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Thanks Chattius. I did not know that that Bakehouse tradition was still alive. Great. As far as I know it is lost here.

 

... as for our oven, the pizzas are just a happy memory, and it will soon be bread time.

 

We make pizzas about 8" diameter and fairly thick - naples style I believe - not the thin and crispy ones.

 

... I have a nasty feeling that the bread will be ready too early and the oven still too hot ... recriminations ahead? ... better put a little more rum in my coffee

Edited by Bondbug
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In my area there are several bake houses surviving. The villages are too small that a butchery or bakery can exist. But many of the older people never had or no longer have a driving license to reach a super market. So house slaughtering, bake house and food sharing are a very good replacement with the positive side effect that kids learn the old traditions, recipes and stuff like how to use a sickle, scythe, how to weave a basket, ....

 

As you said, while heating the oven you have a lot of time. So in summer when the blade of my scythe gets damaged from all the gras cutting at a hill where I can't got with a cutter I bring it to the bake house at saturday. There are normally old farmers around who do the peening(?) of the blade really good and try to show it to me (because of my CTS, I will never be good in it). They bring damaged electrical machines which I try to repair in return, ...

 

We call this hardening and repairing of a blade Dengeln. I hope I translated it correct into peening.

180px-3_mm_schmaler_Dengel.JPG

 

For garden plants: our garden is in the shadow , so our goose berries are normally too wet and die of dieases all the time. So I gave up on these and we do now stuff which grows well at our place and change it for stuff which grows better at other gardens. It's this community which makes me staying there instead going for an appartment closer to work.

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Well I'll be .... Chattius, you are teaching me my own language.

 

"Peening" ... correct, friend. I had to look it up cos I did not know the word.

 

"Peen" - I have a hammer with such a head and I never knew that that was what it was called. On my hammer the 'peen' is round, but wedge shaped is also correct.

 

You learn something new every day!

 

 

Well, the bread got only a little burnt at the edges today, not too bad. Waiting for the oven to cool for the stew, and there is a cake and an egg custard to follow. Going to get fat(ter) tomorrow.

 

I like the idea of getting back to a "bakehouse" ... I will have a word with the baker in the next village.

 

Our gooseberries are finished - we only have one bush and not much fruit this year. But our one redcurrant is fruiting well, and we have a bush which is halfway between gooseberry and a currant, and that produces enormous amounts of fruit.

Edited by Bondbug
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Is it a Josta-berry?

 

It is a mix of Johannisberren (black currant) and Stachelbeeren (goose berries). I planted 3 bushes this spring. Heard they are more robust than goose-berries. One of the holes I dug for them contained the hundreds of paralyzed worms from the CSI-garden thread.

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Yes, that's the one ... Bauer ... Josta. Very robust. No problems. Heavy crops. Fruit freezes well. My wife makes pies, jam ... anything that you can do with currants or gooseberries. Our gooseberries are finished, the redcurrants are half done, these and blackcurrants will be ready in a day or two.

 

I think you will find them very satisfactory ... ours have taken only a couple of years to become well established.

 

I am not sure about pruning for these. Similar to blackcurrants I suppose, but I am not sure.

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My memory tells me that white and red currants get their fruits on twigs which are from the year before.

Black currants, goose berries and Josta's get their fruits on 2-4 year old twigs.

 

So for red and white currants you can very radically remove twigs which carried fruits. For the black ones I cut away just the oldest twigs, the ones which are 5 years or older.

 

We are a bit late with fruits normally: wind, rain, shadow.... germanies mid mountain rage. I saw the first strawberries slowly turning red.

 

We had bake house day today and we did some Streuselkuchen with Rhabarber. Rhabarber is rhubarb and adds a sour note to the sweet Streuselkuchen.

 

Streuselkuchen (crumb cake) is a German speciality. Traditionally it is made of a yeast dough covered with crumbs. The main ingredients for the crumbs are flour, sugar and butter.

 

57512-bigfix-rhabarber-streuselkuchen.jpg

 

We also did 3 4-pound round sour dough breads.

