Twisted Raisin and Hazelnut Breadsticks

I had a reason for a small happy dance yesterday ;)

About five years ago was the last time I was on holiday in the Netherlands.

One thing I remember very distinctly apart from the beach, the wind and having a great time kite flying are Twisters. Twisters? Yes, Twisters.
You haven't heard of them? I have to change that!!! The probably most common supermarket in the Netherlands, AlbertHeijn, sells twisted bread with raisins and nuts in them and I absolutely loved them. You can see them here, but we always bought baked ones to eat right away and not frozen ones like on that website. Sadly, I couldn't find a recipe anywhere for how to make them :(

Two years ago I gave it a try, but wasn't completely happy with it and the procedure was a bit too complicated be justified by the outcome.

After my recent sourdough experiments I decided to give it another try. Also, with me starting my job soon (yay!), I remember that it has proven to sometimes be more practical to be able to just grab a twisted bread stick from the freezer in the morning than to cut the bread loaf and butter the slices and wrap them up.

And surprise, surprise, even though I made the recipe up completely by myself without any references...

... using this chaotic note, but I'm quite sure that doesn't help anyone ...

... they turned out really well! I am so happy about that!

I've had one test eater confirm that and my Mum baked the Twisters herself today and she agrees. As As apparently you say round here .... Happy Days ;)

Twisted Raisin and Hazelnut Breadsticks

Recipe by Ines Feucht

Prep time: 18 hours
Cook time: 3 hours
Total time: 21 hours
Yield: 6 bread sticks

Ingredients

• 125 g wheat sourdough
• 125 g rye flour
• 125 g water

• 300 g wheat flour
• water
• 1 tsp dried yeast (or 8 g fresh)
• ½ tsp honey
• 1 tbsp honey
• 8 g salt
• ½ cup raisins
• ½ cup hazelnuts, chopped roughly
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 1 tsp cookie and cake spice (nutmeg, clove and cinnamon - you can mix this yourself*)
• flour for dusting

Instructions

1. The afternoon/evening before (or 12 hours before you plan to bake) mix sourdough, rye flour and water in a bowl. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 12 hours.
2. Dissolve yeast and the ½ tsp honey in some warm water (max. 100 ml).
3. Add wheat flour to your sourdough mixture. Also sprinkle salt on so that it is evenly distributed. Add yeast-water-mixture, honey, raisins, nuts, cocoa powder and cake & cookie spice. Start kneading. Gradually, if needed, add more water. Knead until you have a soft pliable dough that is not overly sticky.
4. Put back into the bowl and let rise in a warm (!) place (preferably on a radiator or a warm cherry stone pillow) for about two hours or until doubled in size.
5. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking paper / foil or dust heavily with flour. Then knead the dough again and divide into 150 g pieces. This works better with wet hands.
6. Have some flour ready and dust part of your work surface next to your kneading area. Roll the dough pieces into ropes of about 18 cm length. Then lay them one side down on the floured surface so that they have a lengthwise white stripe. Twist each one about three times and place on the baking sheet.
7. Let the twisted bread sticks rise for half an hour in a warm (!) place. If necessary preheat your oven to 230°C (210°C if you have fan heat). During the last ten minutes place an oven-safe baking dish with a bit of water in the oven.
8. Place the bread sticks in the oven and bake for 15 minutes at 230°C (210°C fan heat). Then turn down the heat to 210°C (190°C fan heat) and bake for another 10 minutes.
9. Take the bread sticks out of the oven and let cool on a rack or freeze immediately in freezer bags. If you do that let them defrost in the bags and after a few hours re-crisp on a toaster rack.

* If you do mix the spice yourself grind approx. two small cloves, add a pinch of nutmeg and top up the the teaspoon with cinnamon. DO NOT use equal amounts of the spices! Too many cloves can be quite....strong ;)

my Mum's baking =)

Everyday Fruit and Oats Breakfast Bowl

Hi there!

... Do you remember me? I know it's been a while and I do hope that I am still there, somewhere at the back of your mind ;-)
I had been thinking that after the exams things would get more relaxed, but that hasn't happened. So I figured I should better stop waiting for things to get less busy.

What I am sharing with you today is something really, really easy. There's no heat required and you can't do anything wrong! Here comes: My everyday breakfast.

I guess I've had some variation of this every morning for the past nine years. ( I can hear you thinking here I think..."What??? Is she crazy?") The recipe has changed over time and with that my liking for this breakfast has increased. When I was a child my Mum had learned in her course that you had to eat 60 grams of raw cereal grains each day in order to get your vital supply of vitamin B1. The first recipe was different from what mine now is and I have to admit that I was not particularly happy about this new mindset. Not at all...

For the first recipe I remember us being in the kitchen trying to shred apple on a circular travel-size citrus peel grater. The apple was getting brown and doing this with 300 grams of apple was no fun. There was also some cream in the base, no orange and the consistency was quite heavy. ... Well, don't worry about that...none of this applies to my today's version anymore and these days I love my breakfast. I am looking forward to it every day and I would get seriously confused if there was a day without one.

