“Pinkel”  is a traditional Northern German sausage eaten in parts of Lower Saxony and Bremen. It is made from bacon, and some other animal bits, but also has plant-based ingredients like onions and grains. It is eaten during winter and served with kale and potatoes. People adore this dish so much, they organize and join an event which is called a “Kohlfahrt” (kale tour). This tour includes two attractions: lots of meat and lots of alcohol. [I wrote a bit about how we Northern Germans can be crazy about our kale here.]

[Sorry for the crappy picture. It was dark and rainy.]

As an omni kid, I used to love “Pinkel”.  I was fascinated by the fact that the sausage contained grains. I guess that was the first sign for me to become a vegetarian one day.

I don’t really miss “Pinkel”. I don’t ever miss meat. But I have thought about a vegan “Pinkel” recipe for a while now. I thought that the idea of putting grains into a plant-based sausage was not too bad. And I wanted something special to serve with my kale. Last weekend I came up with a recipe for this traditional sausage, a seitan based log with fried onions and cooked cracked grains.

This probably doesn’t taste like “Pinkel” at all. It is more like “Mettwurst“. [I haven't eaten meat for 20 years, I probably have no idea what I'm talking about here.] A “Mettwurst” is a chewy, smoky sausage, reminiscent of salami. [If you leave out the grains, this recipe will probably make a delicious salami] It is served with kale, but often found in soups, too. It is also the sausage you will find next to sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Okay, now. Enough of all this meaty talk. You can use this for any dish that calls for a smokey sausage, but it is great on its own too, between a slice of crusty bread. I used half a log for a spit pea soup, which came out with the most amazing smokey taste. Seriously, this is my favourite sausage.

I used smoked cracked smoked spelt berries and tofu bits fried in liquid smoke to achieve a smoky flavour. The dough is a bit crumbly, but the sausage will firm up nicely when baked.

Vegan “Pinkel” or “Mettwurst” (makes 2 logs)

For the grains:

50 g (1/4 cup) cracked “Grünkern” (smoked spelt, use other cracked grains like wheat, oats, or barley instead)
1 cup vegetable broth
Cook over medium heat until the grains are soft and most of the broth is absorbed. The consistency should be similar to oatmeal. Let cool.

For the “meaty” ingredients:

1 red onion, chopped into very fine dice (yield: 3/4 cup)
50 g finely crumbled tofu (1/3 cup)
2 t vegetable oil of choice
2 t liquid smoke

Over medium to high heat, fry the onions in 1 t of vegetable oil, for about five minutes. They should be slightly brown. Add the second t of oil and tofu. Stir in liquid smoke. Cook for 2 more minutes until all tofu bits are coated with liquid smoke. Set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F) and prepare the sausage:

Additional ingredients for the sausage:

144 g (1 cup) gluten powder (vital wheat gluten flour)
120 ml (1/2 cup) water
1/4 t freshly ground allspice
3/4 t freshly ground black pepper
1 t salt

10 g (1/8 cup, packed) freshly chopped parsley
2 t soy sauce

In a bowl combine gluten powder, allspice, black pepper, and salt. Add water, onion-tofu mixture, cooked grains, parsley, and soy sauce. Knead for 2-3 minutes. The dough will be elastic and firm with bits of grains or onion falling out here and there. Don’t worry about that.

Prepare two pieces of aluminium foil. Divide dough into two pieces and place on foil. Roll the dough up to get 2 logs which are approximately 17 cm (6 1/2 inch) long and  4 cm (1 3/4 inch) wide. Transfer to oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Let cool completely before unwrapping them. Use immediately or store in an airtight container. We fried the sausage, and served it with salt potatoes and kale cooked with margarine, red onions, and cracked smoked spelt.

I have been experimenting a bit with different grains for my latest bread baking adventures. I made the most wonderful bread with spelt sourdough starter, rye, barley, buckwheat, and more spelt. It’s funny, because I often read that spelt is difficult to work with when it comes to bread baking: “Spelt breads dry out faster than other breads.  It is difficult to use a sourdough starter in spelt breads…better use a pre-ferment. Spelt gluten is a little bit wonky and erratic and therefore hard to handle. Breads made from spelt flour don’t rise that much.”

