Buckwheat Bread from Slovenia

In the multimedia series "Baking Bread," EU correspondent Georg Matthes bakes 28 loaves from 28 EU countries and spices his baking instructions with typical anecdotes about each land. This time, he bakes Austrian Kaiser rolls.

Ingredients

Rye sourdough

• 60g rye flour sourdough starter
• 150ml water
• 120g medium rye flour

Buckwheat dough

• 180ml boiling water
• 100g buckwheat flour

Main dough

• Rye sourdough and buckwheat dough
• 100g medium rye flour
• 200g brown bread flour
• 200g plain flour
• 200ml water
• 20g honey
• 100g walnuts
• 12g salt
•  

You will also need

• baking paper
• dough scraper

 

And here is how you make the "Ajdov Kruh" – Slovenia’s Buckwheat Loaf: 

1. Start by making the rye sourdough. Mix together the sourdough starter, rye flour and water, and leaving to rise overnight.

2. The next day, make the buckwheat dough by mixing the buckwheat with the boiling water and leaving to cool.

3. Finally, make your main dough. Mix the sourdough and buckwheat dough with the remaining ingredients. Knead for 15 minutes by hand, or for 7 minutes in a food processor. The dough will be very sticky.

4. Leave the dough in a warm place for four hours, or until it has doubled in size.

5. Tip the dough out onto a well-floured surface and use the dough scraper to shape it into a round. Then place the whole thing on a sheet of baking paper.

5. Leave the dough to rise for a further hour to hour-and-a-half, until it has once again doubled in size. If you feel like it, use a stencil to create a pattern on top in flour.

6. Preheat the oven to 250°C. Place a baking sheet in the middle to heat up, and a cast iron pan on the floor of the oven.

7. Slide the baking paper with the dough on top onto the hot baking sheet. Straight afterwards, pour a mug of water into the cast iron pan.

8. Bake the bread for 35 minutes in total.10 minutes into the cooking time, open the oven door slightly to let out some steam, then reduce the temperature to 200 °C.