Dutch bruin brood (brown bread)
One of my colleagues, who's Dutch and enjoys his bread, has been asking if I can make a simple Dutch 'bruin brood' loaf, the kind, he tells me, is sold all over the Netherlands and available anywhere. All he really knows is it's brown, it doesn't have rye in it, it's not sourdough and may or may not have some seeds and grains.
I've hunted around the web for recipes, including here, and found a few, some sourdough, some which seem to be to be very simple brown breads with nothing special, some with seeds, some in Dutch, some using Waldkorn which appears to be a commercial grain mix ground to a flour. I'm fairly sure if he wanted just brown bread, that wouldn't be too hard to find, so that's probably not it, however I haven't found any recipes with much of a theme to them which tells me I've found a traditional dutch brown bread.
Does anyone have a good recipe for bruin brood which he'll recognise as the kind of daily bread he's craving?
When I still lived in the Netherlands (until 1990), what we Dutch commonly called "bruin brood", translated as "brown bread" and typically sold as "Volkoren brood", translated as "Whole Wheat" bread. This is a straight forward pan loaf.
It is often created by placing two balls of dough side by side in the load pan, creating the esthetic of two half loaves grown together when it is done, but that is not a defining characteristic.
It is a simple bread, with no additional grains on top or incorporated (although those varieties also exist and are popular, but are usually given different names such as 7 grains bread, etc. even though they too are made with whole wheat flour). As you might guess, the Dutch also eat "wittebrood", or "white bread". While it may look like a loaf of Wonderbread, I assure you it tastes nothing like that chemical, beaten into submission, concoction. Go into a "Warme Bakker" (literally "warm baker", but meaning an on-premises, fresh bakery where bread is often still a little warm when you buy it in the morning), and you'll find these and many more and an aroma that makes you not want to leave without at least 5 loaves :-)
You'll find plenty of recipes, in Dutch, with a search for "volkorenbrood". One I like (not baked it myself, but it looks like what I remember, unlike some others, and the ingredients sound right) is https://www.broodbakshop.nl/blog/recepten/volkorenbrood/
This one too, is in Dutch so you should Google Translate if necessary. It uses a poolish with whole wheat flour (volkorenmeel) and otherwise uses "standard" ingredients such as active dry yeast, water, salt and some butter or oil.
thank you for that, very helpful. That recipe looks simple, love that it uses a poolish for flavour, I'll start with that and my colleague can perhaps then tell me in what way it differs from the bread he craves. I rarely make a 100% wholewheat loaf, usually I go no further than about 50/50 wholewheat and white flour, so this will be something a little unusual.
I'll post back with the results.
I often substitute some white flour for wheat flour as well, sometimes up to 50%. It does change the flavor of the bread. I would not replace it in the poolish though.