Pumpkin seed & sesame bread: WTSIM#4!

Bread, glorious bread... just how do they do it?
If I needed to survive on one food alone, I would probably choose bread. Having grown up in Austria, there were also so many different varieties to fall in love with. Take the rolls (please note that names vary throughout Austria, depending on the dialect): Semmerl (plain roll, top mimicking a pin wheel), Flesserl (braided, topped with poppyseed and salt), Salzstangerl (rolled like a croissant, but not bent, and much, much longer - topped with salt & caraway seed), Wachauer (again a simple roll, but with a mixture of rye and wheat flour, sprinkled with caraway seeds), Vintschgerl (a flat roll made with rye flour and beer), Grahamweckerl (a long roll made with wheatgerm), Kornspitz (a long, crusty roll from rye with whole grains and sprinkled with salt or sesame), Kipferl (a crescent made from wheat dough, but using milk and sugar), and a ton of variations on the theme using add-ins (sesame, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, nuts, raisins, whole grains) and add-ons (poppy-seed, sesame, salt, seeds)... the possibilities are endless! And that's just the rolls! There are even more varieties of the humble loaf, with similar declinations of flours, seeds and seasoning.
I really do miss Austrian bread here... yes, we get excellent French bakeries, chains, of course, but they do a mean flûte and pain au chocolat nontheless. There's even a German bakery in the vicinity, but, their next-to-perfect Vintschgerl aside, the bread is but a sad copy of what I grew up with. Last weekend, I went to Vienna and one of my first trips was to a bakery - in fact, it was not even a proper bakery, but the bread section of Vienna's gourmet shopping paradise Meinl am Graben. Just looking at all the gluten makes my heart jump with joy! (They have gluten-free bread as well, no fear!)
As for myself, I am a novice at baking, really. Although my agency-colleagues back in Vienna gave me a bread-maker as a parting gift, I never really warmed to the idea of having a uniformly shaped loaf every time I made bread and not being able to experiment with my dough one single bit. If you're in the market for a bread-maker, have mine. Seriously, if you pay for the postage, it's yours. Emails to .
I have made various attempts at baking bread, but none of them have been the huge success I had been hoping for. In hindsight, I blame it on the yeast. I was using dry yeast, not knowing that you could actually buy live yeast at the supermarket here. All you need to do is sneak into their bakery, yes, behind those intimidating shelves with cooling racks, and politely ask them to cut off a piece of the huge slabs of yeast they've got hiding back there. There's a law in England preventing supermarkets from selling anything live (wouldn't it be nice to be able to buy yor sheep for your Sunday roast next time you're at Waitrose?), and yeast is a live culture. It may not be jumping around all over the shop and leave it's droppings behind everywhere, but it's live. And boy do you notice that when you let your bread rise...
The first time I used it, I was making apple & cinnamon hot-cross buns and the starter leapt straight out of the bowl I was using. 50 g of yeast, 1 egg, 1 tbsp of flour and a pinch of sugar can go a long, long way. They can even end up on your kitchen floor, if you leave it unattended for too long! And at the second and third rising, I misjudged its power again, ending up with a uniform tray cake rather than individual buns. But there you go, we all learn from our mistakes.
Three attempts later and I am somewhat more prepared for the challenge that is baking bread. For this month's instalment of "Waiter! There's something in my... BREAD", hosted by Andrew of SpittoonExtra, I was in a rush to come up with a recipe until, well, today. There's nothing like a bit of advance planning, right? So, having nothing up my sleeve, I decided look up someone else's to see what I could borrow. During my recent stay in Vienna, I discovered a gem of a restaurant (review to follow momentarily) where I fell in love with their bread, in particular their pumpkin seed loaf. After hours of pleading, I managed to get some information out of the kitchen, not a proper recipe, but an indication of the ingredients they use. And so I tried my luck... see if you like it as much as I did.