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(Just a note of irritation - I wish I had a Streuselkuchen for every time I start a post then nick back for a reference in a previous post and come back to find my draft gone)

You make me jealous with your bakehouse days, mainly I think because of the community life that goes with it.

 

We do well with our small wood oven here, but it is usually just myself and wife. The 90cm diameter oven is in a small dining area. We sometimes invite people in for a meal, but the oven and cooking keep us occupied and my wife seems to think we are being unsociable! Probably because 4 visitors is the most we can fit in, and they usually sit in a different area to the kitchen/dining area.

 

Redcurrants - don't know. If I prune every branch that is carrying fruit this year there will be no bush left - the wife will kill me!

 

Blackcurrants/gooseberries - I pruned out a few bits crowding the centre of these bushes a few years back. So they must be about due for another clean out. Thanks.

 

The Josta has already had a few branches pruned because it was trying to take over the neighbours garden over the top of the wall.

 

The Streuselkuchen looks good. We will look it up and give it a go. It was a jam sponge we cooked yesterday. Nice and light and going down well. There are so many wonderful cakes for home baking. Nothing you buy in the shops to equal them.

 

How about Streuselkuchen mit Quark found on Google ... I think yours looks better. The topping is much the same as 'crumble' which is a desert in GB. We also have a recipe for "Apple Kuchen Bread" which also looks good.

Edited by Bondbug
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(Sorry to be double posting but this is a slightly different subject)

 

@Loco ... "You know I find this thread one of my favorites. Like sitting under a shade tree with a tall glass of iced tea and just shootin the breeze with old good friends."

 

Here is your tree Loco, just outside the Inglenook window. I think your wife might like it too.

 

Difficult to get a decent photo, not enough room to stand back from it, and my little tinny camera can't cope with the light contrasts if the sun is shining.

 

The way things are going we might have to include a kitchen garden, or perhaps what can you grow in the window or on the balcony if you do not have a garden.

Edited by Bondbug
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Chattius ... (no rush) ...if I may ask you a favour ... can you set out for me a detailed description of one of your bakehouse days. I am particularly interested in how you co-ordinate the state of the oven with the preparation of the different items waiting to be cooked.

 

So ... (a beginners guide if you like) ... when is the fire lit, what wood, when do you expect it to arrive at a "start cooking" temperature, how do you judge the cooling down period and the times for putting in the different doughs, dishes, whatever. Where dough/yeast is involved how do people know when to start preparing the food. It is a fairly precise process isn't it? ... and no doubt a full day's programme. Do you provide food preparation areas/tables or is it all done at home?

 

Must be a great community atmosphere, both during and at the end of the day ... a great communal banquet?

 

 

I would not go so far as to say that there is no community life in the city, especially among the not-too-well-off, but it a takes different form, an exchange of different expertises, a different contact pattern.

Edited by Bondbug
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You need a person who is experienced with the oven. It has different temperature at different places. You have to spray in water for some breads to prevent their surface to rip off. For the order in which stuff is baken:

 

The oven is fired at 8am and the first Flammkuchen are shot into the oven at around 11:30 am (hope shooting in is correct for the german einschiessen). Einschiessen (shooting in?) is taking the wooden plate with the long pole and place the bread in the oven

mid-Rhof-brotBacken.ogg.jpg

 

If the oven is fired and the beech wood burning white it has biggest heat. People test the temperature with a testing cake/bread. In germany we name it Flammkuchen (flame cake), french took the recipe as tarte flambée. Our hessian slang names it Ploatz. Depending how soft/cross or even burned the Flammkuchen is the heat is adjusted. The Flammkuchen is then normally eaten as lunch by the people.

180px-Flameukeusche_2.jpg

 

After the Flammkuchen comes sour dough bread and then yeast dough cakes. Last is Dulges or any other lunch which is done in a real BIG pan for an hour.

 

The yeast dough cakes are done on iron plates:

180px-Bild-Waie-1.jpeg

 

We prefer the yeast dough thin and cross. Streusselkuchen we lay a thin layer of dough on such a plate, add a layer of sour fruits: rhubarb, currants, goose berries, early green apples or later in year Zwetschgen (a german variant of plums). And last the Streussel/crumbs is put on top.

 

There is a small room around the oven which is around 38 Celcius. The things which will be baken are placed there so the dough can 'work'.

Edited by chattius
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Streuselkuchen (crumb cake) is a German speciality. Traditionally it is made of a yeast dough covered with crumbs. The main ingredients for the crumbs are flour, sugar and butter.

 

57512-bigfix-rhabarber-streuselkuchen.jpg

 

We also did 3 4-pound round sour dough breads.

 

That looks sooo good. We have some german family friends and the wife makes this. Havent had it in a while but it tastes soo GOOD!

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Brilliant Chattius ... many thanks.

 

- what sort of building are you using here?

 

- I note that your oven is different from the ones used here. Here they have one big oven and the fire is inside this space. When the oven reaches the highest required temperature, the 'braises' (glowing cinders, I suppose) are either pushed to the back and sides and the cooking area sponged/cleaned a bit, or the 'braises' are removed. As far as I can see, you have the fire in a separate oven below the cooking space. I suppose the floor of the cooking space is iron? It looks a better and more manageable arrangement. I will build one like that.

 

- Hope you will not be offended -your English is excellent (who was it that taught me the word 'peen' and 'peening'!). I think when you say "We prefer the yeast dough thin and cross." that you probably mean "thin and crisp" .

 

P.S. my wife has just popped in to say to tell you she admires your English and wishes she had kept up her German just as well.

 

On a different subject ... just to mention, because this particular item only happens once a year. We have chives in the garden, and at this moment they are in flower. The pretty pink flowers in the pic, a bit like clover to look at, are very good chopped and mixed into a soft cheese. The cheese starts a bit like your Schmand, I think, then is strained well and pressed a bit to firm it. We mix various herbs (only one type per portion) with some of this cheese, chives, parsley, marjoram, etc and also ground cumin which works well. The chive flowers, as long as they are used fresh, are a once a year treat.

Edited by Bondbug
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Streusselkuchen (crumb cake), Schmandkuchen (sour-cream cake) and just yeast dough covered with fruits( plums and apples mainly) are the main cakes done at a bake house. Whipping cream cakes and such are just for one or 2 days (and the whipping cream can't stand the heat). The cakes from the bake house can be eaten for more than a week.

 

Wonder how to translate Schmand, its a bit like this: Smetana. Around 24+% fat normally. Schmandkuchen is another sweet/sour variant of cakes.

 

Johanna.jpg

 

This is a Schmandkuchen from a thin layer of yeast dough, then a layer of currants and then a layer of Schmand. If you google for recipes you have to know that bake house recipes are normally a bit diffrent than recipes for normal kitchen: yeast dough, and put on square iron forms to be shot into a big oven. So the served cake-pieces are squares and not looking like a triangle from a round cake.

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"Smetana" - we know the word but do not really have this product here. It is a sort of soured double-cream, or perhaps a curd cheese. Known but not used in French cuisine as far as we can see. It must be similar to the soured cream Viv uses to make her cheese at one stage in its production.

 

Your Schmandkuchen looks similar to the fruit/currant slices I used to love from English bakers, though I think the top layer was not your Schmand.

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Chives must be what we call Schnittlauch. But we don't use the flowers just the leaves. They are even put on our tarte flambee. We cut them down to nearly the bulbs 4-5 times a year. And freeze some for the winter. Will ask other people at our next bake house day if they use the flowers. We don't do soft cheese in our region. Our sour cream cheese is very local and if we add herbs then it is caraway.

 

Nearly all bake ovens have a lower part to reach a fitting working height. Normally the lower part is used to store wood. The lower part in our local house is an ash container. Their is an opening in the baking part and you can push the ash in so it falls into an iron container below. So the hot ash/cinder heats the air around the oven (some circulation system which was build before I was born and could look) and it takes longer to cool down. You also have more room for breads since no ash/cinder is in anymore. Another reason was the risc of forest fires by sparks and all the barns with hay around.

You don't want an iron ground plate. Stones are not affected by the acid from fruits which will drop down.

