The recipe for my coveted German peasant bread, made at a leisurely pace over two days. It’s a simple sourdough bread with a rye flour content of almost 70%.

With the move to Düsseldorf at the end of the summer, the holiday afterwards and generally a lot of work-related things going on, I’ve been very busy lately. I didn’t get around to beak any bread at all since the move, but I’ve now reactivated my sourdough and just finished my first bread in a few months. Since I have to get used to a new kitchen with a new oven, I decided to go back to basics and bake an old favourite of mine: a traditional German peasant bread (Altdeutsches Landbrot) recipe I’ve adapted into my own sourdough-only variant from an article by Hans Gerlach in the Süddeutsche Zeitung . Since people inevitably ask me for the recipe whenever I post photos of this bread anywhere, I’ve decided to finally write it down on the blog and share it for posterity.

Equipment

• Two large bowls and a medium-sized bowl
• Cutting board
• Two baking trays
• Beaker
• A number of sturdy spoons
• An oven
• (Optional) Stand mixer or bread kneading machine
• (Optional) Proofing basket

Ingredients

• Rye sourdough starter
• 900g rye flour, type 1150 ¹
• 450g wheat flour, type 550 ¹
• 50g wholemeal rye flour (to feed the sourdough)
• 30g salt
• (Optional) Bread spices ²

These amounts will yield a good-sized bread that will feed two people for almost half of a week. The bread pictured above has a diameter of about 25 cm.

Directions

When baking bread, it generally pays to be mindful of the wait times involved. Plan ahead so that you don’t have to sit in the kitchen into the wee hours of the morning, waiting for your bread to finish or wake up to a dough that’s gone stale while you were sleeping. With this bread, I like to start the preparations Friday afternoon, which will get me to a finished, freshly baked bread in the early afternoon on Saturday. I generally like to bake at a leisurely pace since this is a hobby to me and meant for relaxation. Your mileage may vary, but this approach works very well with this recipe in particular and makes for a lovely late Saturday morning baking session and an afternoon in a house filled with the smell of warm bread.

Day One (Friday afternoon)

1. Take your sourdough starter from the fridge. Fill a medium-sized bowl with 50g of wholemeal rye flour and 50ml of warm water, add your sourdough starter and mix thoroughly.
2. Cover the bowl loosely with cling wrap and leave it in an undisturbed, warm place at room temperature for 6 - 8 hours.
3. Take a large bowl and mix 50g of your sourdough with 350g of rye flour and 350ml of warm water.
4. Cover the new bowl loosely with cling wrap and leave it in an undisturbed, warm place at room temperature for about 12 hours.

Day Two (Saturday morning)

1. Separate 1 - 2 tablespoons of the matured dough and store it in the fridge – this is your next sourdough starter.
2. Take the rest of the dough and add 550g of rye flour, 450g of wheat flour, 550ml of warm water and 30g of salt. If you want, add bread spices. Mix thoroughly until you have a homogenous dough. If available, use a strong stand mixer. A dedicated bread kneading machine is best. You can mix it by hand but it will take a long time and serious effort. You will feel your arms the next day, believe me.
3. Once you have a nice, supple dough, fill it into a fresh large bowl (unless you kneaded by hand, in which case just leave it in the bowl you were using for that) and cover it with a kitchen towel. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
4. Cover your workplace in a light dusting of rye flour and spread some on your hands. Take the dough from the bowl and knead it a few times on your kitchen counter. Make sure to work it over properly. We want to get some fresh air into the dough to encourage it to rise nicely in the next step.
5. Form the dough into as nice a round shape as you can manage and put it into a proofing basket (or, if you don’t have one, use a third large bowl). Put it in with the good looking side (that you end the kneading on) facing the bottom of the proofing basket. That’s the side of your dough sphere that has less canyons and ridges from where the dough didn’t completely stick together again. Leave this alone four about 2 hours, preferably in a warm place. I usually leave it sitting on the (switched off) stove above the oven, which we will be heating up shortly and which produces a nice, cosy warmth around it in the kitchen.
6. Put the deeper one of your baking trays at the very bottom of the oven. Turn the other one around and put it the middle position of the oven (I actually use a pizza stone on an oven grate instead). Pre-heat the oven to 260 °C or as close as you can get to it. This usually takes some time. Pre-heat the oven thoroughly and don’t believe its own temperature gauge. Better to give it some extra time then skimping on this step. This usually takes an hour but depending on your oven you might want to do this for up to an hour and a half. Do this early enough so your oven is ready by the time the 2 hours from step 5 have passed.
7. After your down has matured for 2 hours, pitch it from the proofing basket onto a large cutting board. The side that rested in the bottom of the basket should now be on top. Put it onto the turned-over baking tray. Pour about 200ml of water into the bottom tray, being careful not to burn yourself. Quickly shut the oven.
8. Wait for 15 minutes, then open the oven door for 10 - 20 seconds to let all the water vapour escape. Reduce oven heat to 230 °C. Bake the bread for another hour. Don’t take it out too early. Remember: The crust is meant to be a nice dark brown and very crunchy. As crunchy as you can get it.

All done. You should have a wonderful, traditional German-style bread. Let it cool for an hour or two and remember to turn it over as well so the underside can get hard. Now cut some thick slices from it, cover them with a generous helping of butter – flood the cowling, plenty off it – then add some salt and enjoy!

Tips on Cleaning Up

A word of warning: Rye dough is an extremely effective glue. I believe they used to use it as such in the Middle Ages. The dough used in this bread is very sticky. If you don’t want to be surprised like this food blogger for example, here’s a few handy tips I gathered in my two years of baking rye breads:

• To transfer rye dough from one container to another, it’s best to use two spoons. Use sturdy ones and work them against each other to scrape off dough residue sticking to them. It’s a lot of work and takes patience, but it’s the easiest way to move the last dregs of dough. Otherwise you’ll leave a quarter off your bread behind at every second step of the process. Do not use your hands. The stuff sticks to your hands like the devil and you’ll inevitable cover anything you touch in rye glue.
• Always wash off dough with cold water. Warm water activates enzymes in the stuff that make the situation even more sticky.
• To get the dough off bowls, your stand mixer or other kitchen implements, I found it works best to let them sit in cold water that’s been thoroughly spiked with detergent for a few hours. Use a lot of detergent. The more the better. The dough will disintegrate into a slurry that can be easily rinsed off. Do this even if you have a dishwasher. Otherwise you will witness the rye dough turning into some kind of cement, glued to your utensils, inside your dishwasher. You’ll basically have to break it off.
• Use a generous amount of flour to prevent the dough from sticking to your kitchen counter. If you need to clean some dough off afterwards, scouring cream works quite well.