Well, I think spelt likes me because I never experienced any of these problems. My spelt breads always come out huge and fluffy and the keep fresh for a couple of days. Okay, I often use whole spelt flour (which keeps the bread moister)  or I mix the spelt with other grains. But even my 100 % spelt breads with spelt sourdough came out great. To me spelt is a wonderful bread flour.

This bread is the best bread I have ever made. Very flavourful, fluffy and soft. It has the perfect texture and lasts long. The key to a good spelt bread is a relatively high water content, because spelt flour absorbs more water than wheat. It is also important not to overknead the dough and to knead by hand. Don’t use a kitchen machine or you might damage the spelt gluten.

I milled most of the grains myself, except for the medium spelt flour. I liked the bread so much, that I made a similar version a couple of days later. I give you the recipe for both.

Dinkelmischbrot Version I (spelt bread mixed with other flours)

200 g spelt sourdough starter*
100 g whole rye flour
25 g barley flour, made from pearl barley
25 g buckwheat flour
150 g medium spelt flour
300 g water
10 g salt

Dinkelmischbrot Version II

200 g rye starter*
250 g medium spelt flour
25 g buckwheat flour
25 g kamut flour
300 g water
10 g salt

*The sourdough starter is prepared 16 hours before you actually make the bread. Take a tablespoon of sourdough starter and mix it with 100 g water and 90 g whole spelt flour(or whole rye flour for the other recipe). Let sit covered for 16 hours. It should be bubbly and have a pleasant sour smell.

Mix all ingredients, knead for five minutes by hand. (It will be a very sticky dough, a bit like a thick cake batter) and place the dough in an oiled bowl. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes. Knead again for 20-30 seconds.

Because of the relatively high water content, the dough will still be very sticky. Don’t worry about shaping it, just pour it into your greased loaf pan. Cover the pan with a damp kitchen towel and let the dough rise for 1.5 hours, until doubled in size. Since there is no additional yeast used in this recipe, the rising time might be even longer (~ 2 hours). Don’t forget to preheat your oven to 250°C (480°F). Bake the bread at this temperature for 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 200°C (400°F) and bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely before slicing.

If these breads sound too complicated to you or if you cannot find all the ingredients, you can try a simple yeast bread instead. I used kamut berries and kamut flour for mine, but the bread works well with spelt as a substitute.

Kamut Bread

100 g kamut berries (1/2 cup) soaked in 200 ml water for 8 hours, drained

400 g whole wheat flour
100 g whole kamut flour
350 g water
10 g salt
10 g fresh yeast (or 1 t instant yeast)

Mix all ingredients and knead for 10 minutes. The dough should be soft and tacky, not sticky. Place in an oiled bowl and let rise for 1 hour (covered), until doubled in size. Knead again for ca 20-30 seconds and shape. Transfer to a loaf pan or a “Brotform“. Let the dough rise for another hour (covered). Meanwile, preheat oven to 220°C (420°F). Bake for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 200°C (400°F) and bake for 30-35 minutes [for a darker crust you can opt for 40 minutes, but check so it doesn't burn]. The bread should sound hollow when tapped.

This spread can be used as a filling for the marzipan gianduia crescent rolls. It can be used as a truffle or cookie filling and as a frosting for cakes or cupcakes. It can satisfy your nutella cravings, although it doesn’t contain any milk chocolate. The taste is very similar to that famous Italian spread, but with a tiny bitter note from the roasted hazelnuts and the dark chocolate. It is so delicious, it can be eaten right from the jar.
This recipe calls for hazelnut butter. If you cannot find this product, you can use roasted hazelnuts and make your own nut butter. Place the roasted hazelnuts in a food processor and process into a smooth paste. Almond butter is also a great substitute.