Pumpkin seed & sesame bread
(after Harald Riedel, who really is not just a passionate, but an inspired chef)

50 g live yeast*
1 tsp sugar
300 g pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
750 g wheat flour
100 ml melted butter
500 ml + 80 ml warm water
15 g salt

For the starter, dissolve the yeast in 80 ml warm water, roughly stir in the sugar and 2 tbsp of the flour. Let sit on the kitchen counter, but protect from draughts. Leave to rise for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, toast the pumpkin seeds until they're browning and starting to pop. Roughly chop in a fod processor.
In a large bowl or your food processor, combine the flour, sesame, salt and pumpkin seeds. Add the starter and the melted butter and knead for 2 minutes until well combined. Don't over-work it. The dough will be quite sticky.
Butter enough loaf tins (I used a 1l and a 1.5l one) and fill with dough about half-way up. Leave to rise in a warm place for another 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven to 175C. Put in the loaf tins, bakes for 20 minutes. Check to see if a skewer comes out clean. If not, continue baking until it does. Turn off the heat, leave loaves to rest in the warm oven for another 5 minutes.
Remove loaves from the oven and leave to cool in their tins.

This bread keeps for several days wrapped in a kitchen cloth and placed in a bread tin. It is best enjoyed slightly warm, so I suggest slicing it and toasting it before consumption.

* Get it at the bakery of your local supermarket or a bakery, if they're not extinct where you are

Comments

[James]

I agree completely with you about live yeast. In addition dried yeast can impart a disagreeable flavour of its own to the loaf. As an experiment try making a recipe with 1/2 or even a 1/4 of your usual amount of live yeast, leaving it to rise overnight in a cool place. You'll get a much better flavour, and a marvellous breakfast treat!

[Silverbrow]

Try out Dan Lepard's book The Handmade Loaf. It's fantastic for learning how to bake decent bread. You might particularly like it because he looks at traditional breads from around Europe. I'm not at home so not sure if Austria is included, but it might well be.

[Eva]

I know exactly what you mean - you get nice French or Italian Bread in Sydney but no German loaves let alone decent bread rolls...
In case you're still possessing your bread maker, have a look at "Jennie Shapter: The Bread Machine Kitchen Handbook". I don't like uniform loaves either but there are many recipes that use the machine just for kneading which makes bread baking quick and fuss-free. It also uses poolishes, bigas, and sourdoughs so you can have proper European bread!

[johanna]

james, that's a very good idea - i often find breads a tad too yeasty.
silverbrow, eva: must look out for these books, have gotten into the spirit now!

[Ulrike]

Sieht lecker aus, ich nehm da 'mal 'ne Scheibe.

Ich stehe auf Vinschgauer Fladen. Dan Lepard's Buch mag ich auch sehr. Und wenn du Sauerteig benötigst....

[zorgclyde]

hi this post reminds me of my bread-eating student days in Germany! (I was also under budget limit, hence lots of bread) Even now living in NYC I found out good German bread is next to impossible to find. I've decided to start experimenting on my own as well. Do you or anyone happen to know a good book or resource for beginners? thanks, and keep posting! Handmaking bread is fun.

[Bonnie]

Hahaha how funny! Dan had a *get this* Antony Worral Thompson bread maker - given to him by his ex-girlfriend ;)

When we recently moved I jumped at the chance to get rid of it and I gladly offered it to any of my colleagues. I had no less than 6 offers to take it off my hands and that's before I sent the 'sorry it's gone' email.

Bread makers make me squirm.

[James]

"james, that's a very good idea - i often find breads a tad too yeasty."

Just to make myself clear, a dough that rises slowly from a small amount of yeast doesn't just make a better loaf because of the absence of a yeasty flavour, but because the slow rising develops the whole flavour of the bread, rather in the same way that a stew cooked long and gently extracts the maximum flavour from the meat.

[rachel]

This made a lovely bread. I substituted the sunflower seeds for pumpkin seeds.