Hello douglasray,

I finally have time to answer your questions here, which I had the pleasure of reading last night in the last few minutes before my night shift.

Now I'm sitting here relaxing with my first fresh cup of hot coffee and can take my time, as I now have three days off. Unfortunately, I don't know which country you live in and your profile doesn't say anything about it either. It would be important to know where you could buy ingredients, because what good are recipes from my drawer if you can't get them or can only get them under difficult circumstances? It might also be important to know what units of measurement you are accustomed to using.

Nevertheless, I would like to share a few initial ideas with you here. As a mother of four school-age children, there is one food that is a recurring item in our household: bread. After all, four hungry beaks need to be provided with the necessary sandwiches for the school breaks. Is it also the case in your country that the price of bread and other baked goods has almost exploded in recent years? Due to inflation and high energy costs?

But we have been baking our own bread here for a long time, not just since the price explosion. Why? Quite simply, our home-baked bread is many times cheaper, but the quality is just as much better and we also have a much greater variety in our bread because we bake it ourselves.

How does that work? We always buy various bread baking mixes from our favorite discount store. In Germany, these are usually packaged in one kilo packs. Every discounter, whether Lidl or Aldi, Edeka or Netto, Penny, Norma or Kaufland, they all always offer at least three different baking mixes, some of the above even up to 8 different varieties.

Starting with the baking mix for farmhouse bread, wholemeal bread, sunflower bread through to fine white bread and often ciabatta is available from all of them. With these baking mixes, baking bread is no longer an art, because all that needs to be added is water. And no, you don't need any ... sorry ... idiotic and really superfluous and, to make matters worse, extremely impractical bread maker.

All you need is an oven, a baking tray, a kitchen mixer with dough hook, kitchen scales, a mixing bowl and a measuring jug. Almost everyone will have these utensils in the house.

All you have to do now is put the baking mix in the mixing bowl, add the amount of water indicated on the packet and then knead the whole thing for a few minutes at the highest setting to form a homogeneous dough.

Leavening agents such as yeast or sourdough are usually already included in the baking mixes. After kneading, we always cover the bowl with a moist tea towel and place it in a warm place so that the dough can rise for approx. 45 to max. 60 minutes.

After the rising time, the dough must be kneaded again, but now on a work surface that has been thoroughly dusted with flour. You can be a little more generous with the extra flour. Shape the kneaded dough into a loaf, place it on the baking tray lined with baking paper, cover again with a damp cloth and leave to rise again for around 35 minutes. The warmer the place, the faster and stronger the loaf will rise.



Now it just needs to be baked according to the instructions on the packet, usually for 10 minutes at around 180°C in a fan oven, then another 40 minutes at 150°C and your bread is ready. Place it on a rack to cool, the smell of freshly baked bread will certainly make your mouth water.



Up to this point, everything has been simple enough for you to follow, so that's not much to think about.

The real thought-provoking ideas are just beginning. All these baking mixes are compatible with each other, in any case if from one company/mill, but often also if from different companies. So why not bake yourself a loaf from half a packet of sunflower bread and half a packet of farmhouse bread? You'll have a different taste to the loaves before, sunflower bread and farmhouse bread pure.

And now I'm increasing the variety of breads for you by a factor of 100. How? Quite simply by telling you what you can add to your bread dough to suit the mix.

Almost all seeds and nuts are valuable foods, so why not add linseed, oat flakes, sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds to your bread? The best way to do this is to knead it the second time with the extra flour.



You can also add various types of vegetables to your bread, and grated carrots are a particularly good addition to the various types of brown bread. Of course, you will get a really hearty and tasty bread if you add diced onions or onion rings that have been lightly fried until translucent to the dough before kneading it a second time.

Perhaps you have some mashed potato left over from your last meal? Then take the leftover mashed potato and add it to a farmer's bread and voilá, you have a potato bread.

Do you get ciabatta baking mixes? Then try them and add black pitted olives or diced tomatoes or walnuts, for example.

Speaking of nuts, almost all bread mixes are suitable for adding walnuts or hazelnuts, which will give them a different flavor.

