Bauernbrot mit Sauerteig (Farmer's Bread with Sourdough)

I have blogged about making bread from Italy, from France, from the Netherlands but I never posted about baking a bread where our neighbours should be proud of: a typical German farmer's bread, made with sourdough and almost no yeast. To make this wonderful tasting bread takes some time, but it doesn't need much work: most of the time the dough is developing in the refrigerator. I used my own rye-based sourdough, which I keep alive now for more than two years. You can find information about starting a rye-based sourdough culture in one of my previous posts. Two days before baking I've made a poolish in the evening:

Poolish:
- 100 g flour
- 15 g rye flour
- 115 g water
- a teaspoon sourdough

Mix the ingredients in a mixing bowl until a slurry mass forms. Cover the bowl (I use a transparent plastic pedal bin liner for this) and let it develop at room temperature during the night. The next morning the poolish is ready for preparing the final dough.

Dough:
- 300 g flour
- 40 g rye flour
- 150 g water
- 8 g salt
- 1 g dry yeast
- a teaspoon honey

Mix the flour with the salt and the dry yeast and add it to the poolish. Dissolve the honey in the water and add it to the dough. Mix it with a rubber spatula and take it out for kneading. This dough needs a lot of kneading! At least 15 or 20 minutes. In my post about making Sourdough Bread with Spelt you can find a detailed explanation of my favourite way of kneading.
When the dough is smooth and not sticking anymore to the working surface, transfer it to the mixing bowl, cover it with plastic and put the bowl in the fridge for 24 hours.
The next morning the dough must have almost doubled in volume. Take it out of the fridge and let it come to temperature in the kitchen for about two hours or longer (until it has doubled in size). Take the dough out, knead and fold it a few times and form a nice batard (or another shape, depending on the form of your banneton). Let the dough proof until doubled in size. This may take a few hours (I put the dough on a rack on the warming plate of my Aga and it takes 3 to 4 hours before it is ready for baking). Score the bread with a razor blade.
Create steam in your oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes on the floor of the roasting oven (240°C). I posted several times how to bake a bread in an Aga: I use a tile of Chinese hard stone for it on the oven floor. When the bread is brown enough to your wishes, place it on a rack high in the baking oven (180°C) for another 20 to 25 minutes.
Guten Appetit!

Klik hier om dit recept in het Nederlands te lezen.