Kringel bread

Kringel is a Estonian traditional sweet-bread cake that appears to be originated from Germany. Is knotted and sprinkled with nuts and chocolate and filled with cream cheese or raisins. A standard dessert at Estonian birthday’s parties.The dough is similar with traditional Romanian sweet bread ( cozonac) a cake for all holidays: Easter or Christmas, wedding or christening. Every Romanian has a recipe from her mother or grandmother. My grandma always cooks huge quantities of sweet bread for Easter or Christmas. There is a lot of Romanian sweet bread recipes on the net for that I chose today to make a Estonian version in my own Romanian way. I made extra dough for my daughter to play with and she came out with some beautiful cinnamon rolls bread.

Ingredients
24 g dry yeast,
75 ml warm water,
550 ml milk,
500 g sugar,
1 tsp. salt,
1 tsp. cinnamon powder
3 eggs,
900 g plain flour, sieved
225 g butter, melted
Filling
250 g soft butter
2 tsp. cinnamon powder
250 g raissins
250 g chocolate
150 g butter,
100 g tasted almonds,
Method
Preheat oven to 200°c. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the warm water.
Stir in the milk, salt, cinnamon, eggs and 200g of the flour, until the mixture forms a batter. Beat until smooth before adding about 300g more flour. Beat well, until the dough is quite smooth and glossy. Stir in the melted butter. Add the remaining flour and mix to stiff dough. Turn the mixture out onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. Return the dough to a lightly greased mixing bowl and leave to rise for an hour or until double in size. Take the dough out of the bowl and rolled out to a thickness of 1cm. Spread the softened butter evenly over the pastry, then sprinkle with raisins, cinnamon and sugar.

You then roll it up Swiss roll style and slice it in half lengthwise. Twist the dough together, lifting each half over the other in turn. Finally, shape the bread into a bretzel shape and transfer to a buttered baking tray and leave to rise for another hour.

Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 190C  for a further 30-35 minutes until dark golden brown and cooked through. In the meantime, prepare the chocolate topping by melting the chocolate and butter in a bowl over boiling water or in microwave. Once out of the oven, let the bread cool down a bit, place on a serving plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce and toasted almonds.

To make a savory, Kringel, leave out the raisins and sugar, fill them with cream cheese, bacon, spinach, pepper sundried tomato and cheese then sprinkle the Kringel with grated cheddar. Here is the pictures of one I made.

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Focaccia

There is nothing like freshly baked bread and focaccia is one of the easiest bread you can bake from scratch. Is a simple bread to make at home and is related to pizza, but not considered to be the same. The flavor of the oil is important, so it's advisable to use a good, strong, fruity virgin olive oil for this. Extremely easy and great for sandwiches and snacks. A wonderful, quick alternative to garlic bread. Is a flat Italian bread traditionally flavored with olive oil and salt and often topped with herbs, onions, tomato, olives or other flavor can be added to your wish . This recipe is for traditional way but you can make the dough in the bread machine too and bake in the oven. It's practically a meal in itself, perfect for picnics with salad or serve a big chunk with a bowl of soup.
This Italian flat bread is prepared from a soft dough enriched with olive oil. Extra olive oil is traditionally sprinkled over the dough in generous quantities before baking. Focaccia makes an ideal accompaniment to Italian meats to create a wonderfully antipasto plate with cheeses and salads.
It will take some time (about 3 hours), but much of the time is waiting for the dough to rise, so you can do something else in between.
Ingredients:
1 packet dry yeast 12 gr or fresh yeast cube 50 gr
1 Teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon salt (~12 gr)
650 ml warm water
1 kg bread flour
2-3 Tablespoons fresh rosemary or 1 Tablespoon dried rosemary, finely chopped.
200-250 ml good fruity olive oil
50 gr grated Parmesan cheese
250 gr cherry tomatoes
1 Tablespoon sea salt
Mix the yeast and 100 ml of warm water together in a jug, add the sugar, 50 ml olive oil and about 2 tablespoon of the flour.
Put the yeast mixture somewhere warm to activate for about 10 min, or until the yeast mixture is fizzing gently. Sift the flour into a big clean bowl and make a hole in the center. Pour in the yeast mixture and knead it energetically into the flour and add salt and little by little of the remaining water and knead for about 10 min. The dough should be soft and sticky on the hands. Set aside in a warm place to rise for about 1 h or until double in size.

 

Preheat the oven to 200 degree C. Put some of the olive oil into tray and with well-oiled hands shape your dough. Now it's ready for topping. Force dips in the surface of the focaccia with your fingertips, then generously add cherry tomatoes, rest of olive oil, Parmesan cheese, rosemary, sea salt and then leave to puff up again for about 30 min-1 h or double in size. Bake for about 30 to 45 min or until the top is golden and crisp and look well cooked in the center. Cool on a wire rack and serve warm.

For variation you can stuff the focaccia with grated cheese or ham to create a nice sandwich

Here is one made with slices of fresh tomatoes and olives and one with mozzarella cheese and red bell peppers.

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