Thurgauer Lake of Constance bread with wheat sourdough

Thurgauer bread fresh from the oven

Thurgau is a small administrative region (Canton) of Switzerland aligning the Lake of Constance on its southern borders. Kreuzlingen, the station of the ferry that crosses the Lake of Constance is in the Canton of Thurgau.

Alone for its beautiful situation next to the Lake of Constance, it is worth a visit, but what else can we find there? A beautiful artisan bread that is, the Thurgauer lake of Constance organic bread that I found over here presented by a lady from Switzerland. What a delicious bread I have to say, the taste, the crust and the crumb, everything is just excellent. I had to adapt the recipe already because I did not have all the ingredients, but never mind, you can follow my recipe or the original recipe on the before mentioned website.

Lake of Constance ferry approaching Kreuzlingen

Sourdough:

• 100 g wheat flour
• 100 g water
• 15 g of sourdough starter

Mix it all well together until there are no more lumps in the mix. Then let the sourdough get ripe for 16 – 20 hours at room temperature (ideal around 26 degrees Celsius, when the sourdough is ready, you will see the bubbles coming up and the sourdough getting active).

Sponge:

• 100 g wheat flour
• 80 g water
• 1 – 2 g of fresh yeast (or 1/7th of dried yeast)

Knead it well through and let it rest for 10 hours at room temperature (25 degrees Celsius might be best here again)

Scald:

• 50 g of rye- or, spelt flakes or if not available you can also use oatmeal flakes, which I did
• 70 g hot water

Pour the hot water over the flakes let it cool down and keep it in the fridge over night
Main dough:

• Sourdough
• Sponge
• Scald
• 350 g wheat flour
• 50 g rye flour
• 12 g salt
• 12 g honey
• 5 g yeast (or 1/7th dried yeast)
• 180 g buttermilk (if you don’t have it do it like me, I mixed 50 g yogurt and 130 g milk to replace the buttermilk)

Mix everything well together; knead the dough for five minutes. Now let the dough rest for 40 minutes. 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 wet the bowl 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. Once the dough is added, I also wet the top of the dough (which means the bottom of the bread) one more time so it won't get a hard crust on top. Let the bread ferment another 80 - 120 minutes.

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. I wet the top of the bread one more time and sprinkle some sesame grains over the bread before it goes 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 - 15 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 190°C and continue to bake the bread for another 40 - 45 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 of homemade bread when it's still hot. It gives a nice and shiny surface the fresh baked crust.

Enjoy you own, self made artisanal bread.