Life is too short for bad coffee. So I strive to let my crema ooze out of the espresso machine like thick amber honey (like we did in the picture). Not an easy task, but practice makes perfect. Making a good espresso is almost an art. It’s hard to get it right with every shot.

But I know these tips will bring you closer to that goal:

Perfect Espresso!
The quality of an espresso depends on a combination of factors: time, temperature, grinder calibration, dosage, tamping and.. your coffee. A well-brewed espresso has a smooth amber golden froth: the ‘crema’.

1. Buy freshly roasted beans of high quality or roast your own.
2. If you use coffee beans, grind them just before you brew the espresso. Ground coffee soon loses its flavour and aroma through exposure to air and humidity.
3. Heat the espresso cups beforehand. Make sure that the filter holder fits securely in the machine and let hot water flow through it for 3 seconds.
4. Place 7 to 8 grams of coffee in the filter holder for each cup of espresso. Adjust the dosage till you find the right flavour for you. Use a little more if you like your espresso robust, a little less if you like it mild.
5. Now tamp the coffee. Exert pressure of around 15 kg and turn the holder 45 degrees to ‘set’ the coffee. Clean the holder of excess coffee in one short sharp movement, so the surface is even.
6. Place the filter holder in the machine with the cups underneath. The ideal time for one espresso is 20 -- 25 seconds.
7. Test your crema: it has the right consistency when a little spoonful of sugar lays on top of your cream for at least a second. (ideally it is 5-10 mm thick)

Note: also within world of the much praised 100% Arabica coffee beans there is a lot of difference in quality. Every country has it’s own classification system for coffee quality. Look for high quality beans (‘specialty coffee’) and do not forget about the coffee farmer! Look for coffee that supports initiatives to give farmers a good price for their coffee. For example: Cup of Excellence, Rainforest Foundation, E-Café Foundation (Ethiopia).

Also read my tips on good quality coffee beans

I decided to marry two recent favourites in these cupcakes. I used rose liqueur in the cakes and macha green tea in the frosting. Ideally I’d end up with rose tea cupcakes that of course would go perfect with a cup of Rose tea, because you can never have enough of a good thing. I am quite happy with the first result. Next time I can add some more rose flavour, because it was a bit faint (I actually would have to tell you it was in there, and you would go..Oh Yeah now I taste it!…).

Darn..I thought everything was coming up roses but I am all out of Eden Rose tea and white tea with rose and water lilies (current number one with me) but top tea sellers Betjeman & Barton are all the way in The Hague. I guess I have to console myself with more cupcakes.

Still no sign of our new Rofco ’semi professional’ baking oven. So while waiting for it, we might as well bake some more bread in our little normal household oven with a capacity of one bread at a time. We hope to improve the crustiness of the bread crust and achieve a more open, creamy bread structure with the Rofco and can’t wait to try it out. But for the time being we are already producing bread that’s a 100 times better and tastier than your average factory or supermarket bread. And the added bonus of the smell of freshly baked bread filling the house is also something I can never get enough of. Ed made the ‘pain rustique’ from the book ‘Bread’ by Jeffrey Hamelman for the third time this week. It’s turning out to be a great recipe with a nice tasting crumb, however, like I said, the crust softens during cooling.

Third go at the ‘pain rustique’ proofed in our German bannetons (recipe from ‘Bread’ by Hamelman)

We use bread flour we get from a miller who uses a real windmill to produce great quality wheat and spelt flour, both regular and organic. The windmill is called ‘De Zandhaas’ and is located in the village of ‘Santpoort’ above the town of Haarlem. Flour is at it’s best in the first few months after milling. But it cannot be to fresh either, because the dough would become too springy and elastic to knead and shape and reluctant to rise. The flour needs to oxidise a few weeks before it is used. This process is called sweating. Commercial mills speed up this process by bleaching or adding latent oxidisers. This sounds to us like something you don’t need. Patience is a good thing, this goes for bread and a whole lot of other stuff. However old flour can go rancid (especially whole wheat) so do not use a forgotten bag you found in the back of your storage cupboard.

Check the production and ‘best before’ date for optimum quality and support your local miller!

We are still baking bread. I have baked a white bread with a sort of nice slash pattern on the side of the bread and Ed has baked a 20 hour retarded (in the refrigerator) fermented bread with 20% whole wheat flour.

Ed’s Pain Rustique – based on 50% poolish (6 hour fermentation)

Ed’s Pain Rustique – Nice crumb

A 1.2 kilogram 20% whole wheat loaf by Ed (20 hour retarded first fermentation)

We started baking bread like crazy again after a little break. The reason; we wanted to see if we also could bake great artisan breads. We also got fed up with fluffy tasteless supermarket breads. However, in our small oven we can only bake one bread at the time and never get the crusty crust we admire. That is why after some study on the internet we decided to order a bread baking oven. It is a semi professional oven ( Rofco B20 ) with three tiers of chamotte brick which can bake 6 breads at the time. The heat stored in those brick floors should give a better crust because of the more intense heat radiation. The oven is also better sealed so the much desired damp air (by means of steam) is kept in the oven during the first stage of baking and has two steam vents to release this damp air during the final baking phase. This gives a better ‘bread spring’ during this phase and of course also the cracks and tears a nice artisan bread is supposed to have. We have to wait for two more weeks before delivery and Ed is reading all the technical bread baking books he can get his paws on. He tells me about water percentages and calculations however this is not something I really like. I like to feel and look at the dough and use my senses and add a little water at the time to get it right.

Here are some pictures of our current bread baking projects in anticipation of our new Rofco. I am still trying to come up with a good name for him or her (the oven) .

Bread made by Ed with a lot of poolish

Flat 3 strand braid bread by Rieke

Bread made by Ed with a 22 hour delayed ferment

Looks rather good inside! Tastes great.

I made a Dutch Frisian sugar loaf… hmm!

Pain a L’Ancienne made by Ed, a recipe by Peter Reinhart

Bread proofing in our new German ‘mandjes’