My mom sent me this recipe, she originally clipped it from a Danish magazine. It is called ‘a bread that keeps’, and it really does keep well. I made it two times, and I think I have tweaked the recipe to where I like it.
It is started the day before you bake, making a quick ‘sourdough’ – but it still contain quite a bit of commercial yeast, and does not really have a typical sourdough taste, as you get with a fully developed sourdough. It is then made with buttermilk, which I think make it very moist.
The original recipe calls for 2 types of flour I can’t really get here in the US, sigtemel which is a mix of sifted rye and wheat flour with 30%-50% rye. I mixed bread flour and rye flour with about 60% rye, though the result is a little different, as I use whole grain dark rye flour – sigtemel is a white flour. Secondly, the recipe calls for 4-korns mel which literally means 4-grain flour, and that might be what it is. I don’t recall having seen it in stores, and the only thing I could find online was from Norway, where it indeed was a mix of wheat, rye, oat and barley flour. My mom, however, was convinced that it meant some flour with whole kernels in it – though she said she usually just makes it with sigtemel telling me ‘you know how fussy your dad is with whole kernels’. I’m pretty sure it would be a great bread to add some soaked wheat or rye kernels to, but I stuck to adding some whole grain barley and oat flour.
You can play a bit with the ratio, this is a bit of a dense bread because of all the non-wheat flours, they don’t have much (if any) gluten, so the bread does not become that fluffy.
I baked this on the pizza stone, and that worked really well, but you can bake it on a regular sheet with parchment paper just fine.
Ingredients: (original recipe from unknown Danish magazine)
Day 1:
- 25 g yeast cake (8.3 g /0.3 oz active dry yeast)
- 250 ml lukewarm water (1 cup)
- 150 g bread flour (5.3 oz)
- 100 g rye flour (3.5 oz)
Day 2:
- 400 ml buttermilk (1.7 cups)
- 1 tbsp coarse or kosher salt
- 150 g oat flour (5.3 oz)
- 150 g barley flour (5.3 oz)
- 150 g rye flour (5.3 oz)
- 325 g bread flour (11.5 g)
Method:
Day 1:
1. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water
2. Add the initial bread and rye flour and mix well.
3. Cover with film and let stand at room temperature for 12-14 hours.
Day 2:
1. Mix the buttermilk with your dough.
2. Add salt and the barley, oat and rye flours and mix.
3. Add most of the bread flour in 2-3 portions.
4. Turn the dough out on a work surface and knead well, add more bread flour if necessary. The dough is a little sticky, take care it doesn’t get too dry, but is should feel elastic and easy to work with in the end.
5. Let the dough rise for about an hour.
6. Form 2 breads (or one big one).
7. Cover and let rest for 20-30 min. Preheat the oven to 200° C/ 395° F. Have your pizza stone in the oven if using one.
8. Score the breads with a sharp knife, and brush with milk or egg as desired.
9. Gently lift the breads onto your stone, or put your sheet in the oven.
10. Bake for 20-30 minutes. 40-50 if you are only making one.
11. They should sound hollow when tapped when done, and be nicely golden on top. Take out and let cool on a wire rack.
This bread freezes really well, and also keeps well. Even a week old I don’t feel a need to toast it, it is still moist and fresh.