Bake wholesome #realbread at home with tried and tested recipes from The Bread She Bakes
Baking bread with sourdough is the purest form of baking. Commercial yeast isn’t needed as naturally occurring yeasts are taking care of the rise. Keeping the sourdough in harmonious balance, baking with it again and again and transforming the most basic ingredients into wonderfully complex loaves is the essence of #realbread baking. Based on slow fermentation, the excellent flavour and texture of sourdough loaves are sure to reward your patience.
If you are the beginning of your sourdough journey, start by creating a sourdough culture from scratch. All you’ll need is flour and water. I’ve typed up step-by-step instructions for both a rye sourdough starter and spelt sourdough starter.
If you’ve already got your sourdough starter at the ready, here are my sourdough recipes:
If you like to read up all about the sourdough process in detail, Andrew Whitley’s book Do Sourdough: Slow Bread for Busy Lives has all the answers.
Described as ‘the antithesis of the industrial factory loaf’ by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, pain de campagne (French for ‘country bread’) is my favourite everyday loaf. This pain de campagne recipe using sourdough starter for leavening the dough is a delightful loaf of bread, guaranteed to please your family, friends or dinner guests. What is pain de … Read more
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We are celebrating here. With potato bread and champagne, great combination, try it! Potato bread makes use of potatoes to replace some of the wheat flour. The addition of potatoes keeps the bread moist and prevents it from crumbling. Usually, potato bread recipes use either raw or cooked potatoes. In this recipe, … Read more
I usually use jumbo oats when making granola but they also make a loaf of bread nice and wholesome. Rolled oats are oat groats (hulled whole grains) that have been rolled into flakes, steamed and lightly toasted. Note that the oats, although quite sizeable, will ‘disappear’ and completely blend into the finished loaf. The day … Read more
Schusterlaberl (also Schusterloaberl or Schusterlaibchen) which translates as ‘shoemaker loaves’ are fragrant Austrian rye bread rolls and have always been a favourite of mine. The smell of these freshly baked rye rolls is mesmerising and brings back childhood memories of stepping into the village bakery (now unfortunately closed) in Gilgenberg. Rye Bread Rolls Recipe (Schusterlaberl) Full of nostalgic feelings, I’ve … Read more
Rye flour is my favourite flour for bread baking. It produces breads with a rich and hearty taste, complex nutty flavours and a moist, dense and chewy texture. 100% pure rye breads are higher in fibre and lower in fat than wheat loaves and therefore have added health benefits. From a practical viewpoint, I also love … Read more
Vinschgerl (also sometimes Vintschgerl) are rustic palm-sized flatbreads which originate in South Tyrol. Blue fenugreek (Brotklee, Schabziger Klee, trigonella caerulea) adds a very distinctive, slightly spicy flavour to these delicious breads and the flat shape ensures that there is a lot of surface for the strong crust to form. Vinschgerl Recipe Ingredients – Makes 12 Vinschgerl … Read more
Having been home in Austria for Christmas, I brought back a big pack of shelled walnuts from the trees in my parents’ garden. A good time to experiment with walnut bread! Try my walnut bread recipe below – a sourdough walnut loaf using white wheat and wholegrain rye flour. My walnut bread is a slightly … Read more
At home in Austria for the week, I was keen to bake some traditional Austrian Schwarzbrot (black bread) with my family. It was a good team effort! My grandmother provided the recipe for Hausbrot, my mum prepared the rye sourdough and got the various ingredients ready and I did the dough work. There are many different recipes for Austrian Hausbrot … Read more