The theme for this month’s Bread Baking Day which is hosted by Zorra at  1 x umrühren bitte aka kochtopf is Pizza Party.

I started making my own pizzas when I decided to go vegan two years ago. I couldn’t and still can’t find any vegan pizzas here in Dresden and seriously, who wants to scrape off the cheese?  Speaking about cheese: of course my first thought was that a pizza without cheese wasn’t a pizza anymore. To me the cheese topping provided most of the pizza flavour and I also loved the texture it provided.

Fresh Herb Pizza

Now  I am glad that I started to make pizzas without cheese. And I like my cheeseless versions much better than the cheesy ones. I prefer them because I changed my focus from (cheese)topping to crust. And I found the perfect crust recipe. It is made with the delayed fermentation method, which means you prepare the dough one day in advance, add as little yeast as possible, and let the dough rise in the fridge over night.That way it will develop a great flavour and texture. If you use this dough recipe for your crust, the flavour explosion will transport you right to your favourite Italian restaurant (or maybe even to Italy?), enjoying the perfect pizza.

The perfect crust recipe can be found in the book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice or at 101 cookbooks. It takes some preparation time, but not much actual working and cooking time. Once your dough is prepared, you can just stretch or roll it out thinly and top it with your favourite toppings. If you can heat your oven up to 500 °C,  your pizza will be ready after five minutes baking time.

We enjoyed ours with lots of fresh herbs. I added finely sliced fresh sage to the dough, made a tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic, fresh sage and oregano, topped the pizza with aromatic tomatoes and added some arugula and fresh basil after it was cooked. Great on a warm summer’s evening with some red wine or your favourite non-alcoholic drink.

There’s work on my desk. Lots of it. Therefore I won’t be able to comment on all your awesome blog entries and therefore my entries on this blog are going to be a little bit shorter than usual. And I’m skipping the German entries for a while. I hope you’ll bear with me. And forgive me? If I give you berries?

This blog entry is dedicated to someone who misses Rote Grütze terribly. And her request came the day before yesterday, when I had tons of cherries around and didn’t know what to do with them. We foodbloggers can read minds!

Rote Grütze (= red grits or groats), or Rode Grött, as my grandmother would say in our dialect, is a red berry compote which is a famous Northern German and Scandianvian dessert. (Norwegians call it rødgrøt, the Danish call it the same, but write it rødgrød and pronounce it totally different. About the Swedish people I don’t know.)

The main ingredients of Rote Grütze are red berries like red currants, raspberries, strawberries, sour or sweet cherries. In my opinion it doesn’t matter what kind of berry you use, but it has to be red.  Black currants and blackberries are okay, too. (Don’t ask me why.) And what about cranberries for a local touch?

You can also make Gelbe Grütze = yellow Grütze from yellow fruit and Grüne Grütze = green Grütze from green fruit.

There is an original version somewhere out there which is made from fruit and sago pearls (similar to tapioca pearls), but I have to admit that I grew up on a version made from  berries, sugar, and cornstarch. And it came from the store. And it was Danish. In this version only the ingredients come from the store (and the cherries from a friend, who is not Danish).

Rote Grütze (serves 4)

600 g (21.2 oz or 1 1/3 pound) mixed berries ( I used 1/3 red gooseberries, 1/3 red currants, 1/3 sweet cherries)
4 T sugar
3 1/2 T cornstarch
3 T cold water

Wash your berries, pit the cherries, de-stem red currants and gooseberries, half gooseberries and cherries. Place berries in a saucepan and stir in sugar. Bring to a boil and cook for five minutes until the currants start to break down. In a small bowl, mix cornstarch and water until dissolved. Pour into berry mixture and cook for 3 more minutes until thickened. Let cool completely and chill for approx 2 hours before serving.

Serving: Traditionally this is served with a thick vanilla sauce (pictured) or whipped cream, but I can see it on waffles, ice cream, brownies, as a pie filling, in yoghurt and of course all by itself. Enjoy the summer!

© seitanismymotor 2009

Strawberries are my favourite fruit. I could eat them all day long. Now that local strawberries are available I buy a box of them every day. Often I eat them right out of that box, sometimes they make it into my morning oats, and sometimes I do even use them in a recipe. Who would have thought?

Homemade ice cream usually requires only little little preparation. Pureé some fruit, mix all of your ingredients and let your ice cream machine do the rest. Oh and don’t forget to eat your ice cream once it is ready.

Strawberry Ice Cream with Mango and Banana

inspired by Andrea’s fantastic ice cream recipe

100 g (3/4 cup) banana, chopped
400 g (2 1/2 cups) strawberries, chopped
150 g (1 cup) mango chunks
150 g (3/4 cup) sugar
1 T vanilla sugar or 1 t vanilla extract
240 g (1 cup) soy yoghurt, very cold
180 g (1 cup) coconut milk, very cold
3/4 t guar gum (optional)

Purée the fruit pieces in your food processor, blender, or with your hand held blender, until smooth. Add all other ingredients except for guar gum (if using). Carefully sprinkle guar gum on top and purée one more time. Transfer to your ice cream machine and follow manufacturer’s instructions. Freeze for a couple of hours before serving. To serve sprinkle with coconut flakes or fresh strawberries. Or how about brownies or chocolate waffles?

© seitanismymotor 2009

Happy Bloomsday, everyone! Do you celebrate it?  We do by reading a chapter from Ulysses or Dubliners and by eating fresh bread…which is my substitute for the grilled mutton kidneys that Leopold Bloom, one of the main characters in Ulysses, eats for breakfast. Maybe this strange beginning of a food blog post is an example for the writing of James Joyce, maybe it is just a bad introduction, anyway go celebrate! And now back to food:

One of my favourite food blogs is Tofu for Two, where Anni and Heikki share their amazing and creative recipes, which always come with the most beautiful pictures.
A couple of days ago Anni posted a recipe for Finnish Rye Bread. Of course I had to make it. Finnish and German Rye breads have many similarieties.  Anni’s bread is a 100 % rye bread leavened with sourdough. For a long time rye was the standard grain for bread making in many Northern, East, and Central European countries and in Germany it is still used quite often. Because German sourdough starters are traditionally made with rye flour or rye chops, 100 % rye breads are not too hard to find. And they are really something special. It is a miracle that something made only from flour, water, and salt can develop such a complex flavour and such a pleasant smell. And this miracle makes bread baking not only fantastic, but also very addictive.

To make Anni’s bread, I halved the recipe and made small loaves. The recipe calls for stale Finnish rye bread to prepare the starter. I didn’t have any and so I used my own sourdough starter. Therefore I had to adjust the amounts of water and flour in the recipe. Apart from that I followed Anni’s excellent instructions to a tee. If you want to make this bread, which I would highly recommend, hop over to Anni’s blog to find out how to.

Anni’s Finnish Rye Bread

For the starter:
50 g sourdough starter made from medium rye flour
375 ml water
250 g medium rye flour

For the bread dough:
the starter
500 g medium rye flour
50-75 ml warm water
1/2 T salt

This bread has a fantastic smell and flavour. It is a strong bread, aromatic and chewy and has a tough crust and a very dense crumb. In my opinion it is exactly how the perfect rye bread should be. After I baked it, we waited another day to cut it. As Anni already explains on her blog, rye breads are best one or two days after baking. Clearly one of my new favourites! And my contribution to Susan’s YeastSpotting.

© seitanismymotor 2009

Once or twice a week P. comes home with some stalks of rhubarb. We both love rhubarb and I have tried several new recipes with rhubarb, like ice cream or cake. P. loves to cook rhubarb compote and when it is ready, we often leave it in the pot and snack on it all day long. But this time we decided that the rhubarb deserved something better. Something sweet. Something with crumbs. Something with vanilla. Something moist and soft. Some cake. And the rhubarb loved it. And the cake was perfect.

For this recipe I merged and adapted two other recipes: the coffee cake recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen (it is also in Vegan with a Vengeance) and the Rhubarb ‘Big Crumb’ Coffee Cake recipe from the New York Times. I was pretty pleased with the result. And my coworkers loved this cake too.

Delicious Rhubarb Cake (makes 12 pieces)

Preheat oven to 340°F. Grease a 10 inch spring form pan with oil and set aside.

For the rhubarb filling:
1/2 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch

For the cake:
2 cups flour*
1 1/2 T chickpea or soy flour
1/2 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3/4 t cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup soy yoghurt
3 T canola oil
1 t vanilla
3/4 cup + 1 T soy milk

* I used German “Type 1050” flour, which is similar to American “first clear flour”. If you don’t have this on hand, mix one cup of all purpose flour with one cup of white whole wheat flour (which has less gluten than regular whole wheat flour).

For the crumb topping:
3/4 cup flour (see note above)
1/4 t baking powder
3 T sugar
2 1/2 T margarine ( = 1/3 stick)
1/2 t vanilla
1/2 – 3/4 T soy milk (as needed)

To prepare the filling:
Place rhubarb in a bowl, sprinkle with sugar and cornstarch, mix well and set aside.

To prepare the cake:
In a bowl sift together flour and chickpea flour. Add baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and sugar. In a second bowl mix together yoghurt, oil, vanilla and soy milk. Add wet to dry ingredients. Pour 3/4 of batter into your prepared pan. Carefully sprinkle the rhubarb mixture on top and distribute the pieces evenly.
Spoon remaining batter over rhubarb mixture.

To prepare the crumb topping:
In a bowl mix flour, baking powder, and sugar. Add margarine and vanilla. Use your hands to mix until mixture starts to form into crumbs. Add soy milk if  too dry. Crumble over cake.

Bake for 35 – 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. The crumbs should be golden brown, the rest of the batter a bit darker. Cover with aluminium foil if the cake gets too brown during baking. Let cake sit in pan for 10 minutes, then remove the pan. Slice into 12 pieces.

© seitanismymotor 2009