Category Archives: Bread

August 14th, 2017

Spelt Potato Bread

Category Bread Tags: Buttermilch, Lieblingsbrot, only with yeast, Spelt, wheat free, wood fired oven 48 Responses

I was making dessert in my summer warm kitchen and when whipping cream the cream turned nearly instantly to butter. Luckily it was still unsweetened and so I took the butter clumps out to wash them and use them as delicious homemade butter. The buttermilk was at this point not fermented, so I decided to inoculate it with some creme fraice from the fridge, thinking: if you can use buttermilk to inoculated cream for creme fraiche it will work the other way round, too. And it did! After 24 hours the buttermilk was thick and tasted sour.

But what should I do with this tiny amount? Making bread with buttermilk is always great and so I decided to put it into the dough I was kneading for the bread baking in the wood fired oven in the local museum.

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July 24th, 2017

After Work Bread

Category Bread, Overnight Tags: overnight, Sourdough, Sweet starter. malt, Wheat 32 Responses

Sometimes it can happen even in a bread loving household: no bread! This happened to me some weeks ago when we had to defrost our freezer and so started to eat our way through all frozen goods. And then – in the middle of my working week – all bread was eaten and only to lonely rolls where left in the freezer. Enough to ensure our breakfast the next morning – but for the rest of the week we needed bread. And so I checked the flour stocks, took out some sweet starter and sourdough from the fridge and kneaded a dough before I went to sleep. The dough rested in the fridge meanwhile.

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July 16th, 2017

Klever Schwarzbrot

Category Bread, Bread baking for beginners Tags: Anfänger, only with yeast, regional, Rye, Wheat 29 Responses

There are so many different variants of black bread in Germany that I always feel sorry that my stomach can not cope to much of it. So I can bake one just once in a while and to bake me through all the regional variants will take some time. One really fascinating black bread recipe is the “Klever Schwarzbrot”. It uses buttermilk instead of sourdough. This adds enough acid to make the rye bake-able.

The bread has fine lactic flavour in combination with the sweetness of the molasses makes this bread special. And to add some complex flavour notes I added for my recipe a preferment with rye meal, buttermilk and tiny bit of yeast. The preferment adds not only aroma but helps the meal to soak up enough liquid which makes the bread more moist. The same is true for the soaker: the roasted bread crumbs add flavour and the nuts and coarse meal can soak up the liquid. And while this two additional steps makes the recipe more complicated then the “fast” variant with a lot of yeast but it makes it so flavourful that it is worth work. Continue reading →

July 1st, 2017

Whole Wheat Braid

Category Bread Tags: Biga, Butter, Sahne, whole grain 17 Responses

And the next recipe is again a recipe which circled for a long time in my mind before I would write it down. But as soon as I had penned it to paper I was itchy to try it. But with sometime circumstances slowing me down. This time it was first the bread baking course I gave and then the monthly bread baking day in the old wood fired community oven in our local history museum which keeps me from testing. And as I bake more then one bread in the wood fired oven my freezer was afterwards well stocked and with no free space. But…

… I found an excuse for baking the recipe anyway (visiting family or friends is always a good excuse – I can not come with empty hands, can I?).

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June 22nd, 2017

Porridge Bread with roasted Buckwheat

Category Bread Tags: Ahornsirup, Flohsamenschale, Lieblingsbrot, oat, Rye, Sourdough, wood fired oven 22 Responses

Some breads sneak their way into my my mind and stay there for awhile while my subconscious mind works on the recipe. This time it was a short sentence about a bread MC from Blog Farine tasted in Sandeep Gywalis Bakery: Porridge and roasted buckwheat, filled with many complex flavour notes. There was not much more information but this was enough for my brain to come up with a recipe.

The monthly bread baking day in the local museum Bergneustadt was the perfect opportunity to bake the bread. Because what can make a delicious bread even more delicous? Right – baking it in an old wood fired community oven! And so I roasted the buckwheat the night before and then milled the roasted kernels to a fine, dark brown flour. The smell of the flour was astonishingly delicious: Malty and buckwheaty notes creates a rich and deep flavour. And it was suprising how much water the flour needed when I mixed the sourdough with this flour. The sourdough developed rather strong sour note.

