Although I have not written a #breadbakers post for a loooong time, I was prolific. I am still baking roughly one or two times a week a loaf of bread and for this rotation I have two new favourites both from an amazing-super-wonderful book: Anita Sumer, Noch verrückter nach Sauerteig. This is her second book (first one is Sourdough mania) and – pity on all of you who speak English – it is not translated. But the book does its name honour (roughly translated: even more crazy about sourdough) because it is full of amazing and for my impressible baker’s soul, very new recipes.
I got the book as a Christmas gift, but shame on me, have only tried two recipes. But these very often.
One recipe is a very dark bread where the baking process begins with fermenting a lot of nuts and seeds.
This sounds complicated, but no, it only means you put the starter into the nuts and not the flour. And it works. Every time. And I may have changed the mix of nuts, seeds, and flour types very liberally. The original bread asks for black sesame, flax, sunflower, millet, rye flour and and and. I may have used walnuts, chia, spelt-rye flour, almonds… you see, very flexible recipe.
To call the second one a bread would be a lie. It is a soft cloud with subtle sweetness which is eaten in a blink. I am talking about Anita Sumer‘s signature bread cake, a bread cake made with sweet sourdough. Her new cookbook has a lot of new cake like concoctions but there is one recipe which is perfect for me, the „a lot from one“ dough. Here she gives the baker an only slightly sweet sourdough which when properly proofed can be used for a jam cake, for chocolate brioche, for sweet fried doughnuts and more. I love this flexibility. Till the last moment I can change my mood from almond filling to poppy seed or to bake the brioche plain.
The first time I made this dough was a complete disaster as I used old lievito madre (ca 1 week old). Please, dear baker, don’t roll your eyes. My lievito madre is very „triebstark“ (no idea how to translate…) meaning I can bake a wonderful bread with the old sourdough, no problems. But for the sweet dough which contains eggs and butter, the old lievito was not strong enough.
Second try with fresh starter worked perfect. Problem solved. But beware the sweet sourdough is no recipe for the spontaneous because as just mentioned, the starter must be fresh and then you need to freshen it up two times with sugar, water, and flour to get it properly fit for baking. I estimate you need to start two days in advance.
But its worth it. The brioche (or what ever you want to make) has a wonderful taste, not a hint of sourness, not too sweet and so cloudy. You notice, I am in love with this sweet sourdough. It is so cute to observe how a tiny ball of dough is getting bigger and bigger
Right now, another sweet dough is proofing on the heater, and I am still indecisive if I will fill it with one layer of poppy seed and one with almond paste. Or if I bake it plain….
Thank you 
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