The hazelnut butter I used is the natural kind. It is a little bit runny, which is important for the texture of this spread. If your nut butter is more like smooth peanut butter, you may need to add more oil.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Spread

50 g semisweet chocolate
2 T sugar
1/8 t ground vanilla
4 T soy milk
60 g hazelnut butter
1 T canola oil

Chop  chocolate into small pieces. Place in a small saucepan together with sugar, vanilla, and soy milk. Carefully melt the chocolate mixture over low heat. Stir constantly to combine all ingredients and prevent burning. This won’t take very long, probably less than a minute, if you chopped the chocolate very small. Set aside when everything is well combined.
Mix hazelnut butter and oil. Stir into chocolate mixture until smooth. Transfer to a glass jar and let cool to room temperature. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours until set.

Enjoy this on a slice of freshly baked and still warm white bread, so that the spread starts to melt.

Store this spread in the fridge.

Last week I bought marzipan and gianduia (hazelnut nougat, as we call it here) to decorate some brownies. Apparently I bought too much and didn’t want to waste the leftovers. That is how these filled crescent rolls were born:

I used my stuten recipe, which is really an awesome basic recipe for sweet yeast rolls.  To make things a little bit more interesting, I used half all purpose and half kamut flour. I milled the kamuth flour myself from whole kamuth berries. If you can’t find whole kamut flour, you can use whole spelt flour or just all purpose flour. If you use only all purpose flour, make sure to use less soy milk (about 3 T).

Marzipan- Gianduia Crescent Rolls (makes 6)

For the rolls:
280 g  flour (2 1/3 cups) [I used 1/2 whole kamut flour and 1/2 all purpose flour]
1 package active dry yeast (7 g or 2 1/4 t)
30 g sugar (2 T)
205 ml vanilla or plain soy milk, room temperature (2/3 cup + 3 T)
25 g coconut oil, melted  (2 T) [vegetable oil of your choice works well, too]
1/4 t salt

For the filling:
150 g marzipan
50 g gianduia [use chocolate chips and ground hazelnuts as a substitute,or use this homemade chocolate hazelnut spread]
cornstarch for dusting

Mix soy milk and yeast and let sit until foamy (about ten minutes).
Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Mix with a spoon and add milk mixture. Add oil as well. Knead the dough for 10 minutes to develop the gluten. It will be smoother than in the beginning, but still sticky. Don’t add too much additional flour. Let dough rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size. (You can place it in an oiled bowl and cover with a damp kitchen towel.)

Transfer your dough to a floured work surface and roll into an 25 x 25 cm rectangle (10 x 10 inch). Cut into four rectangles and cut those into triangles, to get eight triangles:

Roll out the marzipan into a 20 x 20 centimetre (8 x 8 inch) rectangle. Dust the counter with a bit of cornstarch to prevent sticking.  Cut into eight triangles as well. Place each marzipan triangle on top of a dough triangle:

Now crumble some gianduia on top. I am not really sure if gianduia is the correct name for the stuff I am talking about. It’s made from sugar, ground hazelnuts, cocaa mass, and cocoa butter and looks like this:

If you can’t find this, substitute some chocolate chips and ground hazelnuts, almond butter, or vegan chocolate spread, if you have.

Try to spread out the gianduia a bit and then roll the dough up, starting from the long side of the triangle. Shape into crescents by bending the edges a bit. Place the rolls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel. Let rise in a warm place for about an hour. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) after half an hour. Bake for 17-20 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool completely or serve warm, but not hot. Enjoy with a hot cup of coffee, chocolate, or tea.

This blog entry was submitted to YeastSpotting.

This recipe was inspired by Susan’s seitan stew. I used her method of cooking the seitan directly in the soup. It saves time and makes the seitan itself very tender. Adding seitan to this dish makes it very filling. Don’t forget to add some lemon, it takes away the sweetness of the pumpkin, if you like your pumpkin savoury like me.

