Swedish Seeded Barley Bread - Svenska frö bröd
Hello everyone,
I saw a beautiful post on stirthepots.com last February –
Jeremy’s lovely take on a Swedish seed bread (Svenska frö bröd) [1].
The ‘mosaic of a crumb’ Jeremy described; all those beautiful seeds! That bread looked so, so good.
It took me awhile to look up his friend Martin’s blog [2], and bake this bread – I’m so glad I did! - here's a slice... :^)
There’s so much I like about this bread!
Tons of seeds (pearled barley too) ;
rye sour and a decent proportion of whole grain flour; easy mixing and process;
the delicious flavor and keeping qualities.
There were some interesting things in Martin’s formula and process.
Martin recommended a cold soak for the seeds, to soften them but not so much that they disappear into the crumb after baking.
Bread syrup was one of the ingredients. I wasn’t sure what bread syrup was but Jan Hedh had a definition in his book Swedish Breads and Pastries [3] (syrup is 25% sugar). I thought I’d try molasses, and for another try, barley malt syrup from the brewer’s, as a substitute.
The mixing was really quick; no dough development, just long enough to combine the ingredients, then the dough panned and retarded.
Reading through Martin's post, the timing for this bread seemed so convenient, the process easy; and they were! :^)
For this bread, I wanted to emphasize barley, since barley is one of ‘seeds’ in this bread.
Barley malt syrup (a dark, thick syrup found at a brewshop) was used in place of bread syrup, and barley flour in place of whole rye called for in the original formula, for the final dough.
The baked loaf
The formula for the bread picture above:
I liked this bread so much I experimented a little bit with the flour and syrup, making a couple of other versions -
whole barley flour, regular molasses at 24% of flour
(a bit of sweet carried through in the flavor - factoring in seeds, too, dough may have had about 10% sugar overall)
(scaled approximately 1400g dough for 9"x4"x4" pullman pan)
whole rye flour in final dough, blackstrap molasses at 12% of flour
(a bit of extra water added to compensate for the decreased amount of syrup)
(scaled 768g dough for 8.5"x4.5" bread pan)
In terms of flavor and texture, these breads were moist, chewy, hearty, rich and full of flavor.
Thank you so much to Martin in Sweden for this beautiful bread, and to Jeremy for his gorgeous version of it!
Happy baking everyone!
:^) breadsong
Submitted to YeastSpotting [4] :^)