Rye Bread with Wheat Sourdough

The last bread of 2014. Because my rye sourdough died and I had no time to start a new one before the holidays I modified  a recipe I had for a rye sourdough bread and replaced it with wheat sourdough - which I usually have a lot of around. A soaker of stale bread (altus) adds additional flavor.

Seven Delights Bread

A whole laundry list of seeds - millet, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, spelt berries and more - goes into this 80/20 wheat/rye bread, including buckwheat, which I had never used before. Out came two very flavorful and fluffy breads after only around 3 hours on baking day (plus 12 hours soaking).

Rye 100%er

A week after I made a 100% wheat bread I felt like making a 100% rye bread. It's made from only rye flour, water, yeast and salt. And - as most of my breads - is made with sourdough.

Whole Grain Wheat Bread

This bread is interesting because of how it's made. Only one type of flour is used - whole grain wheat flour - but there is a lot of fermentation and interesting preparation steps going on. Sourdough, poolish and a flour soaker all ferment over night. And there is a total of 4 1/2 hours of fermentation time even on baking day.

Potato Bread

It's been a long time since I made a potato bread. Combined with rye sourdough, (whole grain) wheat poolish and an altus (stale bread) soaker this bread develops a rich flavor. Not very complicated to make also.

Multi-Seed Spelt Bread with Buttermilk

I made quite a few breads recently that can be done relatively quickly, but I believe nothing can beat this one: Done in well under 3 hours all in! There are a lot of seeds in grains in this bread making it very flavorful even without sourdough or longer fermentation times.

Rye Flake Bread

There are rye flakes inside the dough and all over the outside of this 80/20 wheat/rye bread. This is one of the "quick" recipes I found and can be made in only a few hours since there is no sourdough or poolish. The name of the original recipe was actually "Pumpkin Seed Bread", but since I replaced the pumpkin seeds on the outside with rye flakes I thought I'd also replace them in the name. It came out really well, good texture and flavor.

Morning Bread Rolls

Most of the preparation for these bread rolls is done the night before baking allowing to finish it up in the morning and possibly have the rolls for breakfast. Only tasks left to do is shaping, a little resting and baking. This still takes just under two hours though, so it needs to be prepared by someone who doesn't have to eat for two hours after getting up. ;-) Preparation is also relatively easy: combine everything, mix, shape, bake.

Flower Bud Sourdough

The name for this recipe derives from the bread's shape, there are no actual flower buds in there. A lot of fermentation is going on; there are two kinds of sourdough in the dough: rye as well as in a wheat in a roughly 2:1 relation and there is poolish also. That allows this recipe to have very few ingredients, basically only water, flour and salt. Slightly more effort than usual goes into shaping the bread which makes it look really nice.

Spelt Berry Bread

This is a rye/wheat bread with whole spelt berries. I used spelt berries before but those breads also contained at least a good amount if not all spelt flour. What made this interesting is that there is no spelt flour in the dough, which sometimes gives the bread a little more of a drier taste. This one is basically a rye sourdough.

Wheat Bread with Buttermilk

Still in a busy summer schedule I made this 100% wheat bread that can be made on a single day if you don't use sourdough or have enough around and don't have to start it the previous day. Has some oat flakes and cracked wheat. Most of the breads I make contain at least some, if not all rye flour. The original recipe actually doesn't call for any sourdough, but I decided to replace some of the flour/water with it to make it more interesting.

Seeds and Grains Wheat Bread

Four different seeds and grains constitute for over one third of all dry ingredients in this bread. The flour is predominantly wheat and it's one of the very few breads I have made without sourdough. Due to it's two longer cold proofing cycles it fit perfectly into my schedule with only a few hours spent on baking day. Very good with cheese or prosciutto but also under a nice piece of meatloaf.

Whole Grain Wheat Bread Rolls

I'm a fan of rolls with seeds and grains and also didn't have a lot of time to back so I made these whole grain wheat rolls as they take a lot less preparation time. I picked up a suggestion out of the comments on the original recipe and replaced some of the flour/water with wheat sourdough since I had it around anyways. If you don't want to use sourdough or want to limit the efford even more, just increase flour and water in the main dough by the amounts used in the sourdough and double the amount of yeast.

Wheat Long-Bread

A wheat sourdough bread that could hardly be more basic: Water, flour, salt, that's it. OK, there is 0.1g of yeast in it, too, but since that is roughly 0.02% of the amount of flour I pretend it isn't there. Most of the recipes I made use rye sourdough so I was pleasantly surprised how tasty this bread is. It came out a little bit denser than most breads I have made, but that doesn't effect the pleasure of eating it. One of my favorite breads without seeds or grains.

Not an awesome name for this bread, but then I only translated the name from the original recipe. ;-)

Dark Beer Bread

After massive amounts of seeds and grains in last week's bread, this week is back to the basics. Water, flour, salt and yeast. Well not totally basic, beer is replacing the water in the main dough. This time it's dark beer again, but, different from the dark beer rye sourdough I made before, this one is mainly made from wheat flour, except for the sourdough, which is whole grain rye. Because of the high amount of wheat flour there are several resting periods, making the process a little more envolved timewise, but it's actually pretty easy to make.

Ketex' Multi-Grain Bread

I really felt like making a bread with some kind of seeds and I got lucky and found a recipe from my favorite source, Ketex, that I had apparently previously overlooked. It's a rye sourdough with almost all the grains and seeds I have around. Just what I needed. It's originally called 6-grain, but calls for a few things I can't get, so I replaced it with a 5-grain mix I got at a supermarket some time ago, making the total number of grains used difficult to determine. ;-)

Very nice crust and of course tons of flavor from all those grains and seeds.

