Schwarzwaelder Krustenbrot - Black Forest Crusty Bread
For a long time I wanted to bake this bread. It sounds like home, and it tastes like home.
I am from the Black Forest, here a photo taken during my last visit:
Wolfgang Suepke posted the formula in his blog - quite a nice read because he sheds light on some regional eating habits in Germany.
The bread is a 20% rye bread with 80% (almost) white wheat flour, containing 1% of lard. 12.5% of the total flour is prefermented in a rye sourdough, and 40% of the total flour is prefermented in some kind of wheat biga.
The rye sour matures at ca. 26C for 16 hours, and the wheat preferment is put into the fridge after 2 hours (just when yeast activity becomes visible) and left there overnight (or up to 2 days).
Mixing and shaping as usual (folding works well), the dough needs ca. 1 hour bulk proof and 1 hour final proof.
The formula is on google docs. You can export the spreadsheet to excel and adjust the quantities according to your needs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkcYHhPxccKtdGJ2WVY4ZHV1bHdocGprdkhOam5UMFE
Mr Suepke uses wheat flour Type 812, which I do not have here in the UK, and light rye flour Type 997, which I get from Shipton Mill.
For the wheat part I use 50% high extraction flour and 50% bread flour (Shipton's No 4).
Here a picture of the bread:
It is proofed in a basket seam side down, and left to crack open at the seams. This creates the characteristic look.
The crumb is niceley elastic, and typically not too open.
The taste is complex with a strong wheaty note, due to the large amount of prefermented wheat. Despite the small amount of lard used it gives this bread a special note that goes very well with the regional meat products, especially with the famous Black Forest ham, see e.g.
http://www.foehrenbacher.de/audfox.php?action=7&id=1&method=detail
A very rewarding bread!
Happy Baking,
Juergen
Comments
Hi Juergen,
Interesting formula. I always have to ask when I see a biga or a poolish used with a bread that also uses a sd leaven why 2 different preferments are used - one with commercial yeast and one with wild yeast. Do you know why a biga was used in this loaf instead of just making a ww leaven to go along with the rye sour? Doesn't make any sense to me but I figure there has to be some logical explanation that I just simply can't see on my own.
I like the way you let the seam open up naturally on your loaf. Did you put the loaf in the basket with the seam facing down though to get it on top when you actually bake the bread or did you flip the loaf when taking it out of the basket?
Thanks for the post and the photo of your Black Forest. I have read about it often but yours is the first picture I have ever seen of it. I take it you were on a tram due to the cables that are in the photo???
Take Care,
Janet
HiJanet,
Thank you for your kind words.
When I took the photo we were in a cable car that runs from a suburb of Freiburg (Günterstal) to the top of Mount Schauinsland, the mountain in which my grandfathers were miners and on which my ancestors herderd their cows.
From there - if the weather is right - you have a view down the Rhine valley, towards the Vosgues in France, and even to the Swiss Jura and Berner Oberland.
With regards to the Biga / Sourdough mix: I read in a document from the Detmolder Akademie for cereal science that you can use commericial yeast in sourdough to create a nutritional concurrency. This yields a sweeter dough. I am not completely sure about the bacteriological details, but I think the formation of lactic acid is enhanced, as opposed to acetic acid. (I prefer the yeasted Pugliese, by the way). It comes down to matter of taste, I suppose.
I proved seam side down. Thanks for asking, I corrected the blog.
I hope this all makes sense to you.
Best Wishes,
Juergen
Juergen,
Thanks for the additional detail to the photo. THe photo is very good in that it gives a full view of the landscape. Places I have read about but not seen. Very interesting to actually 'see' it. To put a name to a place in my mind.
