March 26, 2017 - 2:54pm
Bread from Switzerland
I was in Basel a couple years ago and had a great baguette shaped bread as a cheese sandwich from the basement market in a grocery store. It was whole grain and dark, with some white millet shaped grain in it. I would love to bake it back here in the US, but have no idea what it was. Suggestions? Thanks!!
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Hello Breadprof, I am a US baker and I run a European artisan bakery in Chile. I lived in Switzerland for five years. Do you know the name of the grocery store in Basel? Big chain names are Migros, Coop, Globus, and PAM. They usually have their bread information on their website. It is their company name followed by .ch There is a baking school in Luzern called Richemont and I have all their recipes but I need a better description of your bread.Are you sure you are not mixing up millet with sesame? The Swiss baguette is known as pain souche in French and Chnurzelbrot in German. Its basically a twisted baguette and the rustic one contains sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and flaxseeds. Also the coloring is due to malt and whole wheat chops. Saludos Andrew
It was migros! you are right, probably not millet but it was round, unlike sesame seeds.
That sounds like a really yummy baguette. I would love to have a good recipe for it!
The Swiss baguette is known as pain souche in French and Chnurzelbrot in German. Its basically a twisted baguette and the rustic one contains sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and flaxseeds. Also the coloring is due to malt and whole wheat chops.
I looked around the migros website (thank you for helping me remember the name of the store!) and I believe it was the Twister Rustico and the grain was amaranth. If you have a recipe, please share! Thank you!!
https://produkte.migros.ch/bio-twister-rustico
as Swiss wheat flour that, alas, is most likely not available in the US.
Karin
At bread pro: yeah it has a lot of ingrwdients and the white things are actually sorghum. I am sending you a picture of an easier recipe of pain souche rustique in both German and French.it's with a preferment and retarding of 20 hours.
At karin. Ruchmehl is a flour meant for home bakers. It consists of 20% all purpose flour (halbweissmehl) and the rest are wheat germ and bran. It's an enriched flour of sorts. it makes it easier for the home baker to make "whole grain" breads. On the other hand it screws up the percentages for the professional baker. The flour type is 1050 in Germany and Switzerland but it is milled so that it ia not is enriched for the professional baker. The home baker does not have access to this flour hence ruchmehl. So the recipe does not have ruchmehl being a professional recipe.
This is fantastic! Thank you!!
Swiss flour milling Ruchmehl/Halbweissmehl
I live in Switzerland, I’m not a miller, but I am a baker by profession, my experience in bakeries here ranges from industrial, middle sized to micro. (my partner has also made a career in the cereal foods industry:bakery flour test labs).What I read in this thread about Swiss Ruchmehl starts out completely wrong and steadily gets worse as it goes, I think that this deserves to be corrected: The flour types Ruchmehl and Halbweissmehl are products of the Swiss high-tech milling industry, they are used extensively here, for bread and buns, throughout the country, in bakeries both small and large. This has been the case for several decades and for the foreseeable future will probably remain so. The flour is packed in 25kg sacks or delivered in bulk, then loaded into silos.1kg. sacks are also readily available to retail shoppers, also in small village stores (which also commonly sell small 42 gram blocks of fresh bakers yeast) Modern high-tech milling is kind of like orange juice manufacturing, it’s completely taken apart and then reconstructed as desired, in the case of flour milling, the grain is separated into many streams, I’ve heard as many as 18.To create Ruch and Halbweiss flours, approximately 20% of the grain’s endosperm is left out. They take the whitest of the white away, this is used up by industry bakers to make such things as lily white hamburger buns for the fast food trade.With Ruchmehl the layer that divides endosperm and bran is included as well as part of the bran, this is processed to a fine particle size, dark flecks are clearly evident in the finished flour.To avoid rancidity issues the germ is also most certainly removed. (this is also the case in so called whole wheat flour)Unfortunately Swiss flours aren’t labeled with a convenient #number like in Germany, Austria and France. One has to dig a little behind the scenes to get that info. Typically Swiss “Halbweissmehl”, using the German system would be tagged as a 750, The darkness of Ruchmehl varies from mill to mill, but could normally be typed as a 1100 or higher. Doughs made with Ruchmehl, probably due to the fine bran flecks, are clearly darker than ones made with German type 1050 flour. I believe that Karin is fully correct in suggesting that Ruchmehl was used, many of these “Rustical” twist breads sport a dark crumb and are rolled in seeds&finely cracked grain. Unfortunately though, there is a clear trend by Migros, Co-op and the likes to use cheap low extraction flours, the crumb darkness is created by using very small amounts of roasted black malt flour.The consumer gets tricked into believing that they are eating healthy wholegrain bread and they are spared the bother of having to chew all too much and the doughs have a greater machinability and lend themselves better to retarding or shock-freezing.Cheers from sunny Switzerland, happy bakingDanielThe flour milling process you describe sounds similar to that for producing what is called "First Clear" flour here. It is not generally available in retail stores, but you can order it from nybakers dot com and King Arthur Flour.
