One of my favorite breads to eat is Volkornbrot. A very hearty heavy German bread. I find it to be best eaten with smoked salmon, cheeses, cured hams and with butter and honey. Recently my neighbor Cleo made a batch of this fine bread.. It inspired me to give it a try. It starts out with a sourdough starter that takes 4 days to make. I did cheat on this as Cleo had a bunch of extra starter that she was not going to be able to use so I got a nice head start. The next thing to do is to soak Rye berries and add a bit more flour to the chef(the base for the starter). After the rye berries are soaked and the starter further fermented(about 8 hours) it is time to put the bread together. It starts off with the starter,to that about 8 cups of dark rye flour is added. The water that was used to soak the ryeberries is then added as well as the ryeberries, and a bit of salt. The bread does not get kneaded, that would be a big sloppy mess to be sure and rather impossible as the dough is sticky and on the wet side. No the dough gets stirred with a whisk or a spoon until well blended. At this point it is put in a warm place to ferment overnight(or the refridgerator) The dough does not get too much less sticky over that time..So it gets poured into pans and left to rise for 3 hours or so. After it rises (just a wee bit) it is placed in the oven for 3 hours or so at 300 degrees. I put the bread in the oven and left the house for those 3 hours and when I returned the smell was so over powering. The aroma from this gustutory delight was that of brewing beer.. It really smells just like the malt etc. SO when the bread is done it is time to.... wait another 24-36 hours so as to allow the bread to fully dry to the right consistency. Personally I found this entirely beyond my abilities and sliced a sloppy piece of this fine bread. Now I am not sorry I did that, but it does seem like a good practice to wait those days... Patience is usually something I like to practice, but theres just no call for it when there is bread AND butter involved. I have to wait at least 21 more hours before I cut into it again... we will see what happens. If anyone wants to try this recipe which is fairly complex but well worth it it is in a book called bread alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik. There are a lot of great recipes in this book. til the next time....