How deliciously hearty does gray bread taste when chopped wild garlic or chives have been added? Can you imagine? And while I'm on the subject of really savory variations like wild garlic bread, imagine what it could be like if you added finely diced streaky bacon alongside the wild garlic. Of course, you can also add diced bacon to the bread dough without the wild garlic.

Oh dear, I haven't said a word yet about all the things you can sprinkle on top of the bread before baking. Sesame seeds, poppy seeds, shredded or grated hard cheese, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds.

You see, there's plenty of room for a lot of variation here. And I am far from finished, because you can make a lot more with bread baking mixes. What, I'll tell you tomorrow, for today, this is enough.

All the best, divingA

Hello douglasray,

here is the next answer, which will be the last for at least the next 7 days until April 26th, because tomorrow I start the next block with a total of 6 night shifts.

Have you ever heard the term "gazpacho"? My first time gazpacho came from a tetra pack. Because that's how you find the cold summer soup in every supermarket in the south of France. And even this bagged soup left me with a pleasant feeling of satisfaction: Fresh and cooling on the one hand, deep, salty and filling on the other. Since I've been living in Germany, gazpacho has rarely if ever made it onto my shopping list - too few supermarkets stock it here. Maybe it's better that way!

But now that Mediterranean and southern European weather conditions are increasingly common even here in Berlin, I've decided to tackle the matter again. And this time it's homemade, of course!

Like many local delicacies, gazpacho was born as a poor man's food: originally from Andalusia (Spain), the cold soup didn't have much to do with the vegetable-heavy feast you know today. On the contrary, it was a bread soup in which old bread scraps were "recycled" into a filling meal with the help of garlic and olive oil. Tomatoes and peppers, on the other hand, only later spilled over from the New World into the repertoire of Spanish farmers.

However, like almost every "leftover meal", it is basically a seasonal product: whatever is available is used. For this reason, a good gazpacho stands and falls with the taste of sun-ripened tomatoes and the freshest peppers. What else goes into the soup varies greatly from recipe to recipe and the craziest variations can be found online. I have deliberately opted for a reduced and purist version in the style of the Andalusian original, in which the overall picture is defined by the quality of the individual ingredients without getting lost in the noise of too many flavors.

The vegetables must be ripe and this is particularly true of the tomatoes (which, strictly speaking, are not even vegetables but fruit). The tomatoes form the base of your gazpacho and give it depth and sweetness. As it's not easy to get hold of really full-bodied tomatoes in German supermarkets (unfortunately, you only notice this when you get home), I supplement the fresh tomatoes with a few oven-dried tomatoes. They are sprinkled with a little sugar and salt and dried at 180°C for around 60 minutes. The result is a concentrate of tomato-rich flavors that are guaranteed to catapult your gazpacho to a whole new gustatory level.

Paprika is (nowadays) definitely one of the key ingredients for a successful gazpacho. I have opted for a mixture of red and green peppers: The red bell pepper brings a nice sweetness, while the green pepper has a pleasant bitter note.

The salad cucumber makes a rather subtle contribution to the taste of the gazpacho, but provides freshness and increases the liquid content so that you don't need to add water later.

Opinions differ on the use of garlic and onions. For my recipe, it was clear from the outset that garlic should be included, as it is - before the tomatoes - one of the original ingredients. Onions, on the other hand, give the gazpacho a somewhat burning spiciness that can suppress other flavors and, in particular, make the special spiciness of the garlic less pronounced. My recipe therefore does not use onions at all. Instead, I use fresh(!) garlic.

Bread is essential to gazpacho, that's for sure. However, there are other aspects that still need to be investigated:
Does it have to be toast? Most recipes actually list toast, i.e. pure white bread. The primary aim of gazpacho is to bind the liquid and create a certain creaminess. Gluten is primarily responsible for this and therefore all types of bread containing gluten are suitable. Very grainy or dark breads would not make any difference to the texture after blending, but the color might turn a little grey. I used good sourdough bread in my recipe (I hardly ever have standard toast in the house) and am definitely impressed with the result.

Does the bread have to be old? Originally, gazpacho was a way of upgrading old bread and making it edible. In this sense, it would be true to the original to use old bread. In fact, however, it made no difference, as I soak the bread anyway and so the moisture content is always very high.