Although I think it was cheaper than patent (white) flours historically, now it is more expensive.
David
Hello David
Yes, I believe that the practice of extracting the "First Clear" is quite similiar. The ways of high tech millers can be quite intricate, it's all very interesting, but at the same time simply running a few kilos of grain through a good stone mill is such a wholesome and easily understood process.
cheers and pleasant baking to you
Daniel
Thank you Daniel! I really appreciate you taking the time to post your detailed review of locally milled flours.
Hello Sid
My pleasure, and If you are ever back this way, there is a very good regional bakery here called "Sutter", they have many outlets in the area, one is right across the street from the Migro in fact, downtown. There stuff is a few notchs more interesting than migros.
And if you happen to have room in your suitcase you could take a few sacks of wonderful Ruchmehl back with you, the flour in the 1kg. bags at Migro are very good, US customs will love you for it.
Cheers and happy baking
Daniel
Thanks Daniel.copied and pasted. So ruchmehl is basically a Weizenmischbrotmehl, correct? Do you know anyone from Bühler? They have the best milling technology. I only said that about the home baker because my professional experience in Switzerland there was never any ruchmehl used. (Sion, Valais, anf Sankt Moritz, Graubünden) 2006 and 2010.
Hello Andrew
The term Weizenmischbrotmehl or Weizenmischbrot denotes a product that is at least 50% wheat but is blended with another grain type, such as Rye or Spelt etc. Ruchmehl contains only one grain sort, almost always wheat. Spelt flour is also milled here with the same technique, sold as Dinkelruchmehl.
Bühler is indeed the global industry leader in milling, my partner has attended courses there, and reports that they have a wonderful test bakery.
Thanks Daniel.copied and pasted. So ruchmehl is basically a Weizenmischbrotmehl, correct? Do you know anyone from Bühler? They have the best milling technology. I only said that about the home baker because my professional experience in Switzerland there was never any ruchmehl used. (Sion, Valais, anf Sankt Moritz, Graubünden) 2006 and 2010.
We visit Switzerland often and I have long wondered about the flours. I will bookmark this.
maybe on my next visit we can get to Basel and visit Sutter's bakery.
Leslie
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for the info on flours. We have recently moved to Switzerland (Biel) and I started baking sourdough bread earlier this year with mixed results. I have been using a mix of Halbweissmehl and Vollkorn. Is Halbweissmehl a good sub for American bread flour, or Ruchmehl is better?
Thanks!
Therese
Hello! This is the DE origin miller selling Ruchmehl. It states that Ruchmehl has more minerals, etc. I’m interested to try out. I think that organic mill sells better quality flours than the Swiss baker explained about industrial ruchmehl? I like dark, rustic and wholesome bread.
By chance, I recently found a recipe for Ruchmehl bread on homebaking.at which may be of interest.
Lance
Hi Lance! Such a good find. Awesome blog! So thorough snd do good recipes. I’m so thankful. Will study it thoroughly.
As a bread recipe site, rather than a discussion forum like TFL, there is no better site in the whole of the World Wide web than homebaking.at.
I continue to be in reverence to the depth of breadmaking knowledge that Dietmar Kappl has.
Lance
Thanks for sharing that website Lance, I have bookmarked it and will have a look at it.
Benny