Thanks for the info. on the biga and sd combination. I have read some bakers use IY with sd when there is a high content of sugar in the recipe. ( The IY helps compensate for the competition for the water between the wild yeast and the sugar.) Had not read about the sweetness it adds though it makes sense as it will rise a dough much more quickly than sd so the acidic acid doesn't have as much time to build up. Could you tell a difference in this bread you baked? In any event, you have given me something to experiment with to see if my family can taste a difference if I use sd and an IY biga in the same loaf....I always like to try something new. Drives my family nuts though....oh well, they usually get over it :-)
Take Care,
Janet
Part of my family is from Mecklenburg who oddly instantly became Pennsylvania Dutch when they came to this country. Very confusing since all the Pennsylvnia Dutch were of hearty German immigrant stock though not all were named Doerschlaht :-)
I have been playing with using YW in place of the commerical yeast in 2 starter SD combo breads. I will have to be more attentive to see if it makes the bread sweeter but YW tends to do that on its own without SD.
I also like breads that don't need to be slashed like this one.
Do you thonk the white wheat you used would be like a combination of bread flour and White Whole Wheat in the states?
Nice baking as usual.
brownman! I wasn't familiar with the details of German settlement in the NE of USA, just knew about the Amish in Pennsylvania. Interesting history, and the merging of dialects - the written examples I found on wiki are very interesting.
The wheat flours I used were: 1. Shipton Mill's "Dark Swiss Flour" (or Ruchmehl by its Swiss name), I assume it is around 85% extraction (I have no better details), and Shipton's "No 4" Untreated Organic White flour, which is a white flour with around 10% of protein and 65% Ash. The original post calls for wheat flour witth an ash content inbetween. I am also sure a mix of whole wheat and white flours would work, as you propose. As will yeast water.
Looking forward to hearing about your experiments, and to seeing those amazing lunch plates of yours,
Juergen
It's funny, I just looked through some recipes on Bäcker Süpke's website (nice that a professional baker is willing to shares them), copied the Kürbiskernbrot, and thought this one was tempting, too.
You can never replicate the flours exactly, I'm experimenting here in Maine with the German flour types, too. But if the crumb looks about the same and it tastes good, I am fine with it. I assumed Typ 812 might be approximately 3/4 bread flour and 1/4 whole wheat.
Karin
has a lot to offer. Did you try his Weissbrot?
Nice to hear from you, Karin.
Me setting out with an equal mix of high extraction flour and bread flour was a guess, but it worked well. The result looks and tastes authentic. I suppose it is reasonable to shift the ratio if using wholewheat. I used an equal mix of wholewheat and white once and got a much denser, slightly crumbly bread - more like what we got from our farmer-friends. But there might have been other issues - it was my first go at that formula.
By the way - your Müsli rolls look fantastic.
Best Wishes,
Jürgen
Since German baking books are rarely translated into English (Dr. Oetker did one - but that's pastry), and only a few English speaking authors included German bread recipes in their books (like Peter Reinhart, Daniel Leader and some others) I enjoy adapting and sharing some of them.
I will certainly check into Bäcker Süpke's Weissbrot and other recipes. And I should order some high extraction flour, too.
By the way, I have some very fond memories of trips to the Schwarzwald - I stayed once in Faulenfürst. Every valley has it's own brewery - and every brewery has its own brew pub with usually great food.
Karin
Hi Karin,
I am glad you liked the Black Forest, the Schluchsee area was a frequent Sunday outing for us when I was little.
My mother has a bread and rolls book by Dr Oetker, but I haven't used it so far. From what I have learnt from Süpke and the other documents available on the web (TA Roetz (Google), Merkblaetter of the AG Getreideforschung about the Detmolder Single Step, three-step processes, and the Mohnheimer and Berliner Kurz processes, on Ketex' blog) Hamelman is doing a really great job in laying the foundation to making all sorts of German breads (in the rye bread chapter). The rest is just about getting fancy with preferments, soakers and grains ...
Another great source for me is the document "Leitsaetze für Brot und Leingebaeck" (in German).
Alles Liebe,
Jürgen
Jürgen, I will check those out.
Mach's gut,
Karin