Backhaus

On Monday night I went with the landlord's daughter-in-law, Irmgard, to something so COMPLETELY "my thing" that I hardly have words to describe it.

For almost a decade, Irmgard has gone with a group of women each month to bake bread in a wood-burning stone oven. This oven is "run" by an elderly woman who has been there at the Backshaus for decades. There was a spot "open" at the last minute (one woman couldn't go) and so Irmgard invited ME!!

First we went to an old mill to buy the flour (with more kinds of grains and bread ingredients than I have ever seen -- mill running in the background, men loading grain sacks ....) and I was swooning already with THAT alone.

The recipe she gave me was for Potato Bread**, and used 3 kilos of flour. We each made our dough at home, and to use all 3 kilos I had to make three separate batches, (here is where my giddy relationship to the past falters: I was definately using the KitchenAide for this dough ;-) rather than mixing by hand ...I was the only one, though. Those other women all did theirs the old-fashioned way.)

At the Backhaus, the dough goes into the floured bread baskets (Look!!! just LOOK at those!!!!) and everyone "marks" their bread somehow -- the grandsons of the Baker offered to make small pretzel shapes for my loaves. You can see them with their blond curls hard at work.... :-) Then the loaves are sort of "tossed" from the baskets onto a peel and then pushed inside the oven.

After the bread came out of the oven, we brushed the small wood bits off the bread; and my 3 kilos of flour turned into seven loaves. You can see my braided, be-pretzeled loaves....

I am Over-the-Moon.

This must be how A. feels about the bicycles...;-)

** Potato Bread Recipe: 3 kilos flour (any mix of unbleached/whole wheat); 1 liter buttermilk; 50 grams salt; 5 large potatoes, cooked and put through a ricer; 1 liter of water (+/-); 2 cubes of fresh yeast. All these measurements are transferrable using a Pyrex cup (it shows metric on the other side of cups) and the dry yeast gives equivalent to cubes on the package. I weighed my flour and salt together, but 50 grams of salt seemed to be around 3 teaspoons.

:-)