My Mum's version today still is different from mine, but also very different from the old recipe. Nevertheless I like mine better and she likes hers better. I should get the second recipe from her some time so you can decide for yourself. Unfortunately I don't really know what she's doing differently from me so she'd need to write that down ;-)

Anyway, let's get started before you all go back to sleep again!

Everyday Fruit and Oats Breakfast Bowl

Time: about 20-30 minutes

for 1 person
60 g	rolled oats or other rolled grains
1 tbsp	flaxseed
40 g	water
50 g	orange
80 g	banana
	more water
100 g	apple
	fruit
	nuts
	seeds

1. Put the rolled oats in your breakfast bowl. Grind up the flaxseed into a fine meal. Add the water and stir to combine.
2. Place orange and banana into a blender with approximately 20 g of water and blend up until liquid. You can also place the fruit in a cup and use a stick blender. Add the banana-orange liquid to the oats. Stir to combine.
3. Slice the apple into sticks. I do this by halving the apple, cutting it into slices one way and the cutting the slices in sticks by slicing crosswise the other way. Add to your bowl. Stir to combine and add a bit more water so that your mixture isn't too dense.
4. Top with fruit. I like to use any leftover banana, which I put on top in slices and then lots of seasonal fruit.
5. Then sprinkle with seeds. I like to use 1 tsp of each sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds.
6. Add nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, pecan nuts, walnuts or brazil nuts. I usually use all of these and add some coconut flakes. But feel free to adjust in whatever way you wish.

Some more important notes - not for the taste, but for nutritional reasons, so I feel I am responsible to let you know ;-)

• Cereal Flakes: To get the intended nutritional benefit the grains should be raw, i.e. not heated in any way, which is often done for preservative reasons, especially when the grains are rolled. Ideally, you buy whole grains, which you roll yourself with a device like in this video. Even more ideally, you test if the grains really are raw by trying to sprout them. 
• Flaxseed: Flaxseed should be ground because otherwise your body won't be able to absorb the nutrients in the seeds. They won't really be digested and ... well, they will look the same after you've eaten them as before you've eaten them. This is because the seeds want to stay whole so that if a bird was to eat them and drop them somewhere else they'd still be able to grow. If you buy them pre-ground, though, they will have lost lots of their nutrients due to the open exposure to the oxygen.

Still, even if you don't do this, the breakfast is very healthy and, most importantly, delicious! So don't let this hold you back!

That's it. Happy breakfast :-) Let me know if you like it!

And I nearly forgot something important! Thanks to my Czech friend Damm, who I was talking to this week, I finally got myself 'round to having a look into how Instagram works and opening an account.

I hope that even if I don't feel like I've enough energy for writing sometimes, I can still take some photographs and give you some inspiration from time to time! So please feel free to follow me there (a link is on the right side of the blog in the sidebar) and I promise I'll soon have figured out the details of how it all works soon! ;-)

Schneckennudeln with Nut Filling

As you might remember from my post on my Mum's Crusty Potato Bread I was on Easter break in Germany. I was enjoying cooking and baking with my Mum and re-creating some traditional German dishes. There are dishes I remember having as a child, which sometimes also my grandma made for Sunday lunch and some I've just never made myself... and any recipe I find on the internet wouldn't be the same as my Mum or may grandma used to do it.

One of these is Kohlrouladen (that's Cabbage Rolls in English), with a vegetarian filling, though ... But okay, maybe that was the main traditional dish we made. It was my Easter wish, as sometimes food memories just don't want to leave my head anymore until I've had that dish. The recipe for the Cabbage Rolls still needs some tweaking so I have something different for you first!


Last week my Mum and I made the original version of Schneckennudeln, which I told you about when I made my version with Orange, Almond and Raisin Filling. Traditionally Schneckennudeln are filled with either a nut filling or a poppy seed filling, as you will see when you look for Schneckennudeln on Google.

Since probably the nut filling is the most popular - and since that's the one my Mum wanted to do ;-) -  I am posting this one today.

Nut Filling for Schneckennudeln

Time for making the filling: 10-15 minutes

filling for Schneckennudel dough made of 500 g flour
200 g	hazelnuts, ground
60 g	honey
1 tbsp	carob powder (you can substitute cocoa)
3/4 tsp	cinnamon
1 pinch	salt
150 g	raisins, soaked in water and drained
about ⅓ cup	orange juice
optional
½ cup	cashew cream for brushing (use a bit more cashew nuts (1:7) than when making cashew milk (1:10))

• Grind the hazelnuts if you haven't bought them ground and drain the raisins. You can reserve the water from the raisins and use it if you haven't got any oranges or orange juice.
• Place all ingredients except for the orange juice in a bowl and mix well. Then add as much orange juice as needed to turn the mixture into a sticky paste.
• Use for filling your Schneckennudeln. You can find the recipe for the dough here.
• If you want, brush the Schneckennudeln with cashew cream after letting them rise the last time before baking. That way they will be a bit more moist even though the filling is not as moist as a jam filling.