Bauernbrot (Farmer's Bread) - Gini Youngkrantz
Bauernbrot (Farmer's Bread) - Gini Youngkrantz:
This German Farmer's Bread (Bauernbrot) was made from a recipe in Gini Youngkrantz's Authentic German Home Style Recipes - Fourth Edition (pg. 21). This bread is made from approximately half rye flour (48.8%) and equal amounts of whole wheat flour (25.6%) and AP flour (25.6%), excluding starter. The recipe calls for a cup of active sourdough starter along with yeast in the final dough. Ms. Youngkrantz's recipe produces an excellent German sourdough rye bread very much like the Bauernbrot I remember from Germany.
The recipe calls for "free form" loaves but I used German unlined willow brotforms for the final proofing and placed them on a parchment lined peal and docked them about a dozen times with small 8 inch bamboo skewer slighly larger in diameter than a tooth pick (they held their form nicely) then slid the parchment and loaves onto a baking stone, then a cup of boiling hot water to produce a blast of steam at the onset of the baking cycle. This recipe calls for a slow-bake on low temp. (350 deg. F. for 70 minutes) with steam. Instead, I baked them at 450 deg. F. for the first 10 minutes (to get max. oven spring) then lowered the oven temp. to 350 deg. F. for the remaining time. I checked them at the end of the 70 min. baking cycle and they read 210 deg. internal temp.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL