Bread #1

This is the recipe of the first bread I ever made. It's a 80/20 rye/wheat bread with rye sourdough with a wheat poolish. I bought a recipe book during my Christmas visit in Germany about 3 years ago and when I came back I tried out this recipe. I had never done anything like it before and had no equipment except a mixer. Instead of a banneton I used woven basket I had around and that didn't work all that well but good enough. Also, I didn't want to buy too many ingredients before I knew if I wanted to continue baking bread, so I used only whole grain rye flour, which works too. Texture and taste were so close to what I knew from when I lived back in Germany that I continued baking my own bread for the last 3 years and hardly ever buy a bread in the store. Very easy to make for a sourdough bread and only a few ingredients needed.

Graubrot

The typical German everyday bread: A wheat/rye mix with about equal amounts of the two flour types and made with rye sourdough. There are some variations in the ratio of course, this one is more on the rye side with a little bit of spelt flour to get a slightly more complex flavor; rye sourdough and wheat poolish, very little yeast is added, only to get the wheat poolish started.

Cracked Up Spelt Bread

An all whole grains bread with sourdough made from cracked wheat. Together with a soaker made with cracked rye there are actually more cracked grains in this bread than there is flour, which is whole grain spelt flour. Also, no additional yeast is added. Which means that the dough has to prove slightly longer than the usual. Decorated with sesame seeds the bread came out less dense than you'd think and is one of my new favorites.

Quick Rolls

"Quick" here is of course a relative term, as bread and rolls need their time. So with this recipe "only" taking about 3 hours from start to finish is pretty quick in this context. Most recipes I have for rolls take anywhere between 12 and 36 hours including fermentation/resting periods.

Whole Grain Rye/Wheat

All the flour in this bread is whole grain flour, accompanied by soaked cracked wheat and rye as well as roasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Whole grain sourdough is the base for this originally nutty bread. Since I don't love breads with nuts I replaced them with a mix of roasted seeds. First time I tried this and it worked pretty well.

Whole Seven Grains

Seven different grains are used to make this sourdough bread. Three different whole grain flours - rye, wheat and spelt - and a soaker made from sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and oat flakes. The rye sourdough is also made from whole grain flour, but that is quite normal for me, I simply always make my rye sourdough with whole grain flour.

Dark Beer Stump

I made breads with short ingredients lists before, this is basically water, flour, salt and yeast again. Just... there is no water, all the liquid comes from a dark beer. No poolish or soaker, so this bread can be made in just a few hours with very little efford. I made it 60/40 wheat/rye, but you can also make it 100% wheat if you prefer or don't have rye flour around. One of the very few breads I made without sourdough. Makes two small breads.

Whole Grain Spelt Sourdough

Originally 100% spelt I changed the recipe quite a bit and made it a spelt/wheat/rye bread. Partially because I think pure spelt breads taste a little dryer, partially because I can't find cracked spelt in the shops and of course because I like the taste of rye. All flour used is whole grain, including the sourdough, which is a whole grain spelt sourdough.

Sesame Rolls

I love German bread rolls, so I made a batch of sesame rolls with wheat, rye and spelt flour. Rolls and German bread is what I'm missing the most since I move to the US almost 10 years ago. Since I started baking my own bread that part is solved, however making bread rolls is a lot more difficult to time right, as most recipes require quite long fermentation times and - other then bread - rolls are the best just a few minutes after they come out of the oven, so timing is a lot more crucial. I finally got it together to make another batch of rolls, and as each time I made some, the taste is awesome.

Hunter's Bread

A 2:1 rye:spelt sourdough bread - about one third of the total amount of flour is in the sourdough - with some cracked wheat. It's really tasty, but of course the main reason for me to do it was that I wanted to try out if I can get the decoration to work. I think it came out really nice, but cutting out the stencil took me quite some time.

Olive Levain

A very short ingredients list and a lot of fermentation time leads to this olive sourdough bread: All wheat flour - mainly white and some whole grain - water, salt and olives is all that goes in here. No is yeast added, only wild yeast is doing the work. Because of that  it takes about 48 hours start to finish to make it - including making the sourdough from starter. Not exactly the German style bread I usually make, but at least I got the recipe from a German recipe book. ;-)

Vitalis

Once more I made a bread with two sourdoughs, rye and wheat in equal amounts. I like doing that on occasion recently when I make a bread that is around 50/50 rye/wheat flour. This time all the flour (except in the wheat sourdough) is whole grain flour; and of course some grains and seeds round it all up, in this case rye meal, sunflower seeds and oat flakes.

