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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Katharinen-Markt-Bread

I had the day off so I made this wheat sourdough bread. It seems these always need a lot of resting, this one needs multiple resting periods too, total of almost 5 hours.

Oat Breads

One of our favorite breads, very fluffy. It's probably the easiest recipe I have made so far since it doesn't need to rest in a fermentation basket and doesn't contain too many different ingredients. This recipe makes two small breads.