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June 16th, 2017

Potato Rye Bread

Category Bread Tags: Caraway, coriander, fennel, Poolish, Potatoes, Rye, Sourdough, wheat free 49 Responses

Already for some time I had the idea of a mild aromatic pure rye bread in my mind. But I need – as everyone knows – someone to share breads with high percentage. A big family get together for which I volunteered to bake all bread needed was the chance to bring my idea of this bread to life.

My wild sourdough was build in to stages to ensure both mild flavour and good strength to rise the loaf. But at the moment my sourdough is a bit to wild and the second stage doubled its volume after just one hour. That was to short to develop enough lactic acid and other flavour components. And so I placed the bowl at a cooler spot and let it ripe for another two hours until the flavour of the sourdough was right. But the amazing power of this sourdough was unbroken. After not even one hour(instead of the normal two) the loaf peaked over the rim of the proofing basket.

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June 1st, 2017

Caraway Seed Bread

Category Bread Tags: Caraway seeds, Lieblingsbrot, Sourdough, Sweet Starter 14 Responses

Sometimes the spontaneously created breads are the best. Breads that base on the actual stock in the ktichen cupboards can turn out to be new favourites, just like this potato rolls. And this caraway seed bread follows this route.

After refreshing my differnt starters I had some leftovers that needed to be used. And as I planed to visit my uncles birthday party later this day I decided to bake a bread that would make him happy: Caraway Seed bread.

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April 16th, 2017

Easter Bread

Category Bread, Special Occasions Tags: Almonds, Eastern, Perlzucker, Raisins, Saffron, sweet bread, Sweet starter, Vanilla 10 Responses

For our Easter Brunch with the family I baked different goodies: a varity of roles, easter bunny buns, a cake with rice pudding and an Easter Bread. The Easter Bread is this year nearly a brioche as it contains a generous amount of butter. The amount of butter and the addition of fruits and nuts makes it necessary to knead the dough to full gluten development. This needs some patient but you will be rewarded with a tender and light crumb which can be torn into long pieces.

The subtle flavour of the sweet starter is accomplished by a mixture of vanila, orange zest and saffron. As an addition the dough contains raisin, almonds and pearl sugar which makes it one of the richer ones in my repertoire. It is a delicious bread which needs no spread, even butter is not necessary, it is able to shine all by its self! Continue reading →

April 7th, 2017

Das Urige

Category Bread, Overnight Tags: Bread, Lieblingsbrot, Rye, Sourdough, Über-Nacht 34 Responses

Inspiration is a strange thing: there are phases with only few ideas and then there are phase when my mind is so full that I nearly don’t know which bread I should bake first. At the moment I have so many recipe drafts waiting to a test bake. And then comes a new recipe idea from a reader and sometimes I like the idea so much that it overtakes them all.

The description of the Urigs-Brot was such a case. A moist bread with fine crumb and mild sourdough flavour, baked in a pan with the seam side up. I was hooked and started to draft the recipe immediately. As I prefer to bake with local grains and flours instead of importing it from all corners of the world, I had to change from “Ruchmehl” to Flour type 1150. With some physillium husks for more moisture and two different sourdoughs and a cold rise in the fridge for a deep, complex flavour. Continue reading →

March 18th, 2017

Wheat Rye Bread Number 3

Category Bread Tags: Holzbackofen, Lieblingsbrot, Rye, Wheat, whole grain 16 Responses

Just a few days after I read about Björn’s wood fired oven adventures I stumbled about an older newspaper telling about the oven in the local history museum just 20 km from my home. Each second Saturday of the month the oven is heated and everyone is invited to come and bake their bread – just like it was done traditionally in the old communal ovens. Reading that I got very excited and wrote an email instantly, asking if they still do this as the newspaper was already a bit older.

I got a fast answer and the invitation to join the bakers group the following Saturday as the oven is still used regulary! And so, I must warn you at this point: this post is longer and with more photos than normal because I had a wonderful time in the museum!

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