Curried Pumpkin Soup with White Wine and Seitan

For the soup:
1 t oil of your choice
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
850 g (~ 7 1/2 cups 1 inch cubes) chopped pumpkin
1 cup white wine (or vegetable broth)
4 cups vegetable broth
1 T curry powder of your choice (I used a mild version)
1 t smoked sweet paprika
freshly ground pepper and additional salt to taste
cook for 15 minutes

For the seitan:

144 g gluten powder (vital wheat gluten)
2 T nutritional yeast
1 t onion powder
1 t salt
1 t smoked sweet paprika
1 t liquid smoke
180 ml (3/4 cup) water
cook for 40 minutes

Additional seasonings for each bowl:
1/2 T fresh lemon juice
1 t liquid smoke or chipotle sauce
fresh basil

To make the soup:

Heat oil in a large pot. Add onion and garlic and cook for five minutes, stirring. Add bell pepper and cook two minutes. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.Cook for 15 minutes until the pumpkin is tender.

While the soup is cooking, prepare the seitan:

Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add liquid smoke and water and mix with your hands until a dough forms. Knead for five minutes. Place the dough on a cutting board and cut into 1/2 inch cubes. Set aside.

Purée the soup with a handheld blender until smooth. Add seitan and bring back to boil. Simmer for 30-35 minutes until the seitan is done. Ladle soup into bowls and add 1/2 T fresh lemon juice per bowl and 1 t of liquid smoke or chipotle sauce. Garnish with fresh herbs such as basil and serve immediately.

If you have leftover pumpkin, you can use it to make Nicole’s pumpkin chili:

I added 2 cups of vegetable broth, 1 T of chipotle sauce, 1 T oregano, 1 additional t of cumin, and used kidney beans instead of black beans. What a great autumn coloured stew!

I love gluten. Bread is an important staple in most German households. I grew up eating Brötchen (crispy wheat rolls) for breakfast and a few slices of Mischbrot (a 60 % wheat 40% rye bread found in almost every bakery) for dinner every single day for most of my life. When I moved out of my parent’s place, I substituted whole meal breads for the Brötchen but that was all. When I went vegan, I started eating oatmeal for breakfast and a warm meal for dinner. But we still had bread around to eat on a daily basis.
Since I bake my own bread, I know how important gluten is for giving my bread structure and texture. I have never seen something bad in gluten.
But I know that there are people with gluten intolerance and people who avoid gluten for other reasons. And I am thankful that you still read my blog even though it is overflowing with bread recipes and other things made from ordinary wheat, spelt, and rye flour.

Well, today I have a recipe for you. I had a lot of fun making gluten-free muffins from scratch. I have both a flour mill and a coffee grinder and tons of grains sitting around. I started by milling some amaranth grains in my coffee grinder. Then I started looking for a homemade gluten-free flour mix, which I found here. I made the following changes to it:

2 brown cups rice flour (I made my own from brown rice)
2/3 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup amaranth flour (I made my own, you can substitute quinoa flour, almond flour, or tapioca starch, as Nava Atlas suggests in her original recipe)
1 teaspoon guar gum

After I had my gluten-free flour ready, I chose a muffin recipe from vegalicious as a base and adapted it a bit. When mixing the muffin batter I realized that my gluten-free version was stiffer than regular muffin batter.  So I added some more liquid. I also increased the sugar and the amount of poppy seeds. I was really curious about the outcome of this baking project. After the muffins were cooled down, I couldn’t wait any longer and took a bite. I could taste a bit of the rice flour but that was the only difference from regular muffins I noticed. These were fluffy and delicious and they tasted good even the next day, although they were a bit more dry. They are only slightly sweet and perfect for a gluten-free breakfast.

Gluten-free Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (adapted from this recipe)
makes 6 muffins

1 cup gluten-free flour mix (see above)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons crushed poppy seed
1 T soy flour [you can use chickpea flour]
7 T soy milk
2 T lemon juice
1/2 t grated lemon zest
2 T coconut oil, melted [you can use margarine]

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F. Line a muffin pan or grease it.