Rye Sourdough with Yoghurt

This is a very quick to make rye sourdough (made from rye meal) with 50/50 wheat and rye flour. I made bread with buttermilk and Kefir before but this is my first time yoghurt is used (a substantial amount, almost half of the "liquid" is yoghurt). Since I made this at a week night again I couldn't afford long proofing times; besides the sourdough - which needs to be started the day before - total time for preparation including baking is just under two hours. Most of the rising actually happens while it's baking.

Münsterländer Bauernstuten

We came back from vacation during the week so I wanted to make a bread that does not require long preparation times and can be done after work. I also wanted  it to be easy enough so my  kids could help. This recipe fit the profile, and even better, the bread came out really well and is probably my favorite white bread so far; what a lucky find. This recipe is for two smaller breads, perfect to make it with two little helpers.

For some reason I come across recipes all the time recently that use buttermilk instead of water. So does this 60/40 wheat/rye sourdough bread.

Kefir-Sunflower-Seed Bread

Recently I found a few recipes using buttermilk either partially or as the only liquid in the dough. When I came across a recipe that even goes one step further and uses kefir instead I had to try it. Kefir is also a milk drink but its consistency is more somewhere between buttermilk and yoghurt. In fact it's so much towards a solid I measured it by weight instead of volume, which I usually do with liquids. You can replace the kefir by buttermilk but for me the kefir was what got me interested.

Rye-Wheat Bread

Flour, water, yeast and salt. That's all that goes into this one. To make it more interesting, however, there are actually 4 different types of flour used; two kinds of wheat flour and two kinds of rye flour. After making a rye sourdough that has meanly wheat flour in the main dough last week, this time it's a wheat sourdough (and there is quite a bit of sourdough in there) with only rye flour in the main dough. As often with wheat sourdoughs you have to bring a little bit of time because of longer resting periods.

Multi-Seed Rye Sourdough

A lot of different seeds and grains go into this rye sourdough bread: Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, rye flakes and cracked wheat. It's a rye sourdough but most of the flour in the main dough is wheat flour. This bread goes very well with prociutto, cheese or - since I'm German this can't be missed - liverwurst.

Buttermilk-Sourdough Pumpernickel

There were multiple things that caught my eye when I saw the recipe for this rye bread: The sourdough is made with buttermilk instead of water and contains both, wheat and rye flour. And on baking day only malt powder, yeast and molasses is added. Neither flour nor water.

Spelt Sourdough Bread with Spelt Flakes

A pure spelt bread this time with a soaker made from spelt flakes. I only make wheat sourdough starter since spelt sourdoughs are rare so my version has a tiny bit of wheat flour. I do like the distinct taste of spelt bread, it's a little more interesting than pure wheat. The flour is more than twice as expensive, but definitely worth it to change things up.

Quick Rye Sourdough

There was a lot going on last weekend and I didn't have enough time for a more involved process so I made this very quick and easy rye sourdough bread. There are not many steps to it and the resting times are relatively short. If you use store-bought sourdough you can even get this done in only a few hours. But then where is the fun in that. ;-)

Three-Grain Sourdough with Altus

This is the first time that I used stale bread ("altus") in a dough. I came across recipes using that technique several time but never really had any (especially since I usually have grains or seeds in my bread which may not fit the recipes). This time I had some so I tried it and it turned out great. Super tasty. After several weeks of trying out different new recipe books another great Ketex recipe.

Wheat Bread with Rye and Spelt

A rye sourdough bread combining all 3 major flour types: Wheat (50%), spelt (30%) and rye (20%). All the rye is in the sourdough and all the spelt in the poolish. The combination of all three flours makes for a rich flavor. Longer than usual proofing times (compared to the other recipes I have tried) allow to use less yeast for everyone who doesn't really like the taste of it.

Buttermilk Bread

Another new recipe book that needed trying out. Buttermilk takes the place of water in the grain soaker as well as in the main dough. And a longer proofing period requires less yeast in the poolish. Both the sourdough as well as the poolish are made from whole grain flour which gives the bread a rich flavor.

Malty Multi-Grain Bread

Oat and rye flakes soaked in dark beer give this bread great flavor. This is the third recipe I made that contains a good amount of beer and they all came out great. There is no poolish and total preparation time is relatively short. Makes two 1 1/2lb breads.

Wheat Sourdough Bread Rolls

I've made these sourdough bread rolls multiple times already, now I finally got around to add the recipe here. There are two relatively long resting periods (eight or more hours) which makes the planning a little more tricky. For me it turned out to be the easiest to have both proofing periods over night. This recipe results in 18 rolls.

Rye and Wheat Sourdough Bread

The original recipe is called "Dombrot" ("Cathedral Bread") because it was decorated with a bread stamp saying "IHS", for "Iesus Hominum Salvator" (latin for "Jesus, savior of mankind"). Since I don't have a stamp I'm just calling it a rye sourdough bread. ;-) It's relatively easy to make with very few ingredients, the rye sourdough being the most "advanced" one.

Spelt Sourdough Bread

This is the second 100% spelt bread I made and my first use of spelt berries. It's a very hearty bread for the whole grain lover. Goes very well with liverwurst, prosciutto, cheese, etc. The recipe produces two smaller breads.

Quick and Easy 4-Grain Bread

New year, new recipe book... Having just come back from a 2-week vacation I wanted to make a quick bread so I don't have to go buy one. This recipe is really quick because it doesn't require fermentation, except for the sourdough. But since it's so little sourdough I had it anyways and didn't need to let it proof over night. The grain soaker also only needs to rest for 2-3 hours so there is no need to prepare that the night before either and the whole recipe can be made on a single day. I kept the original name of the recipe, although there are actually 5 kinds of grains used (just not in the dough). This makes 2 small breads.