August 18, 2023 - 8:29am
Hello from Germany
Hi,
I found this great forum a couple of months ago, so why not joining :-) I´m baking bread for about 8 years, mainly rye sourdough or yeast based. I like no knead method but sometimes I enjoy the help of a kitchen machine.
Looking forward to share experiences.
Tobias
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Hi, welcome. I've just been branching out into ryes - the differences from making wheat breads are a surprise, especially mixing and kneading.
your are right, and shaping is also quite different when baking rye breads. My first rye breads looked more like ufos :-)
Welcome! I look forward to your posts, as I also like no-knead breads, and, especially, rye breads.
It's uncommon to find good rye bread in the US. I started baking again a couple of years ago and now I've been making my own rye breads. Many of them are German-style rye breads (from Stanley Ginberg's website and book The Rye Baker), but I have also enjoyed making (and eating!) Baltic and Polish ryes, too.
Every region has different specialties or favorites. I have the feeling that pure rye breads are also declining in Germany. Breads are more and more wheat based und traditional bakers are rare.
Welcome Guten Tag Tobias,
Schoen dich hier zu sehen , great to see you here . I am from Hamburg. Germany and bake for 20 years mostly rye - wholegrain breads with sourdough, because we are missing our real healthy wholesome breads for over 23 yeas now . I bake mostly German/ European breads. Even it is a bit tricky to make, because we are not getting all the different flours , you have on hand from a hug variety/ selection in Europe. I can say I get a realy good results meanwhile with milling my Roggen -Schrot for our favorite bread and found good and unfortunately expensive sources here. I am looking forward to see your Bread inspiration. Einen schoenen Tag und lieben Gruss aus San Diego Sabine Bread baker with passion
Perhaps we should welcome you to TFL, as well, since I don't recall seeing any of your posts previously.
I do hope to see some of your breads and hope that you will be willing to share some of your recipes, too.
Paul
Great to meet someone from Germany. I can imagine that it is difficult to get German flour types across the world. I´m happy to share breads with you, this is a rye spelt sourdough bread I baked recently. This is my first upload, so I hope it works....
Hello, Nce to meet you! I'm going to use European flour to make bread. What brand of German flour is good? Thank you!
Vicky
At the moment I use flours from Biomühle Eiling (wheat, spelt, rye) or Bongu (for special flours like very strong bread flour, ruchmehl and semola rimacinata). There are other mills which I can recommend too, e.g. Drax Mühle oder Adler Mühle.
Lots of friendly bakers here from all over the globe. I'm glad that you found TFL and hope to see some of your breads.
Paul
Thank you. I´m happy to share breads with you. This is a 50 50 rye wheat sourdough bread which I really like:
Welcome! I enjoy the German Brotkultur when I visit for work, which has been often. The German bread scene is my view of near-perfection. Variety and quality. Please share photos and stories of your baking!
Thank you. I have the feeling that good artisan bakers are becoming rare even in Germany. Prices (flour, energy, labor) increased a lot so that most the people don´t want to pay what would be necessary for artisan bakers to survive. Of course there are exceptions.
I have been gone a long time, but maybe it's kismet to see this. Hello Tobias and Sabine. This is a fantastic community of excellent bakers and generous people. I hope you enjoy yourself.
If you don't know of it, may I also recommend the FB community, Angebacken - Die Brot Community (formerly, "Mipano").
I have heard of it, but I don´t use FB so far. Maybe I should get an account....
I understand. If not FB, I can really recommend some blog sites:
Brotdoc, Björn Hollensteiner. Great book, Der Brotdoc: Heimatbrote: Traditionsreiche Brote aus dem eigenen Ofen. Mit Sauerteig, Vorteig & Co.
Plötzblog, Lutz Geißler. I have many of his books. My favorites, Brotbackbuch Nr. 4: Backen mit Sauerteig and Lutz Geißlers Almbackbuch.
Brot & Meer, run by our own member Karin who goes by the name "hanseata," I believe.
Cookie: Der Foodblog, Sonja Bauer. Great book, For the Love of Bread.
Home Baking Blog, Dietmar Kappl
Broot: Einfache und Leckere Brot-Rezepte, René Dasbeck
I know all of them, they are all great. When I did my first steps baking bread, I learned a lot by reading Lutz Geißlers blog and books.
Great! Myself as well. I leaned on Lutz's work heavily as well as Brotdoc and, of course, the FB community.
Happy baking - Paul
I've also have baked some nice rye breads from Ketex and Brotpoet, but Brotpoet's blog is now listed as private. It's a shame, because there were some interesting recipes.
I also don't have a FB account (never have, never will), but I think I would enjoy the discussion on German breads.
Done Ketex but have never done Brotpoet, thanks for the tip. Fully understand on FB. Actually the only real reason I'm still on is because of this community. Outside of Fresh Loaf, I've never in my life seen such a collection of home bakers who devise recipes and bake breads and pastries on a par with the best of artisanal, commercial baking I've seen anywhere. Blows my mind and I've learned so much. This guy, for instance, Hermann-Josef Brammel. (His blogsite, not FB).
Looking forward to your posts of what you bake. I've been baking for decades but only recently have ventured into German and Austrian ryes, and methods like detmolder, berlin kurzsauer, and monheim salzsauer. And the use of bread spice is something I'm becoming accustomed to as well.
I really like monheimer salzsauer. I use it for most of my rye sourdough breads (for example 100g flour, 100g water 120°F, 10g starter and 1g salt) and it works perfect for me. During summer, my sourdourg is ready after 12 hours but the risk of overproofing is reduced due to the salt which gives a lot of flexibility.
In particular, Lutz Geißler´s Brotbackbuch No. 4 goes pretty deeply into sourdough science and practice, including the many Sauerteigführungen (Einstufenführung, Berliner Kurzsauerführung, Monheimer, Zwei- und Dreistufenführung, Schaumsauerführung). Also many chapters devoted to the development of stiff and liquid rye and wheat starters, Lievito Madre, Hefewasser; maintaining Anstellgut; and of course background science.
That´s right. Regarding recipes, I enjoyed his Brotbackbuch No. 2 (together with Brotdoc) the most. Each bread is made by four different recipes - "standard", sourdough only, no knead and overnight proofing.
Excellent, I didn't know that about his No. 2 (I don't have that one, or No. 3). Thanks.
And please excuse me, Tobias - I misread your opening post. I'd thought for some reason you were relatively new to baking rye breads, which is why I posted all the links, thought they'd be helpful. I just re-read your post and see you're a very experienced baker, so of course, you know all these. Apologies.
Hopefully someone newer might see these and find them useful.
I've been waiting to try the M-Salzsauer process. But doesn't the temp need to drop from 90F/32C or so down to 70s/21C or so over that time period, similar to the one stage detmolder? The "quick sour" (4h at constant 95F) might be more easily maintained for me over a heating pad.
The german process I am finding most fits my environment and schedule at the moment is the Detmolder 2 stage: I can do a long stiff 50-60% ferment, without needing to baby it. And then a quick 90-100% hydration the next morning at high heat. In winter here, when it gets more like summer in Europe, I may do the Mohdheim and 1-Detmolder processes.
I think your are right regarding the optimal condition for the monheimer. Dropping to somewhere around 20°C/68°F would be perfect. In the summer time this is not possible for me and I found out, that even with higher room temperatures it works fine. Just give it a try. The salt makes it a very forgiving method.
... all of you for your warm welcome.