Does the bread need to be soaked? Soaked bread seems to bind better than dry bread. I haven't quite figured out this difference yet, but I suspect that the starch can activate a little during the half hour that the bread is in the water. Before the bread is thrown into the blender, it should be squeezed out. The aim here is to avoid adding too much water to the mixture - if necessary, this can be added later.

Olive oil is a must, and in large quantities. You should definitely use a very high-quality, cold-pressed oil. You can't always tell the quality of olive oil at first glance, so here are a few tips:

The 750ml bottle should not cost less than € 7,5. Not everything below this limit is bad and not everything above is excellent, but good oil simply has its price.

The oil should scratch your throat. This is due to oleocanthal, a substance that has properties similar to ibuprofen and has a natural anti-inflammatory effect. In other words, the "pungency" of olive oil tends to characterize pristine olive varieties that produce the healthiest oil.

The blending process is undoubtedly essential: gazpacho thrives on an absolutely homogeneous, slightly creamy consistency. In this context, many recipes raise the question of the tomato skins and seeds: Leave them in or remove them?

Removing the skins takes a lot of effort and is actually only possible by blanching (score the skin, hold the tomatoes in boiling water for 20 seconds, then the skin can be removed more easily). So the news is all the better: no, skins and seeds do not need to be removed, because we achieve an absolutely homogeneous texture either by blending or straining.

My recommendation is definitely to use a powerful blender: My beloved Vitamix* easily chops the vegetables, including the peel and seeds, and conjures up a wonderfully creamy texture. I do this step by step: First, I blend all the vegetables on the turbo setting for one to two minutes. Then I add the bread and salt and blend again on the turbo setting for one to two minutes. Finally, I add the olive oil and blend until the gazpacho has a smooth and completely homogeneous texture.

If your blender doesn't like peelings and seeds, you should pass the gazpacho through a fine sieve. I recommend only doing this with the vegetable mixture, as the bread and oil will make straining more difficult. Then put the strained vegetable mixture back into the blender and do the second round with the bread and the third with the oil as described above.

INGREDIENTS for 4 portions

500 g very ripe tomatoes
50 g very ripe cherry tomatoes
50 g bread of your choice
1/2 red bell bell pepper
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 cucumber
1 fresh garlic clove
75 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt
lemon juice to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Roast the tomatoes

Cut open the cherry tomatoes and place them on an oven tray with the cut side facing up. Sprinkle with a little salt and sugar.
Place in an oven preheated to 180°C for about 60 minutes. Leave the finished tomatoes to cool completely. Incidentally, the oven-dried tomatoes are also great for use in other dishes, so you can make a few more at the same time.

Prepare the ingredients

Place the bread in a deep plate and pour a large glass of water over it. Leave to soak for at least half an hour. (Extra tip: If you still have some beef, chicken or vegetable stock somewhere, use this instead of clear water for soaking. For my gazpacho, I also like to sacrifice half a stock cube, dissolve it in hot water according to the instructions on the packet and then soak the bread in it). Cut the washed vegetables into large pieces.

Blend Step 1

Place the vegetables and dried tomatoes in the blender jug and blend on the highest setting for one to two minutes.
If you are using a Vitamix* high-performance blender, you do not need to blend your vegetable mix, but can go straight to the second blending step.
Otherwise, pass the vegetable mix through a sieve.

Blending step 2

Squeeze out the soaked bread by hand and add to the vegetable mix together with the salt. Blend on the highest setting for one to two minutes.

Add the olive oil and blend again on the highest setting. You should now have a creamy, completely homogeneous texture.
I like to spoon my gazpacho myself and therefore leave it creamy. If you want to drink it, add half a glass of water (or cold stock) and season with salt.

Finish

Season to taste with salt and lemon and chill for about an hour. Garnish with herbs (I like to use mint) and serve cold.

If you bring this gazpacho along with the bread muffins to a garden party, you are guaranteed to be the star of the party. But it will also taste great if you make it for yourself at home.

Finally, you can also keep this soup in the fridge for a few days.

And now I wish you bon appétit, divingA