frisian rye bread?

Hi Nico, I grew up in the Netherlands and used to eat this bread when staying with my grandparents who lived in the north-east near the German border. Roggebrood (rye bread)was made in all the northern and eastern parts of the country, not just in Friesland. It's now commercially made and you can buy it in shops all over the Netherlands. I can even buy it in some specialty shops here in New Zealand (imported). I love the taste of it, slightly sweet-sour with a very distinctive taste that I can't really describe, maybe similar to pumpernickel. But I grew up with it. None of my family here particularly like it, so it might be an acquired taste. My grandparents' parents were all farming people who produced all their own food including grain for milling. According to my grandmother bread made with yeast and wheat flour was only for special occasions but roggebrood was their daily staple. It has a dense texture and is a very dark brown colour, almost black. It's sliced very thinly. We used to eat it with cheese or with butter and sugar. My grandmother didn't have an oven in her kitchen - she used to steam the roggebrood rather than bake it.

A while ago I downloaded this recipe off a Dutch website, but I have never got around to trying it. I've translated it - if you decide to try it, please let me know how it turns out. 

500 grammes rye flour, coarsely ground if possible, or maybe with some gritty bits included (groats?)

10 grammes salt

1 big tablespoon syrup (golden syrup or a sweet syrup)

2 deciliters hot water (not sure of my metrics - maybe 200 mls?)

Mix the rye flour and salt in a bowl. Add the syrup and water and knead to a firm dough (if necessary add another 1-2 tbsp hot water to the dough while kneading). First shape the dough into a ball, then flatten it into a sort of rectangle. Place it into a buttered loaf pan. Cover the pan with double-folded aluminium foil (the side of the foil that faces the dough must be buttered). Bake it for approximately 3 hours in a pre-heated oven at 125 degrees celsius. OR place the shaped dough into a loaf pan that has a well fitting lid and steam the bread for approx 3 hours over boiling water. 

Liz

Here is the link to the recipe - but its in Dutch

http://www.lekker-frysk.nl/brea.htm

How interesting!  For home kitchen, I would make this with discard starter or a little bottle of lactic acid, the rising not being an issue.  I would add it after the hot dough has cooled down.  The size of the recipe is easily reduced.  Sounds very familiar.  Sounds good.

Mini

We have posted a good Frysian rye bread recipe on our blog in English;

http://www.trifles.nl/2010/01/03/the-best-rye-bread/

I found this recipe on one of the web-sites I like to visit; I hope this helps. Perhaps you can tweak it a bit to fit your taste.

Publish Date: Nov 07, 2002
Tags:There are as many recipes for roggebrood as there are bakers, and more. One of the most popular varieties is the black, very grainy, Frisian variety, commercially made by such Dutch firms as Bolletje and Van der Meulen, Voortman in Canada. Because of its ingredients, this variety of roggebrood is not that easy to copy in a regular kitchen. 

450 grams cracked rye - 1 lb.
1 tbs salt
1 tbs baking soda
2 dl boiling water - 7/8 cup
180 dl apple butter, thick syrup or molasses - 2/3 cup

Grease a loaf pan. Mix rye, water, salt and soda and knead into a thick dough. Add a bit of water, or more rye if necessary. Put into the loaf pan and cover well with foil. (grease the side which touches the dough). Bake in a preheated oven at 130ºC/255ºF for two to three hours. 

My grandfather, who was a baker in the village of Sybrandaburen in the early decades of the 20th century, used to chase his sons away when making such ‘bôle.’ According to family tales he used some very ‘original’ additives to deepen the black tone of his ‘bôle’. But then, my other grandfather, also a baker, had his own explanation on how best to put ‘bigareaux’ (candied fruit) on fancy cakes…  - Tjeerd W. Hulstra

I grew up in the Dutch American immigrant in southwest Minnesota around Edgerton, Chandler, Leota, Holland, Pipestone, etc.  There is a bakery in Edgerton that specialized in some Dutch things, including rye "brick" an unleavened, somewhat sour "bread" made from rye meal.  The bakery changed hands and as the original immigrants and the first generation born here died off, demand for the rye brick fell off, so they would only bake it every other month and then put most in a freezer to sell frozen I live in St. Paul, but still have a farm near there and would buy four or so at a time. But the bakery had changed hands at least three times since the 1960s and the current owner stopped making it. About 25 years ago, I talked to the owner then and found out the following:

The bread was made from rye MEAL, very coarsely ground, not rye flour.  Buying the meal was getting hard in the early 1990s already.  

The "dough" was boiled for at least a short time before the excess water was drained off and it was put into molds.  The molds were made of a grid of wood slats, arranged to make about a dozen bricks per set. Each was about 5" by 7" by 1-1/4" thick.  The dough was poured in and leveled off flush with the top of the mold. If there was room, the filled molds were put into the oven with the last batch of anything else being baked and then left in when that product was removed and the ovens turned down for the night. If there was not room, the bricks would be put in as son as the last product was out and the oven would be kept at heat for a half hour or so.  The ovens were never turned completely off and left to go cold unless they required repair. 

So the rye bricks were given about 45 minutes at 350 degrees F. and then left at about three in the afternoon. But before leaving them, the tops of the mold were covered in a thing layer of dry rye meal, right out of the bag.  This formed a  The ovens would cool to about 200 degrees and stay at that level until about 4 a.m. the next morning when the baker would come in to start the bread for that day.  They would leave the rye brick in until room was needed for the first batch going in in the morning.  So it typically was in 14 hours or so, most of it at a low heat. And it was in wooden molds that insulated it more from direct heat than a metal pan would and the top was covered with about 3/8" of the dry meal. The meal would be brushed off and discarded.