Heurigenbrot & Pain de Campagne
Hello!
I'm new to this forum and new-ish to serious bread baking, so please be kind, and forgive me if I don't know all the jargon. I just wanted to share a couple of the breads that came out of my oven this week. First are a couple of loaves of "Heurigenbrot", after a recipe by the Ströck Family Bakery in Vienna, from the book "Der Duft von frischem Brot" by Barbara van Melle. It is a rye sourdough, and dry white wine is used instead of water. I added some Schabzigerklee (Trigonella caerulea) to the usual fennel, aniseed, caraway and coriander mix, and gave it 18 hours of proofing time in the fridge. It's delicious, with a fine, moist crumb - definitely a keeper.
I also baked Ken Forkish's "Pain de Campagne" from FWSY, except I upped the whole wheat content of the final dough to about 30% of total. It turned out nicely, with a very light, airy crumb, but a little irregular. Not sure why. It is delicious, though.
I have much to learn, but having a wonderful time learning.
Cheers,
Vivien
Both of your breads look wonderful. I, too, baked a Pain de Campagne yesterday. I used Forkish's suggestion of 70% flour, 20% wholewheat and 10% rye flour. The loaf was a hit with my hubby eating almost half of one loaf in a sitting.
Great minds think alike. The PdC is a delicious bread - I'm not surprised your husband gobbled it up!
I have been married to my German wife for gong on 16 years now and am blessed to have family in Deutschland as well. I must say, this bread would make my Schwägerin blush, and she is a certified baker! I wouldn't worry about irregularity in bread, unless you really, really need that extra gram of butter, Nutella or jam smeared on there! Nice post, and I'm a noob here too! We both joined the same day - cool.
Thank you for your kind comments, T. Fargo. With such a strong German heritage in the family, no wonder you took to baking bread! ;) As for the holes in the crumb, no, they're not useful for jam or honey, etc., but I'm not a jam kind of girl anyway. My preference would be a chunk of St. André or Roquefort. :)
Welcome aboard TFL. Those are 2 beautiful looking breads. Could you share your German rye formula? I'm curious about the amount of wine used since I've experimented with wine in bread before and noticed if i used too much it messed up the fermentation. I was actually dreaming up a porridge style bread using wine to try soon.
Regards,
Ian
Thanks for the welcome and the compliment. I was a little nervous about posting a recipe from a book here, for copyright reasons, but I've found it already posted on the internet by an Austrian journalist named Heidi Strobl. I can't post a link, but if you google "Heurigenbrot Melle" you should find it (albeit in German). In a nutshell, it's 250g each of light rye flour, unbleached hard wheat flour, and ripe rye sourdough (100% hydration), to 370g of dry white wine (at room temp.), with 15g fresh yeast (about 5g instant?), 18g salt, 15g bread spice (equal parts caraway, fennel & coriander). I also added aniseed and Brotklee, and I used dark rye flour instead of light. I hope I'm not falling foul of copyright posting this here - if so, please remove, and mea culpa.
Those are beautiful loaves, for sure! One thing about artisan bakers is that we are artisans - it's not just about making good food but we take pride in the appearance of the product too. That's very evident from many of the posts on this site.
I think maybe the larger holes in your bread come from shaping it. If the dough is very active and has large bubbles in it when you are shaping, they will be trapped in the boule. Nothing to worry about, unless your butter, cheese or jam run out! :)
It isn't an assembly line product. I just have a tendency to be very hard on myself. Despite "punching" down (gently) during S&F, there were large air bubbles apparent during shaping. I've read and seen suggestions that these should be popped, and I've seen the opposite as well. In this case, I didn't pop them. Thank you for your compliment.
are near perfect. The ideal for the Forkish style 30% whole grain breads or less whole grains is to have an irregular crumb. A regular crumb I would consider a flaw - just the opposite if your rye example. I think both are very well done indeed - including the scoring!
I'm very flattered. I'm glad to hear that "irregular" is a good thing in this case. I was a little disconcerted at first. Scoring is a pet project at present. According to the recipe, the "Heurigenbrot" is supposed to be baked seam side up, without scoring, for that rustic, torn look. I like that look, but I'm trying to improve my scoring, so I didn't quite follow the recipe in this respect (as well as some others). I'm one of those exasperating people who know very little, but never follow a formula exactly, and prefer to use their intuition. Maybe not the best way to progress, but there it is. Meanwhile, I'm scoring everything. Don't be surprised if I post pictures of a scored egg braid at Easter! ;)
There are a lot of German bread baking books -- many of them very good, especially Brotbackbuch 1&2, Peter Kapp's book and Gerd Kellner's book, but Der Duft von frischem Brot (The Aroma of Fresh Bread) is one of the few around that focuses on Austrian breads, which are really splendid and unjustly overshadowed by the Germans. Thanks so much for posting this beauty of an Austrian rye! BTW, where did you get your Schabzigerklee? I use Indian fenugreek (methi) leaves, which are a close approximation, but the real thing is always better.
