World Bread Day Bread

Zorra is celebrating her world bread day on her blog. Come and see all the wonderful breads being baked over here: Kochtopf.me. This is my contribution to this event 

Bread fresh from the oven

Today is world bread day. It is strange how unimportant this important day actually is. Except us hobby bakers maybe nobody on the street would even know about this very important day, because bread is still such an important staple all over the world. But nobody seems to care any more these days. If I only remember how many bakeries from my youth, that made awesome artisan bread, disappeared because they lost the fight with the supermarket chains that offer cheap bread from the dispenser. Anyhow, something to think about while I as baking this fresh kind of bread that contains yogurt and some summer herbs for a light and fresh taste. To celebrate the world bread day, I wanted to bake bread that is fresh and light and that creates the right kind of light mood for the world bread day celebration. As this is maybe the last summer bread, I wanted to bake wheat based bread and leave rye flour for my next autumn bread. In either case it also will taste very delicious, even if it’s not world bread day any more. Anyway, here is the recipe of my bread
Sourdough

• 160 g wheat flour
• 130 g water
• 16 g sourdough starter

Mix everything together to smooth dough without any clumps inside and let it rest in a covered bowl at 24-28°C for 14 – 20 hours. After your sourdough is ready, don't forget to take some starter away and keep it in the fridge for your next bread.

Soaking piece

• 70 g roasted oatmeal flakes
• 200 g boiling water

Put the flakes in a bowl. Pour the boiling water over them. Let everything rest for 12 – 16 hours

Maindough

• Sourdough
• Soaking piece
• 400 g wheat flour
• 185 g yogurt
• 1 g dried yeast
• 14 g Salt
• 2 Tbsp of cumin, oregano and thyme mix

Put all ingredients in the mixing bowl and mix them well together and knead them for about 5 – 7 minutes until the gluten in the dough is set free, the dough is a bit soft and gluey. Let the dough rest for 40 minutes. During this, stretch and fold the thrice.
Now I formed two breads from the dough mass. If you are not sure how to form / shape bread, please follow my link on "bread baking basics + know how". This is another one of my free formed bread and so, it has to rest in a form in order to not run flat on you. So normally you would put in a bread fermentation basket it you have one. This is a basket that bakers will let their breads ferment in for a while to get in form while fermenting. As I don't have a special basket for this, I am just taking a normal high bowl (I am still using the same on that I used when I made this bread) with a round bottom that gives my bread more or less the form that I desire for the bread. I flour the bowl well before I add the dough, this way later it won't stick to it. Now I add the formed dough bottom side up into the bowl. Let the bread ferment another 45 - 60 minutes (actually there is a finger test to check if the bread is ready for the oven or not. I will post this method another time because it’s really helpful at this stage).
Once the breads have been fermented, I drop them upside down from their bread baskets on my permanent Teflon baking foil on which I already sprinkled a bed of flour. I also cut the bread and sprinkle a layer of flour on top of the bread before putting in the oven. The oven should be pre heated on 250°C. Now pour a cup of hot water in the oven (if you do not have this inbuilt steaming program in your oven at home), pop the bread in the oven and also place a cup of water on the floor of the oven to give some additional steam later on. Quickly close the door so the hot steam will be caught within the oven. Having all that steam in the oven is, like mentioned many times before, extremely important for a scrumptious crust and a great consistency of the bread.
Bake the breads for 10 - 15 minutes like this until it reached the right brown color that you are looking for in a bread crust, then open up the door, let the steam out, lower the heat on 200°C and continue to bake the bread for another 35 - 40 minutes. Now switch off the heat, keep the door open and let the bread cool down slowly. I always spray a bit of water on top of the fresh loaf when it's still hot. It gives a nice and shiny surface the fresh baked crust.

Grilled slice of fresh bread with some garlic butter