It is World Bread Day again and this time I brought you some sweet pastry from Argentina, facturas argentinas! Facturas argentinas can be described as the typical sweet pastry you may have for breakfast or as a snack. All bakeries offer an abudance of different options, they are typically either filled with quince paste (dulce de membrillo), the caramel dulce de leche, or a custard cream. They come in different shapes and sizes, but what they all have in common is the same dough, rough puff pastry. Actually, it seems to be impossible to find the proper English translation. In German we say “Plunderteig”, which means it is a yeast dough, which usually has butter layers in between. The rough part in this version, however, comes from the fact that the butter is not worked into the dough as a single layer, but instead mixed into the yeast dough directly and later layered. It probably is described best as rough plunder.
Finally another bread recipe on my blog! If you have been following for a while, you may know that our entire bread is baked by my husband. He has become quite an expert and for that reason I rarely ever post recipes even though we do eat our fair share, simply because my policy is that it is me who needs to have tried the recipe so that I can answer any questions you may have and be sure that it was successful. But this time I had a reason, I wanted to make French toast, I love French toast and thought I might give this sandwhich bread a try, it seemed simple enough.
This fluffy and soft braided bread is traditionally served for breakfast on Easter in Germany. I made it the first time last year in 2020 when Europe was in heavy lockdown due to COVID19 and it was hard to get flour and yeast. I was grateful I always have active-dry yeast on hand, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to make this delicious bread. I have tried many different types of this bread, but this one is by far the fluffiest and softest and for that reason I am confident to present it here.
It is finally Word Bread Day again, yay! This one is extra special to me. The worldwide pandemic is horrible, but one good thing that came from it is the fact that more people are into bread-making again. Suddenly it is en vogue to talk about sourdough and the like. Once you have made your first sourdough and made your first bread from scratch, you will understand. It is so amazing when you finally can eat the very first slice after so much labor, it is hard to explain.
In 2019 I celebrated World Bread day with this Artisan bread, in 2018 the bread was made with semolina and this year, well, this year we have Alex’s bread! My hubby Alex has been baking our bread for several years now. When he started, he barely knew what yeast was and had a hard time, but now he has become a master. He is the master of bread baking. When I told him that World Bread Day was approaching, he suggested making his own version of a bread, because, you know 2020 was crazy, so why not invent something? He graciously allowed me to document the process and write down the recipe for his bread.
Bread, finally you will find bread on my blog again. Reason is the World Bread Day and for this occasion my husband baked the below artisan country bread. I have mentioned this beforehand, but my husband is much better at bread baking than me. That’s probably because his grandfather was the bread baker of the entire village. He made sure the entire village community had bread and cake at hand. My husband currently bakes our entire bread consumption and he definitely is much better at it than me. For that reason I don’t have that many bread recipes on my blog. I have Danish yoghurt buns, a simple sour dough bread, and an Italian bread with semolina and olive oil on here and this simply has to do with the fact that I always test the recipe several times myself before publishing it. It goes without saying that I have tested each recipe myself.
Can I interest you in an easy sourdough bread even if you don’t cultivate sourdough and only need to start the night before? If your answer is yes, then this bread is meant for you. If you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I don’t post many bread recipes on my blog even though I am an avid bread lover. The reason is simple, it is because my beloved husband rules the bread kingdom in this family.
He graciously gave me permission to post one recipe for world bread day, if you want to try a recipe with semolina, check it out here. Well, and when I asked you on Instagram whether you would like to have the recipe for this bread, you said yes, so here goes. This is a new recipe and it is a simple sourdough bread.
You may have wondered why I barely ever introduce bread on my baking blog as I do today with this Italian bread with semolina and olive oil. Yes, there are a few recipes, such as this farmer’s bread, these Danish buns with yoghurt, or homemade croissants. You may think that I mainly eat cakes and cookies, but that is definitely not true. There is a very simple reason why I barely publish bread recipes. The reason is my beloved hubby who is the master of bread-baking. He even has baking running in his blood, his grandfather was the baker of the entire village. So you can probably imagine that he is very good at baking bread, much better than me. Well, at least today. His beginnings were rather humble, I distinctly recall when I told him about the fact that yeast likes it warm and cozy. I also remember when we made our first yeast bread together. He very awkwardly punched the bread and asked me how I knew when the right consistency was reached.
But soon after his humble beginnings he transformed to an excellent bread baker. He works in IT, he is a computer scientist and for that reason he did a lot of research on bread baking, he did experiements and in general loves a very scientific approach to baking. One blogger who definitely contributed to him becoming a master is Lutz from the blog Plötzblog (in German). Lutz also has an extremely scientific approach to baking, he even tells you exactly at which temperature the bread has to rise. His precise language and very scientific recipes were music to the ears of my hubby.
Bread is a huge thing in Germany, in case you didn’t know. The one thing Germans miss the most when living abroad is bread. We do love bread. My grandpa always says bread is very precious to him. When I spent a year in Canda after highschool, I started to bake my own bread after a while. I hated the squishy Canadian bread. I wanted something with whole wheat and rye, something which filled me up and kept me going for a long time.