Rye Sourdough with Beer Soaked Kamut

Kamut flour is soaked in Pilsener beer over night and added to rye sourdough and 50/50 rye/wheat flour. It seems beer breads always turn out great, and so did this one. It shows that 4 different types of flour and a few proving periods make for a really good bread and there is no need to add any additional flavoring. OK, besides the beer that is in this case. ;-)

Grain Gourmet

There are more gains in this spelt sourdough bread than there is flour, in fact twice as much. Besides sunflower seeds, the grains are cracked wheat, cracked rye as well as spelt flakes which soaked for 16 hours. Originally 100% spelt flour, I changed the recipe to be 50/50 spelt/rye flour.

Rye Malt Sourdough

I use rye malt powder for coloring sometimes but this recipe for a 80/20 rye/wheat sourdough bread has more than twice the usual amount intensifying the rye flavor a little bit more. According to the original author of the recipe this happened by accident caused by a distraction during preparation. Like many of humanity's discoveries made by pure coincidence. ,-)

Multi-Grain Sourdough with Kamut

Seven different grains and seeds and four different types of flour go into this rye sourdough bread: Whole grain rye flour to make the sourdough; wheat, spelt and kamut flour in the main dough. A soaker made from pumpkin seeds, oat flakes, flax seeds and cracked wheat and rye provides some crunch. And finally sunflower seeds and rye flakes as decoration.

Flour, Water, Salt and Yeast

Only the most basic ingredients go into this sourdough bread: Flour, water, salt and yeast. And since this is 50/50 rye/wheat I decided to use 50/50 rye/wheat sourdough, as I did very successfully with the Sourdough Duo the week before.You can also make a bigger batch of one or the other type of sourdough. Total proving time on backing day is relatively long with around 5 1/2 hours, but there is one period of 4 hours where nothing else needs to be done, making the process easier to plan.

Sourdough Duo

I found this recipe for a ~50/50 rye/wheat bread and decided to go all the way and also make it 50/50 rye/wheat sourdough. I always have enough of both sourdoughs around, so I didn't actually have to make it the day before. Combined with a soaker of rye berries and a variety of grains and seeds this bread came out excellent. There are about 4.5 hours of proving , so bring some time when you make this.

Rye/Wheat Dark Beer Bread

Rye sourdough bread with cracked wheat soaked in dark beer, which gives the bread a nice color and - as always - full flavor. Main dough is 50/50 rye/wheat flour plus a lot of rye sourdough, which I always make from whole grain flour, so the final result is about 2:1 rye:wheat.

Spelt Sourdough Bread

Originally a 100% spelt bread I turned this recipe into a spelt/rye bread. Like the original it's made with spelt sourdough but I exchanged some of the spelt flour for rye flour; I simply like that better. Some of the spelt is prepared in a mash allowing the flour to bind and retain more water. Another one of Ketex' great recipes.

Dark Beer Rye Sourdough with Kamut

A rye sourdough bread made from 2:1 rye:wheat flour. Kamut flour and oat flakes were soaked in dark beer, which always add really good flavor to the bread. The two ends of the bread were twisted against each other, a technique I hadn't used before and makes for an interesting surface pattern.

Rye Bread with Spelt Berries

100% rye flour bread with sourdough and spelt berries to add a little crunch. Spelt has been very popular recently but most recipe I made before also have some - if not all - spelt flour as well. This is the first time spelt is add just like other grains usually are.

Wheat Sourdough

Just all purpose wheat flour and a few days of fermentation - 72 hours - make for a nice wheat bread. Goes especially well with sweet toppings like jam or Nutella, but also with more savory ones like prosciutto or cheese.

Sesame Bread

Finally a bread where sesame seeds are the star. I've made several recipes with sesame seeds, but they were usually either only decoration or in a soaker with a bunch of other seeds and grains. This one is a rye sourdough bread (60/40 rye and wheat flour) with sesame seeds as the only grain. OK, I cheated a little bit, the original recipe was a sesame seed/poopy seed bread, but since I don't like poppy seeds that much, I just replaced them all with sesame seeds. The result was awesome, a new family favorite.

Miller's Bread

A rye sourdough bread with several different seeds; most notably first time that I used amaranth, an ancient grain that was widely used in Mesoamerica; according to Wikipedia it provided up to 80% of the calories intake of the Aztecs.

Wheat Rolls

Ketex wrote a new recipe book, and of course I had to get it. Here is the first recipe I made from it, relatively simple bread rolls, but - man - they were good right out of the oven. Simplicity doesn't mean they are quick to make though. There are two 8+ hours resting periods, so it requires a little bit of planning.

Dark Beer Bread with Spelt Flakes

All the breads I made so far that contain beer were big successes. So I picked one that has beer in it as the first recipe I made from a new recipe book I got. The dark beer is actually used to prepare the sourdough as well as to soak spelt flakes.

I made a few modifications on the recipe. First and foremost: The recipe was for 4 breads, I reduced all amounts to make only one. I also changed some of the preparation to avoid moving the dough as much. And I left out the cheese used in the recipe as well, which was already a suggested modification.