About
My name is Nils and I live in Germany. My hobbies, apart from baking, include reading and (minimalistic) cooking. By education I am a mathematician.
I started baking bread regurarly 3 1/2 years ago. My first loaf ever was a rye sourdough bread that used a rye starter made from scratch. It took four days and I made it every two weeks.
Height: 1,87m
Weight: 83kg
Favorite color: Blue
Favorite warm dish: Lasagne
Favorite ingredients: Gray sea salt from France, olive oil, mineral water
Favorite bread: Baguette, Seeded whole-grain, rye sourdough, Italian-style white bread like Ciabatta, Stirato, …
Favorite wine: Yes
E-Mail: yeoldebreadblogge@yahoo.de
“Graubrot” – when I was little, I categorized bread in 3 different categories: white bread, gray bread and black bread. The gray bread, or “Graubrot” is made from about 50% rye, 50% wheat and a very soft dough.
If you’re up to reading a German recipe: Try this link to “Heidebrot”. It does look like the typical Graubrot you mention. Or just drop me a line at yeoldebreadblogge@yahoo.de so I get your E-Mail. I will try to translate.
Regards,
Nils
theinversecook
11 December 2008 at 16:34
Nils,
what a great website you have. I come by here almost everyday.
I am wondering where you get your flour from in Germany. I live in the Netherlands and have troubles finding specific flours (like high-gluten). Do you know where in Germany you can get good sorts of flours? Or flours that are tested so you can see how much protein they have?
regards
Dennie
Dennie
11 December 2008 at 22:52
Thanks for visiting, Dennie.
90% of the time I get my flour from the supermarket or bio-shop. Rarely, I order from the Adler Mühle a mill that offers a great assortment of flours including those usaually not available to the home baker (hard-wheat flour or Typr 812 for example).
There is no specific German high-gluten flour, that I know of, the strongest one available being flour Type 1050 with a protein content of about 11.5%. But it’s a bit tricky to compare to, say, American 11.5-protein flour, since it is a different kind of wheat. It is what I consider a strong flour. The normal bread flour, Type 550, has as little as 10%.
I have used flours that had a high protein count, but didn’t perform very well, on the other hand, a weaker flour maybe give an excellent baguette with a brittle crust. So the protein content is not the first thing I look at when buying flours.
Regards,
Nils
theinversecook
11 December 2008 at 23:08
@Nils: I think your point about protein count not being the best guide should be made by bakers more often! I recall when living in Sweden that a consumer institute actually looked at crumb quality of bread made with about 15 different flours on the market. Protein definitely wasn’t the determiner of quality (all else being equal).
Duncan | Syrup&Tang
1 January 2009 at 07:57
@Duncan: Thanks for the thumbs-up. In my begiinings I blamed everything from too soft a flour to poor oven and weak mixer for my poor attempts at baking. Right now I am back where I started in a way, using minimal equipment and the flours available. Quite humbling that most of the things I thought that I knew, including high protein flour being the best flour, were crushed over the time when I started observing dough and its changes myself.
theinversecook
2 January 2009 at 00:01