Sourdough & Yeast Bread with Seeds

Yesterday morning, after non-stop rain on Wednesday, I think I could have give a home to some gold fish in my bike's panniers. That's the downside of having waterproof bags, you see .. the water usually keeps out, but if it gets in, it stays in there ;)

My panniers do have a hole...unintentionally...but it doesn't seem to help much in this case.

In any case it is always surprising how much less heavy my bike is without these panniers and the D-lock on it. 

Well, anyway ... I hadn't planned on having a free morning today, but since I now have one, I am tackling the following very urgent issue now:

Finally ... after moving this note from my desk to the kitchen, back to my desk, being carried around on my phone as a photograph when showing a friend how to make this bread  ... I am now putting it into proper writing for you!

Oh, hold on. Maybe you can just use the note? ;) No? Oh, okay then =P

I've made two versions of this bread now; one with seeds, as my Mum's original version was, and one with left-over red lentils and sunflower seeds. I can recommend both versions or simply using whatever you may have on hand.

Sourdough & Yeast Bread with Seeds

Recipe by Ines Feucht

Sourdough yeast bread with seeds, grains, or pulses. Wholegrain rye and wheat.

Prep time: 12 hours
Cook time: 45 minutes
Total time: 18 hours
Yield: 2 loaves

Ingredients

• 245 g rye flour
• 280 g water
• 50 g ready-to-use sourdough-starter (before feeding)

• 120 g mixed seeds, soaked in
• 105 g water OR
• 1 cup cooked lentils/grains

• 350 g wheat flour
• 60 g rye flour
• 16 g salt
• 2 tsp dried yeast (or 10 g fresh)
• honey
• 50 g water

• water
• seeds or flour for decoration

Instructions

On the day before:

1. Mix rye flour, water and sourdough in a bowl. Cover and place in a warm place overnight.
2. Mix seeds of your choice with water and leave to soak OR make sure you have your grains/pulses cooked for the next day. You can also cook them on the next day, but since you wouldn't want them to be hot it is easier to have them ready. You can also add in grains/pulses and seeds.

On the baking day:

1. Dissolve yeast and honey in lukewarm water.
2. Mix wheat and rye flour with salt. Add to the dough you started the day before along with the yeast mixture and the seeds/grains/pulses.
3. Knead until the dough comes together in a ball and keep on kneading for a bit until you have a soft and pliable dough. Knead into a ball, as described here in the kneading instructions and place back into your bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place for two hours.
4. With wet hands remove from the bowl onto a wet surface. Divide into two equal parts and knead into loaves.
• Either: Place on a baking sheet lined with non-stick backing foil or dusted with a very generous amount of flour. Wet the loaves thoroughly with your hands. Dust with flour.
• Or: Wet the loaves thoroughly with your hands. Dip, upside-down into a plate full of seeds. Turn back around and place on a baking sheet lined with non-stick backing foil or dusted with a very generous amount of flour. 
5. Let the loaves rise in a draught-free place for half an hour and pre-heat your oven to 260 °C. If using fan heat only use 240°C. After 20 minutes place an oven-proof dish filled with water in the oven to let steam develop.
6. With a wet, sharp knife cut into the loaf to determine where it will break up. You can choose the pattern. I did a cross-wise grid sort of pattern, as I remembered too late that I used to make my Mum cut hearts into the surface ;)
7. Bake for
• 15 minutes at 260 °C / 240°C fan heat
• 15 minutes at 220 °C / 200°C fan heat
• 15 minutes at 190 °C / 170°C fan heat
8. Remove from the oven and check if the loaves sound hollow when you knock on them to confirm that they are done. Let cool on a rack until completely cooled, then wrap in a dish towel and store in a paper bag at room temperature OR freeze immediately, when still hot, in a sealed freezer bag.
9. Enjoy :-)

Everyday Fruit and Oats Breakfast Bowl

Hi there!