 

I think I looked at 30-40 bake houses now and nearly all of them are different. Most people I know who have private stone bake ovens have them outside. They are mainly for pizza, tarte flambee when drinking wine with friends and can hold the heat for like 3 hours.

 

A bake house for a village has of cause a different size.

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That's an interesting construction Chattius, but I will have to come back to it tomorrow - weekly shop then choir now. Not back till after 2300.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Sorry jnecros -I noticed this post when I looked in yesterday to apologise for absence till October, and thought I had better deal with it even though it is two months past.

 

When you are so accustomed to the elder that grows here, it is easy to forget that America is somewhat different, to put it mildly!

 

The European Elder is 'Sambucus nigra' and grows up to 30ft high. The American is 'Sambucus canadensis' and only grows to about 12ft high, according to our book. The general properties seem much the same, but with the american elder in particular you should not eat or chew any raw parts of the fresh plant ... they can cause poisoning. Infusions and syrups made with the flowers and berries are OK. Cooked berries are commonly used in pies, tarts, jam, as well as syrups.

 

All sorts of medicinal benefits from the proper use of the flowers and berries, and even the bark and root. Laxative effects too apparently, though I have not noticed this particularly, and I use a small amount of the flower syrup nearly everyday in summer as a refreshing drink. In winter the syrup made from the berries makes a great hot drink and is useful for tired throats and against colds.

 

Be glad to hear how your syrup turned out. Keep it in a cool place or in the fridge.

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We call Sambucus nigra: schwarzer(black = nigra) Holunder. More common at our place is roter (red) Holunder Sambucus racemosa. It grows at hills so some people call it Bergholunder (Berg = mountain). The ripe fruit isn't poisonous. But the seeds of both are poisonous as far as I know. But the poison gets destroyed by cooking. So if doing juice for gelee or for mixing drinks we cook it.

As with all fruits found in the forest we have a simple rule at home: eat no fruits uncooked. I did this mainly for wild forest strawberries and mushrooms but it is easier to understand if I say its valid for all plants in forest. The fox bandworm found its way to our area and I don't want my kids to do any riscs. Cooking kills the worm eggs and if it even breaks poison, the better.

If you read only 1 in 20 survives an infection by the fox bandworm for more than 20 years, sounds no good.

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  • 4 months later...

I come home after a protracted absence (shame on me) and come face to face with "fox bandworm"- disgusting things. Ugh. :sick: Try to forget them.

 

Just back from a week visit to England (Sussex), theoretically to visit family and distribute a bit of Santa Claus goodwill. Phew. What a disaster the weather made of all those months of planning. And what a rip-off was the English hotel where we were forced to stay a night on the way home. The similar stop in France on the way north was superb by comparison. Then a struggle through blizzards in central France to get home. Now peace and quiet for Xmas. Just the two of us. It is not like the old Xmases when the kids were young, but it will do.

 

Get the logs sawn, light the fire. Wrap the presents, few though they are this year. Cook the traditional Xmas dinner ... stuff the face about 1pm, :chef: not the French Reveillon or the meal after midnight mass.

 

We brought back some Stilton (present from a daughter) and Cheddar and Bristol Cream (can't get sherry in France), and I bought a bottle of top French red wine (usually well outside our budget). Wife made the Xmas pud and cake months ago. So having a good long recovery period after dinner is good. Just broaching the Cherry Brandy I made over six months ago ... though I fear that I used the last of the stuff those Canadians have the nerve to call whisky (tough having a daughter living in Canada). Funny thing about Cherry "Brandy", it still works well enough when you run out of brandy and use up the last of the Canadian "whisky" or the dark rum.

 

Need to earn some peace and quiet by doing some posts in here. Wife complains bitterly that the four recipe books she gave me a good month ago are still sitting by the computer as a memorial to my lack of dedication to Dark Matters. We also had a very good version of ham and egg pie today which is worth writing down, and I have a feeling that "pastry" will be a good subject for discussion out in the forum.

 

Excuse me a moment while I just finish scraping the bowl used for the Xmas cake icing. How many of you still get the bowl to scrape when the chef makes a cake?

 

Sometimes it is not so bad to be old and to have time to re-discover past pleasures.