Stan Ginsberg
theryebaker.com
I received this book at Christmas (from my Mom) and read it like a novel, drooling over Wolfgang Hummer's glorious photographs. You are quite right (and my Austrian Mom would love you for saying so, as do I): Austrian bread culture is every bit as rich as the German, but it is often overlooked, like a poor relation. Yet this is a culture that is so very rich and varied, and to be honest, I probably bake more recipes from this region than anywhere else. I remember eating something very like the above "Heurigenbrot" at a vineyard in Rust, with butter and fine smoked ham (Schinken), accompanied (of course) by a glass of "Heuriger" wine, while watching a stork build its nest on a nearby chimney stack. Memories for a lifetime.
As for the Schabzigerklee, I am fortunate to have family in Austria, who visited recently and brought me some from Sonnentor (sonnentor.com). I also did some googling and found Brotklee through sandmountainherbs.com (called "Sweet Trefoil" here). I have no experience with the latter, but it is probably less expensive than ordering from Sonnentor.
I'm quite familiar with Lutz (Plötzblog) and Ketex, but to be honest, I spend much more time browsing the blog of Dietmar Kappl (homebaking.at). In my humble opinion, he is a very gifted Austrian master baker, and one of those rare, wonderful souls who are happy to share information, and rejoice in the success of others. You probably know of him already, but if you didn't, I highly recommend his blog.
Love his blog. Also Sam Kargl (Sam's Kitchen) and Amboss. There are so many good blogs in the German-speaking world, and so many good breads, it's sometimes hard to keep track.
the Kaiser Roll from the Austrians....... the Austrians invented them for Franz Joseph and the poor Austrians got swindled:-)
Thieves! But nah ... the Germans can try, but to me, "Kaisersemmerl" will always be Austrian. I remember them so well from my childhood, properly formed by hand rather than stamped, so that the individual segments each bring that extra little bit of fine, crisp crust, and pull apart into perfect golden pieces just right for a dab of fresh, creamy butter. Kaisersemmeln or "Handsemmeln" like that could only be found at Austrian bakeries; the German versions were mere impostors. ;-)
Stan, do you know if there is an English version of this book?
but my new book, The Rye Baker, will be out this September. While it doesn't include the Heurigenbrot recipe, there'll be lots more. (This is a plug)
Stan
I'm waiting for my signed copy :o
Both loaves look very nice. Forkish's breads you can endlessly vary - I use the Overnight Brownie as base for all kinds of different whole grain flours.
Thanks for mentioning a new, interesting bread baking book, you are right, you rarely see breads from Austria (other than in Dietmar Kappl's or Sam Kargl's blogs - I follow both, too). I ordered it (strangely, it cost less at amazon.com than at amazon.de).
Schabziger Klee is blue fenugreek, I brought some from my visits to Germany, too.
Liebe Grüsse und Happy Baking,
Karin
I'm certainly having a great time exploring the possibilities with Forkish's formulae, and I love Van Melle's book. Dietmar and Sam are daily inspirations, and the source of much valuable information.
BTW, I recently baked Dietmar's "Götz von Berlichingen" bread. It was delicious. Did the hotel actually adopt any of these recipes for their breakfast menu?
Grüsse aus Kanada,
Vivien
Yes, I baked Dietmar's "Götz von Berlichingen" bread, too, and liked it a lot. I hope I get to present it on my blog sometime soon, like the ones from Dabrownman, Khalid, and Britta.
Unfortunately, the hotel never reacted in any way, they must be really bad with social media, but they didn't answer, when I sent them a link on their contact page, either. Their bad - we all had definitely fun doing it.
LG, Karin
...a shame on the hotel for not responding. I don't think many businesses - anywhere - are lucky enough to have a customer or guest take the kind of initiative you took, and to go to such lengths to help them improve their product. Not to mention the effort by all the bakers who submitted breads to this project! I think that's pretty poor on the hotel, and I suspect Götz would have been disgusted. He might even have uttered that famous phrase so often (if erroneously) attributed to him! ;-) Well, their loss is our gain. Thank you for starting that project, Karin.
LG,
Vivien
Why they didn't react - I thought it was rather stupid of them, especially since I had told them when I left what I intended to do, and mentioned my earlier bread baking event regarding Schlosshotel Cecilienhof in Potsdam so that they could see what it was all about. (The management of Cecilienhof had responded at once and very graciously).
LOving that first one, just beautiful!
It was absolutely delicious. So aromatic!