In a bowl mix flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, poppy seeds, and soy flour. Stir in remaining ingredients. Mix well until no lumps remain. Pur into prepared baking thins. bake for 15 minutes or until muffins are golden brown.

P.S. This was the perfect opportunity to show off my fantastic little coffee maker, which I bought in Portugal at a gorgeous little coffee shop (Casa Pereira, 38 Rua Garrett, Lisboa). It is very handy if you are the only coffee drinker in the family.

October was a busy month for me. I couldn’t spend as much time online reading other people’s fantastic blogs and commenting on their great recipes and pictures as I would have liked. Sometimes I didn’t even get to my google reader. I admit that I had to schedule a large number of my MoFo posts and most of them were shorter than usual. But I made it to ever 20 posts, so mission accomplished!

Whenever I had the time, I browsed my overflowing reader and admired what others came up with during this month of food. I found some great new blogs and my recipe folder is filled with many new amazing recipes I have to try.

And it seems that many new readers found my blog through Vegan MoFo. Thank you everyone who read my posts and everyone who took the time to leave a comment!

I also want to thank a very special person who send me a wonderful package. Meg of  The Sisters Vegan send me a care package full of awesome stuff. We both tested for Terry’s new book and whenever I mentioned that I couldn’t get certain food items necessary for testing, she noticed.

She sent me: aji amarillo salsa (yellow hot pepper sauce), aji panca especial (panca pepper sauce), coconut extract, and beautiful frijoles bola roja (red ball beans). Wow, now I can retest some of Terry’s recipes with original ingredients! I also got two stickers from Herbivore and a cookie cutter (the “C” stands for the first letter of my real name.)

Meg also sent me some mint chocolate and wrote: “I hope the minty chocolate makes up for stupid Rittersport changing their recipe!” Indeed, it totally makes up for Rittersport chocolate! Under the chocolate you can see two Herbivore postcards:

Below you can see stickers from Herbivore [Meg wore Herbivore's Koala T-Shirt when I first met her], the buttons [which I placed right next to my Secret Society of Vegans button on by bag], and a sticker from [the urban housewife] Melisser’s Sugar Beat Sweets bakery [San Francisco's first vegan bakery]:

And I finally have a “praise seitan” sticker! Yay, isn’t such an awesome package the best topic for my last Vegan MoFo post? Thank you so much, Meg!

No, that is not a typo. L.E. stands for Leipzig, which is another large town in Saxony and should totally be the capital of it, if you ask me.

Last weekend there was a birthday and an anniversary to be celebrated. So  P decided to rent a car and drive us to our favourite restaurant which is 1 1/2 hours away by car. (Yes, sometimes we do this.) I have blogged about this mostly vegan (all foods are, drinks are sometimes made with optional milk or honey) and totally fantastic restaurant Zest before. Since then we have been there over ten times already. It is just such an awesome place with a very friendly staff and extraordinary vegan food.

At first we ordered our drinks. P had a hot passion fruit juice with lemon grass and lime and I had my favourite beer: Flensburger.

This was our starter: chives lángos / macadamia roasted garlic mousse / arugula and cherry tomato salad:

If you read the menu at the Zest, you always expect something totally different from what you get. The food is always surprising.  This is what a lángos usually looks like. It is fried yeast dough topped with grated cheese. The bread is soft, greasy, and delicious and you can grab a (not vegan) version at food carts all over Hungary. The lángos we got was very small and crispy, almost like a cracker. The taste was also like a cracker. It was nonetheless delicious. The macadamia cheese was to die for and so were the tomatoes which were marinated in garlic oil.

Ps main course was: Jerusalem artichoke roll with date créme fraiche bell pepper farce / rosemary apple vinegar jelly / soy medallions / quince cream sauerkraut:

Although all these brown colours are not very beautiful, everything was scrumptious! The Jerusalem artichoke rolls may have been made like a latke batter and then steamed in foil or something, but that is just a guess. The soy medallions were awesome and so was the quince sauerkraut. who would have thought that these two match so well?