... Do you remember me? I know it's been a while and I do hope that I am still there, somewhere at the back of your mind ;-)
I had been thinking that after the exams things would get more relaxed, but that hasn't happened. So I figured I should better stop waiting for things to get less busy.

What I am sharing with you today is something really, really easy. There's no heat required and you can't do anything wrong! Here comes: My everyday breakfast.

I guess I've had some variation of this every morning for the past nine years. ( I can hear you thinking here I think..."What??? Is she crazy?") The recipe has changed over time and with that my liking for this breakfast has increased. When I was a child my Mum had learned in her course that you had to eat 60 grams of raw cereal grains each day in order to get your vital supply of vitamin B1. The first recipe was different from what mine now is and I have to admit that I was not particularly happy about this new mindset. Not at all...

For the first recipe I remember us being in the kitchen trying to shred apple on a circular travel-size citrus peel grater. The apple was getting brown and doing this with 300 grams of apple was no fun. There was also some cream in the base, no orange and the consistency was quite heavy. ... Well, don't worry about that...none of this applies to my today's version anymore and these days I love my breakfast. I am looking forward to it every day and I would get seriously confused if there was a day without one.

My Mum's version today still is different from mine, but also very different from the old recipe. Nevertheless I like mine better and she likes hers better. I should get the second recipe from her some time so you can decide for yourself. Unfortunately I don't really know what she's doing differently from me so she'd need to write that down ;-)

Anyway, let's get started before you all go back to sleep again!

Everyday Fruit and Oats Breakfast Bowl

Time: about 20-30 minutes

for 1 person
60 g	rolled oats or other rolled grains
1 tbsp	flaxseed
40 g	water
50 g	orange
80 g	banana
	more water
100 g	apple
	fruit
	nuts
	seeds

1. Put the rolled oats in your breakfast bowl. Grind up the flaxseed into a fine meal. Add the water and stir to combine.
2. Place orange and banana into a blender with approximately 20 g of water and blend up until liquid. You can also place the fruit in a cup and use a stick blender. Add the banana-orange liquid to the oats. Stir to combine.
3. Slice the apple into sticks. I do this by halving the apple, cutting it into slices one way and the cutting the slices in sticks by slicing crosswise the other way. Add to your bowl. Stir to combine and add a bit more water so that your mixture isn't too dense.
4. Top with fruit. I like to use any leftover banana, which I put on top in slices and then lots of seasonal fruit.
5. Then sprinkle with seeds. I like to use 1 tsp of each sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds.
6. Add nuts, such as almonds, hazelnuts, pecan nuts, walnuts or brazil nuts. I usually use all of these and add some coconut flakes. But feel free to adjust in whatever way you wish.

Some more important notes - not for the taste, but for nutritional reasons, so I feel I am responsible to let you know ;-)

• Cereal Flakes: To get the intended nutritional benefit the grains should be raw, i.e. not heated in any way, which is often done for preservative reasons, especially when the grains are rolled. Ideally, you buy whole grains, which you roll yourself with a device like in this video. Even more ideally, you test if the grains really are raw by trying to sprout them. 
• Flaxseed: Flaxseed should be ground because otherwise your body won't be able to absorb the nutrients in the seeds. They won't really be digested and ... well, they will look the same after you've eaten them as before you've eaten them. This is because the seeds want to stay whole so that if a bird was to eat them and drop them somewhere else they'd still be able to grow. If you buy them pre-ground, though, they will have lost lots of their nutrients due to the open exposure to the oxygen.

Still, even if you don't do this, the breakfast is very healthy and, most importantly, delicious! So don't let this hold you back!

That's it. Happy breakfast :-) Let me know if you like it!

And I nearly forgot something important! Thanks to my Czech friend Damm, who I was talking to this week, I finally got myself 'round to having a look into how Instagram works and opening an account.

I hope that even if I don't feel like I've enough energy for writing sometimes, I can still take some photographs and give you some inspiration from time to time! So please feel free to follow me there (a link is on the right side of the blog in the sidebar) and I promise I'll soon have figured out the details of how it all works soon! ;-)