When I was a kid in the 60's, my mother would buy black bread at the store in NW Ohio. Does anyone know what that was? I have googled it but only found German or Russian black bread which is actually brown. This bread was not grayish black. It was as black as black can be, like black vinyl. Does anyone know the recipe? Can it be made in a bread machine?

Thank You

I am participating in testing recipes for the New York Jewish Bakers Book. One of the recipes that I baked was the "Plovnik, or Black Bread".

This was such an intriguing recipe, with strong, rich flavors, that I wanted to get some more information about it.

My first stop when looking for information is, of course, GOOGLE. The only hits are linked back here. I have found loads of stuff on Black Bread, but no Plovnik.

Anyone got anything on this Beautiful Bully of my Taste Buds??

Hamelman's Black Bread, I followed  his direction exactly and found the breads had  little oven spring. But the favor and taste are wonderful. 

I buy the Organic Baby Spring Mix every week for salad. I saved all the containers for storage. I found it made a wonderful bread box and also good for bulk fermentation. You can see through the container. 

I grew up in Oak Park, Michigan. We had a fabulous Jewish bakery, Modern Bakery, that made great rye bread (the inspiration of Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor's Jewish rye bread) and they also made a bread called Russian Black Bread. I have looked at all the recipes for Russian Black Bread and they don't resemble that bread at all. It had a very coarse, wet crumb and had a very long shelf life (as long as it didn't get moldy it didn't dry out). Anyone know about that specific bakery's Black Bread. BTW sometimes it had raisins and the bread was a large long square loaf that was sold as slices from the original loaf. Thanks

Hi, all.  I'm new around here, but thought maybe someone here could help me out.

More than 20 years ago I was an exchange student in Wurzburg, Germany (in lower Franconia).  The staple bread in the home I lived in was known as Schwarzbrot (black bread).  I'm not sure if it is native to that area or to Rhineland-Pfalz (my host-father was from there).  Anyway, it was round, strongly flavored, and very dark brown and some loaves were enormous.  I once saw a 2 kg loaf!