This was my main course: fried polenta slice with pepper seitan filling / smoked paprika almond sauce / sherry savoy cabbage with grapes, walnuts and fried sage leafs.

Fried sage leafs? Super-delicious! pepper seitan baked into polenta? Genius! Smoked almond gravy? These guys might have a copy of Vegan Brunch. It was the most fantastic almond  sauce ever! And even though I usually run away from sweet-and-savoury, I ate the savoy cabbage with grapes and walnuts because it was the best cabbage I have ever had in my whole life. I was so stuffed after this meal but I still had to eat some dessert. Because everything is vegan, right? And it’s awesome!

So here comes the: espresso muffin with Irish coffee soy ice cream chocolate truffles.

P and I shared this and we both agreed that the muffin (it was more a cupcake) was a bit too greasy. But the ice cream chocolate truffles totally made up for this!

And while I had another beer before we rolled ourselves and our huge bellies out of the restaurant, P ordered a coconut-banana shake with hazelnut syrup:

Even though we usually don’t celebrate Halloween over here, I just thought that this might count as a Halloween post. Just imagine I baked this bread with some blood…

I wanted to bake bread with beets for quite a while now. Last weekend I even managed to roast some beets. I wanted to puree them and them throw them into a loaf of bread to colour it red. But then P and I ended up renting a car, driving to our favourite restaurant in Leipzig (post follows tomorrow) and the next day I found myself snacking on the cold, roasted beets.

When I cam home from work yesterday, I though about beet bread again. Should I buy some beets? But then I would have to roast them or grate them or whatever and I wasn’t in the mood for it. Five minutes later I remembered that our supermarket sells some weird vegetable juices (two flavours: sauerkraut and beets) and so I bought a box of beet juice.

Marbled Beet Bread

This bread looks really beautiful and is easy to make. Take your favourite bread recipe (I used my basic stand by recipe: 500 g flour, 350 g water, 10 g salt, 10 g fresh yeast or 3 g instant) and divide all ingredients in half. Mix 250 g flour with 175 g water, 5 g yeast, and 5 g salt.Knead for 10 minutes and let rest in an oiled bowl, covered with a damp kitchen towel.

Mix the remaining 250 g flour with 175 g beet juice, 5 g yeast, and 5 g salt. Knead for 10 minutes as well and place in a second bowl. Let both bread doughs ferment for 1 hour, until the doughs have doubled in size. Divide each dough in two equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rectangle. All rectangles should have the same size. Place one beet dough rectangle over a regular dough rectangle, top with regular rectangle and then put the second beet coloured rectangle on top. Roll the dough up and place in an oiled loaf pan, seam side down. Ret sit at room temperature for another hour. Meanwhile preheat oven to 250°C. Bake the bread for 40.50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely before slicing. Enjoy!

This entry was submitted to Susan’s YeastSpotting.

Argh, I don’t know how I missed another day in the month that is Vegan MoFo! And now I come back with even more speculoos.  The day before yesterday I managed to squeeze in some baking time to make cupcakes for my colleagues:

[Sorry, a crappy picture. Darkness everywhere]

I made a batch of the perfect speculoos spread.  Then I opened my copy of VCTOTW and whipped up 1 1/2 batches of the Golden Vanilla Cupcakes to which I added 1 1/2 t speculoos spice mix. The next morning, right before work, I filled the cupcakes with spread and decorated them with semisweet chocolate drizzled on top. I placed the cupcakes in a box and we made a little tram ride.

These cupcakes smell like Christmas or more specifically they smell like filled Lebkuchenherzen. These are heart-shaped and chocolate covered Lebkuchen filled with some jam. These are the only Lebkuchen I like, by the way.

My colleagues raved about them and everyone ate two, which means that these are really good. If you don’t have speculoos, or speculoos spices, or  speculoos spread, go ahead and use any spiced cookie you like, I bet these would be great with gingersnaps, gingerbread, or spice cookies as well.