the floor of the roasting oven and let in bake for about 15 minutes. When the surface starts getting brownish, transfer the focaccia to the baking oven for another 15 minutes. Let it cool down on a rack and eat it with butter and evt. some salt. This bread accompanies the slow cooked shoulder of lamb (my previous post) in a great way!

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.

Slow cooking: Shoulder of Lamb from the Aga

An Aga cooker is the best oven for slow cooking: preparing meat at a low temperature. As the temperature in the cooking oven is 80 to 100º Celsius, it is perfect for cooking a large piece of meat very slowly. Last week I obtained a lovely piece of lamb meat, a shoulder weighing well over a kilogram. Prepared the slow cooking way it tasted delicious!

Ingredients:
- a shoulder of lamb
- olive oil
- a few tomatoes
- a few branches of rosemary
- 5 to 10 cloves of garlic
- 5 to 10 shallots
- 2 glasses of red wine
- pepper and salt

Method:
I used a baking tin for preparing this dish. Heat the tin on the simmering plate and splash generously olive oil in it. Pepper and salt the meat and let it simmer in the tin for about half an hour. Turn the meat over a few times. In the meanwhile clean and cut the shallots and the garlic in large pieces. Add them and transfer the meat to the baking oven for at least half an hour for browning, Take it out a few times for turning the meat over. When the meat has turned brown enough, take it out and place it on the simmering plate again. Add the cleaned and cut tomatoes, the rosemary and the red wine.

When it comes to the boil, cover the tin with aluminium foil and place it low in the cooking oven, where the temperature is lowest. Let it 'slow cook' for a couple of hours, taking it out for turning the meat a few times. Serve with bread (pain rustique for instance) or baked potatoes.

 Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.

Timpano (Italian pasta dome)

Some time ago I watched television (which I seldom do) and a Dutch culinary chef introduced a typical Italian dish: the Timpano. The chef referred to the movie 'Big Night', in which there is a dramatic final dinner scene where a Timpano is served: a kind of drum made of pasta dough filled with layers of pasta, meat, sauce and eggs. Intrigued by the beauty of the result they showed on television, I started to scan the world wide web for recipes and made my own Timpano. This is how I did it....

Ingredients:
-  tomato sauce (recipe below)
- 15 small Italian meatballs (recipe below)
-  béchamel sauce (recipe below)
-  pasta dough (recipe below)
-  about 900 g baked sausages (I used a combination of pork and beef sausages)
-  about 800 g pasta, preferably penne rigate
-  6 boiled eggs (or 15 very small ones, which I get from my bantam chickens
- 300 g grated cheese (Parmesan and old Gouda cheese)
- nutmeg

Tomato sauce:
Make this great sauce the day before preparing the Timpano; it's getting (even) better the next day....
- 1 onion
- 15 whole cloves
- 4 tins peeled tomatoes (in my country a tin contains 400 g tomatoes and there juice)
- 170 g tomato paste
- 4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
- a glass of red wine
- a teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
- a teaspoon dried basil
- a tablespoon sugar
- olive oil
- pepper and salt

Cut the onion in 2 halves and  pierce the cloves into it. Let the onion simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes in a good splash of olive oil in a sauce pan on the baking plate. When browned and all the flavors are infused into the oil, remove them and put the garlic in the pan and sauté them for some minutes, until golden brown. Add the tomatoes, the paste, the herbs, the sugar, the red wine and pepper and salt. Bring it to a boil and transfer the pan to the simmering oven for about  an hour and a half. Take it out a few times for stirring. When ready, let it cool down for using the next day.

Italian meatballs:

Make the meatballs also a day before and keep them overnight in the tomato sauce.

- 900 g mixed ground meat (beef and pork)

- a large teacup breadcrumbs

- a lot of chopped fresh parsley

- a teaspoon dried Italian seasoning

- 80 g of the grated cheese

- 2 teaspoons salt

- half a teaspoon pepper

- a quarter teaspoon ground nutmeg

-  a large egg, beaten

- almost a teacup of warm water

Mix all the ingredients with your hands and form about 15 small meatballs. Put the meatballs in a baking tin (on a sheet of baking paper) and let them bake for about half an hour in the baking oven (turn them over after 20 minutes). Keep them overnight in the tomato sauce.

Béchamel sauce:
- 70 g butter
- 70 g flour
- 700 ml milk
- 2 teaspoons salt
- a half teaspoon nutmeg

In a medium saucepan, heat the butter on the simmering plate until it is melted. Add the flour and stir until smooth. Cook until light golden brown, 6 to 7 minutes.
Meanwhile, heat the milk in a separate pan until just about to boil. Add the milk to the butter mixture 1 cup at a time, whisking continuously until very smooth. Bring to a boil and cook for 30 seconds. Remove from heat and season with salt and nutmeg.

Pasta dough: 
- 325 g flour
- 170 g cold butter + 30 g butter
- 4 egg yolks
- a half teaspoon salt
- 125 g toasted breadcrumbs
- 30 ml olive oil
- 1 teaspoon ice water

Prepare the dough by putting the flour on the working surface and make a well in the top. Cut the cold butter into small cubes and place them in the center of the well with the egg yolks, the salt and the ice water. Mix well with the tips of your fingers to form a lumpy mass. Bring together as a dough and knead it for about 5 minutes. Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest a few minutes.

Now the great moment is there... building the timpano!
Roll out the pasta dough to a large circle, about 5 mm thick. Butter a large metal bowl (20 to 30 cm wide, I used a large pan) and dust it thickly with the toasted breadcrumbs. Line the bowl completely with the pasta dough, with an overhang which is large enough to cover everything when the timpano is filled with all the ingredients. Now cook your penne in enough water, 3 minutes less than the package instructions state. Drain the penne and refresh under cold running water until cold. Toss with some olive oil and mix 1/3 of it it with a large amount of the of the tomato sauce and half the grated cheese. Set aside.
Mix the rest of the penne with the béchamel sauce (you won't need all the sauce), the rest of the grated cheese and some nutmeg. Put it into the bowl, and press lightly.

Place 1/3 of the tomato sauce penne into the bowl and press lightly. Sprinkle with some of the grated cheese and arrange the meatballs on top in an even layer, and press down again. Sprinkle with more grated cheese. 

Now spread half of the remaining tomato sauce pasta over the meatballs and press down gently. Add a layer of the cooked sausages and the cooked eggs.

Repeat with a final layer of penne with tomato sauce.

Fold the extra pasta over the whole thing, and press gently to seal.

Let it bake in the baking oven for about 2 hours, halfway the beakingtime cover the top loosely with aluminium foil.

Remove from the oven, remove the foil, and invert onto a large serving platter, without removing the bowl. Allow to rest 10 minutes, then carefully loosen the pasta around the sides with a knife and knock with your knuckles to release the bowl.

Serve immediately, cutting the timpano into wedges to serve. Timpano is a great dish for a crowd with a side salad.

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.