Story and photos by Corinna Pongracz
My small daughter, my husband and I love it when our home smells like freshly baked bread! That’s why I often make our bread myself. My passion for baking bread started a couple of years ago with a recipe for walnut bread by Tim Mälzer. By now, I create my own recipes and try something different from time to time. Our current favorite recipe is a Mediterranean bread, which we like to serve with a creamy soup. Maybe you’d like to give it a shot yourselves?
Ingredients
I like to bake with spelt flour because it’s healthier and more digestible than wheat flour. For a small bread, baked in a bread tin with 500g / roughly 1.6oz volume, you’ll need:
• 300g/10.5oz spelt flour (type 630)
• 100g/3.5oz spelt flour (type 1050)
• 1 pack of dry yeast or ½ cube of fresh yeast
• 320ml/1.3cups lukewarm water
• 1 ½ teaspoons of sea salt
• 1 pinch of sugar
• Italian herbs (you can use your own mix or a store-bought one, doesn’t really matter)
• black olives (pitted and dryly preserved are best)
• 1 pack of feta cheese
• concentrated butter or coconut oil to prepare your tin
Instruction
1. Dissolve the yeast in your lukewarme water.
2. Mix both types of flour, the salt, sugar, and Italian herbs in a bowl.
3. As soon as the yeast has dissolved, pour the water-yeast-mixture into the dough and either use a cuisinart or knead by hand.
4. Cut the olives into quarters, cut the feta cheese into cubes, and add both to the dough. Knead again.
5. The dough is ready when the mass has a soft consistency, but you can loosen it from the bowl with a spatula.
6. Let the dough sit at room temperature for at least an hour, covered with a tea towel or paper towel.
7. In the meantime, prepare your bread tin by brushing the inside with some concentrated butter or coconut oil, and then dusting some flower on top.
8. When an hour has passed, fill the dough into your bread tin and let it sit again (uncovered this time!) for about 5-10mins. Preheat your oven at 240°C top- / bottom heat in the meantime.
9. As soon as the oven’s preheated, bake the bread in the center of the oven for 50mins. Then bake for 5mins without the bred tin’s lid.
10. When the bread’s ready, immediately get it out of the tin and let it cool on a grate.
My personal tip (unpaid ad because I’m mentioning a brand) is Stoneware’s bread tin that comes with a matching lid for your tin.
Have fun baking and enjoy the fruits of your labor!
Author’s profile: Corinna is a graphic designer, photographer, wife and mom. Her blog knuffelknutscher.de includes fun, honest and creative posts about the wonderful, chaotic, and colorful life as a working mom as well as recipes and craft projects.
