Nussdorfer Landbrot - artisanal wheat sourdough herbal oregano bread

artisanal wheat sourdough herbal bread after baking

So, coming back from holiday (Thailand was an amazing experience again, I am just still mourning that I wasn't able to visit the cooking class because it was fully booked already), it's time to get some bread baking activity starting again. Sometimes it is hard to decide what kind of artisan bread to bake. Although I am a big fan of the dark artisanal rye bread that is so full of goodness and healthy stuff, I do sometimes enjoy a homemade bread from the wheat kind of sort. Well, as long as it's organic, who cares, right? So today let me introduce you to a wonderful self made bread using wheat flour and wheat sour dough starter to get that extra portion of natural yeast in our bread that we want to have in there. I slightly modified this great recipe that I found over here the Nussdorfer Landbrot, a wonderful farmers loaf. I added some dried oregano to the recipe that made this herbal bread so tasteful, I could not belief it myself.


Sourdough:

• 100 g whole wheat flour
• 100 g lukewarm water
• 15 g wheat sourdough starter

Mix well and let it rest for 14 - 16 hours

Sponge:
100 g whole wheat flour
100 g water
1 g fresh yeast
Mix well and let it go for about 12 hours

Dough:

• Sponge
• Sourdough
• 150 g whole wheat flour
• 200 g rye flour
• 160 g water
• 14 g salt
• 5 g fresh yeast
• 1 Table spoon of honey
• 2 g of dried oregano herbs

Mix everything well together; knead the dough for five minutes. Now let the dough rest for 90 minutes. "Fold" the dough once after a 45 minute fermentation. We now form the bread. If you are not sure how to form / shape bread, please follow my link on "bread baking basics + know how". This is another one of my free formed bread and so, it has to rest in a form in order to not run flat on you. So normally you would put in a bread fermentation basket it you have one. This is a basket that bakers will let their breads ferment in for a while to get in form while fermenting. As I don't have a special basket for this, I am just taking a normal high bowl (I am still using the same on that I used when I made this bread) with a round bottom that gives my bread more or less the form that I desire for the bread. I flour the bowl well before I add the dough, this way later it won't stick to it. Now I add the formed dough bottom side up into the bowl. Let the bread ferment another 80 - 90 minutes (use the finger probing method to check if the dough is ready).

Once the breads have been fermented, I drop them upside down from their bread baskets on my permanent Teflon baking foil on which I already sprinkled a bed of flour. Also sprinkle a layer of flour on top of the bread before putting in the oven. The oven should be pre heated on 250°C. Now pour a cup of hot water in the oven (if you do not have this inbuilt steaming program in your oven at home), pop the bread in the oven and also place a cup of water on the floor of the oven to give some additional steam later on. Quickly close the door so the hot steam will be caught within the oven. Having all that steam in the oven is, like mentioned many times before, extremely important for a scrumptious crust and a great consistency of the bread.

Bake the breads for 10 minutes like this until it reached the right brown color that you are looking for in a bread crust, then open up the door, let the steam out, lower the heat on 210°C and continue to bake the bread for another 50 - 55 minutes. Now switch off the heat, keep the door open and let the bread cool down slowly. I always spray a bit of water on top of the fresh loaf when it's still hot. It gives a nice and shiny surface the fresh baked crust.

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

artisanal wheat sourdough herbal bread after baking, brown crust, side view

Slice of my organo bread with some cheese on top