My first real self made artisan organic bread - the chinese nutcracker

Bread fresh from the oven, decorated with oat flakes

Today I proudly present my first real self-made artisan bread. This artisanal bread is special because it is not only homemade bread but I even created the recipe on my own. It took me two rounds of trying, reading and all the experience from my past baking to come up with this recipe. I learned a lot about the consistency and the physics of making bread, dough, baking, and relation of flour to liquids, etc. But finally I was going for it and of course, my first own bread had to be an organic bread with a lot of seeds and nuts because this is what we like best. So I proudly present the Chinese nutcracker, my first very own bread. For this rye sourdough based bread I used wheat seeds, spelt seeds, walnuts and pumpkin seeds. So please lean back, relax and celebrate with my first real self-made bread.

Bread cut open showing the crumb, the nuts and seeds

Sponge:

• 100 g whole wheat flour
• 100 g water
• 1 g dry yeast

Leave it 3 hours at room temperature and then pop it in the fridge for another 13 hours.

Sponge dough

Sourdough: 

• 150 g rye flour
• 150 g water
• 20 g rye sourdough starter

Leave it for 16 hours at room temperature

Sourdough

Cooking piece

• 40 g spelt seeds
• 40 g wheat seeds

Leave the seeds soaking in water for about 30 minutes. Then cook those 30 minutes on medium flame until they are soft. Sieve out the excess water and put them aside in the fridge until we need them in the recipe.

Seeds soaking in water

Cooked seeds

Scald:

• 40 g crushed walnut pieces
• 40 g pumpkin seeds
• 3 table spoons of dark rum

Roast the seeds and nuts off, let them cool a bit and pour the rum over it. Put them aside overnight and let the rum soak in.
Main dough

Sponge:

• Sourdough
• Scald
• Cooking piece
• 200 g rye flour
• 100 g wheat flour
• 120 g water
• 1 g dried yeast
• 15 g salt

Mix everything well together, cover the bowl up, put it in a warm place and let it rest for 45 minutes. After that, pop the dough on a well-floured surface and knead the air out of the dough. In the meantime prepare a bread baking form with butter and pop the dough in the form. Cover it up and let the form rest in a warm place for another 60 minutes.

In the meantime preheat the oven to 250 degrees Celsius. Then pop the bread form in the oven and pour a cup of water in the bottom of the oven. Actually, you can put a baking tray in the oven when you preheat it. This way you can pour the water in the tray instead of the bottom of the oven, it’s less messy. Anyhow the effect is the same, what you want is the hot steam. Now you bake the bread in the hot steam for 10 minutes. Then you open the oven, let the steam out (eventually take the baking tray out) and reduce the heat of the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Continue baking the bread for another 45 – 50 minutes. Then pop the bread out of the form and spray some water on the bottom and the side of the bread. Put the bread back in the oven and bake for another 5 minutes. Finished is your Chinese nutcracker bread.

Like always, I will try to post this self made bread to the yeast spotting webpage like every time I am baking one as I thing this awesome blog event always deserves my support.