Posts for Tag: baking

Is everyone baking except me? – A Berlin Coronavirus Diary

I wasn't planning on going to the grocery store today, but I passed a fairly empty Lidl on my walk (should we call them constitutionals to sound fancier?) so I popped in. Under normal circumstances, I go to the grocery store every couple of days and buy a few things. I like grocery stores, even after several years in Germany, I get a kick out of browsing the selection – less than most US supermarkets, but much cheaper – and trying out the pre- and semi-prepared foods. These days, I'm trying to go less frequently and spend less time there, which means that I am keeping a list and don't linger as much.

Inspired by some other people's activity on Instagram and elsewhere, I wanted to buy some fresh yeast to try baking bread. I've never baked bread (excluding things like banana bread or corn bread which work differently) before, and why not try something new? Unfortunately...

(Photo of a refrigerated shelf, above the sign for "fresh baking yeast" for 9 cents, the shelf is empty. Below the price tag, there's a handmade sign that says in German "Yeast -> max 3 portions")

The sweet reward of a recipe "translation" well-done: banana bread

With a couple of bananas making their way from ripe to too-mushy-to-eat on my shelf in the kitchen, I decided to dust off my recipes and try my hand at banana bread.

Two things that are different about baking and cooking in Germany. First of all, they use metric units like grams and milliliters, which is to be expected. Second of all, and this catches me off guard every time, they don't use volume measures in their recipes, e.g. 3 cups of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt. Instead, most recipes call for a certain number of grams of flour. To make things even more confusing, baking powder (Backpulver) and baking soda (Natron) usually come in single-use packets instead of in jars or containers, so while an American recipe may list 2 tablespoons of baking soda, a German one might just say two packets of Natron.

My very simple banana bread recipe (courtesy of my friend Miler) looks like this:

  • 1/2 cup of oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 3-5 bananas
  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1 teaspoon of baking soda

Converted into metric and weight units, this is what I ended up with, using the guidelines on this handy reference "the Metric Kitchen":

  • 120mL of oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 200g of sugar
  • 3-5 bananas
  • 240g of flour
  • 7-8g of baking soda (1 packet)

(Mix oil and sugar, then add eggs, then bananas. Make sure it's all evenly mixed. Add flour and baking soda and mix until completely blended. Bake at 375*F / 190*C for about 30 minutes)

The main thing that takes some getting used to is that volume to weight conversion depends on the density of the substance. A cup of sugar weighs significantly more than a cup of flour, so when converting, you have to find the right table for that ingredient.

After overthinking this, I went into the kitchen and actually started getting ready to bake, when I discovered that there isn't a scale! Instead, there's a giant measuring cup with markings for how much volume is approximately how many grams... so after taking the time to convert from volume to weight, I wound up using volume to approximate the weight anyway!

Here's how it looked part way through baking process:

I'm not enough of a baker to know how important the exact ratios of the ingredients are, but it tastes to me like the banana bread turned out fine. It tasted especially delicious fresh out of the oven.

I baked pumpkin bread!

Pumpkin Bread (7)

I baked pumpkin bread today at around 11pm after Tom left to catch his train. I've had a box of Trader Joe's pumpkin bread mix (just add oil, water, and eggs) sitting around for a few weeks now. Instead of just using a pan, I used a bundt cake pan Cara picked up a few weeks ago. Since the recipe calls for a regular bread form, I had to watch it like a hawk to make sure nothing was over- or under-cooked (it took about 30 minutes instead of the 55-60 in the instructions).

I'm thinking about making a glaze, I have powdered sugar but no milk. Maybe if I melted some vanilla ice cream and slowly mixed extra sugar into that?

All the pumpkin bread photos in a slideshow