Open the oven door and a wonderful fresh aroma of fresh bread comes out. There are several loaves of bread in the wood-fired oven. We take a good look inside, take out a loaf with the slider and check. Close the oven door. It takes a few more minutes, then the bread is ready.
For years, guests have been able to learn how to bake bread with me or improve their skills. There is a stone wood-fired oven in the garden. There is a large plane tree in front of it. Baking is simply beautiful. And there are no limits to the variety.
Because not all bread is the same. After all, a wide variety of flours are used: Wheat, rye, spelt, oats. But tarte flambée or pizzas are also on the baking menu. It depends.
First of all, baking day means firing up the wood-fired oven. It can take a good two hours to reach the required temperature. In the meantime, everything is prepared for the bread. The dough swells, is put into the mould and weighed out.
When the fire is out, only smouldering embers remain. Then we use the pusher to clear the ashes into a container. The ash residue is cleaned out of the oven with a wet cloth. Now the dough loaves can be placed on the hot stone.
But it's not just holidaymakers who come to Bamlach. Real bread baking experts like Dr Stefanie Herberth also come here. She offered me a private baking course. It was summer and it was 30 degrees in the shade. Numerous participants had travelled here especially for the course. Perfect dough management was the order of the day in these midsummer temperatures. There was mixed wheat bread, fluffy wholemeal spelt bread, mixed rye bread, spelt rolls and wheat rolls. Within six hours, 19kg of flour was processed. Pizza was also baked according to a completely new recipe. The result was the first and probably unique Bamlach pizza. A real treat! Stefanie Herberth has published the recipe on her homepage: www.hefe-und-mehr.de