 

Talking of drink, and beer, which I wasn't, I recall that we still have some bottles of Old Ale and Brown Ale, from Harveys of Lewes, that I brought home at least 12 years ago, and they are still excellent. Need to dig a couple (or so) out for Xmas. This is the season for Old Ale.

 

Happy Xmas - see you around. :)

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Bristol Cream for cooking ! Quiet fit of apoplexy while I recover.

 

Blue bottle ... yes indeed. We have to buy it on our infrequent trips to GB. Oddly enough the French do not really include sherry among their vast range of 'vins cuits' ("cooked wine:)) for aperitifs.

 

As for cooking, we used to be able, in GB, to fill bottles with cheap sherry at the local grocer. That was indeed cooking sherry, but it seems to have disappeared. Used to be able to take your empty bottles to the supermarket here in France and fill up with red wine. That seems to have disappeared too, as have the bottles with refundable deposits. What do kids do for pocket money these days!

 

Sorry - Merry Xmas Loco. Are all your family well ... including Mama Paula?

Edited by Bondbug
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  • 3 weeks later...

Long time since I posted here:

 

 

Baking house (continued):

We had a lot of black ice last weeks. So the old people decided to do an old recipe for bread which I never tried before. They said it would stay fresh for some weeks. So there would be no need to walk to the baking house in case of too much ice.

 

The recipe how I wrote it down, caution big amounts:

1 kilogramm Hirse (millet?) are boiled in 3 litres water. Whole water will be sucked up by the Hirse. Then the hirse has to cooldown.

 

Then 5kg full grain flour from Dinkel (spelt?), 10 cubes of yeast, 100 g salt and 2 litre water are mixed with the cooldowned Hirse. Put the mix in a warm place till the yeast did its job. Then stray some rolled oats on the shaped bread. I was told not really necessary, but better looking. An old baker I asked the other week sayed : old trick to avoid that breads will stick together if the ove nis filled too much.

 

It was enough for 10 breads around 2 pounds each. The baking in the baking house was like 20 minutes hot zone (my infrared temperature sensor from work said 235-240Celcius) and then 40 minutes around 190-195Celcius. They sprayed water into the oven from time to time and used a fork to pierce holes into the bread after around 10 minutes hot zone.

 

It was a very tasty bread, but it didn't last for weeks. 5 hungry kids and winter breaks. Dinkel/Spelt is harvested in our area so we have easy access to it. I hope I can redo the recipe with a baking automat. That was the reason I took the temperature inside the oven. With 3 kids doing sports now there might be too many soccer or hockey games when the baking house is heated on saturday afternoons.

 

I felt a bit guilty with all the high fat recipes I posted and then reading that many suffer from diabetis. My wife told me that this bread is not too bad because the old corn variants are high on dietary fiber.

Edited by chattius
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Chattius. I have been neglecting the kitchen lately and just spotted this. The quantities you deal in leave me gasping, compared with our little 90cm diameter oven and the quantities for two people! We had a 'four-day' (four=french for oven) yesterday. Maybe one cube of yeast for the bread, perhaps even less.

 

I am going to ask my wife to read your post and write down her reactions. She is the prime cook here and it is more than time she took a direct interest in the Dark Kitchen. :chef:

 

The millet flour looks interesting. I remember on a rare visit to Germany (Köln) in the 50s being struck by how different the bread in Germany was from the normal white bread, or even brown bread, of Britain and France.

 

However, as she only gets access to the PC when I am out watching rugby (on TV at local bar), we should have her comments this evening! :whistle:

 

P.S. Have to be careful what I say here, she will probably see this later.

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A more known millet/spelt mix is bible bread. Hesekiel gave a recipe in the bible which has several types of flour, two of them are millet and spelt. Spelt is replaced by wheat knowadays because spelt became rare outside central europe.

 

http://www.sunshinerecipes.com/biblebread.shtml

 

Back to our bread

A old women told me that they did the bread different in her youth, Adding some lentil puree to the millet/spelt mix. But fresh lentils are hard to get and the dried ones from shops wouldn't be the right ones, closest would be dried red ones, boiled and made to puree.

Edited by chattius
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