Home At Last! with Patty Gironda

This was a very successful experiment and one that I will definitely continue to work on.  I might consider ordering German flour from GermanDeli.com for a more authentic German taste . . .although this was very good with the flours I had on hand. My goal was to bake a loaf similar to the brown farmer's bread that I enjoyed as a child while living in Germany. I started with the basic bread recipe that I have on the Home At Last! website-but changed up the recipe by swapping out a cup of rye flour for one of the five cups of flour.  I have made just about every combo I can think of. This particular loaf was rye, unbleached, Italian flour and a white whole wheat. Everything else was the same except that I spritzed the oven through-out the entire bake process (about every ten minutes) and added a jar of water to create a crispy crust.

I found this recipe in one of my favorite chef cookbooks. The recipe is made over a couple of days and calls for starter made from potato water. I had just made up a batch of potato starter-but with potatoes and the potato water, so, that was the first substitution I made. I also switched one cup of the required bread flour for a cup of Italian flour. The results were wonderful. As you can see there is a golden crust around the entire bread but instead of a typical chewy sourdough crust this was a little more crispy. . .like German brotchen. The recipe called for spritzing the dough with water before putting into the oven-which I did-but I also placed a small glass bowl with water in the oven-occasionally pouring water on the floor of the oven to create steam. My husband told me he loved me as he ate his hot-from-the-oven bread! I wanted to share a photo of the inspiration behind all the sudden interest in bread baking.  My friend, Char Fontane gave this to me for Ch...