The blacksmith of bread: a different take on Easter pancakes

One of my fondest memories of Easter is breaking the fast as a family. While the kids are busy trying to find all the Easter nests, the rest of us are already setting the table for Grandma's Easter cake. Now that Grandma is gone, I have to do the Easter baking myself - and recently went in search of a suitably traditional recipe. I met master baker Philipp at the Brotschmiede in Innsbruck's Markthalle and found what I was looking for. Just in time for Easter, because a sourdough spelt pinze takes a lot of time and love. You can read here why it's not just worth the effort at Easter.

Easter is quite a mess. Pagan, Christian and Jewish customs mix together to create some very curious traditions. Rabbits hiding eggs, for example, or carrying palm bushes through the village. To make Easter even more fun, you can also fast for 40 days beforehand. Because the Jewish people were in quite a hurry when they were expelled from Egypt in the Bible (see Moses and the sea), they liked to do without sourdough when fasting. They had to be left behind during the hasty flight, and bread remembers this to this day. Because pure baker's yeast was only produced industrially from 1846 onwards, all that remained without sourdough were bland flour cakes. It's nice to know that this is where the wafers in the church come from, but it's somewhat irrelevant here. Today we want to focus on a sourdough Striezel, which makes the traditional Easter yeast plait look pretty old. Sorry, grandma.

Master baker Philipp usually works at the Brotschmiede bakery in Hall. But today he has come to the branch in Innsbruck's Markthalle to meet me. And to tell me all his secrets, I hope. I know that somewhere inside me lies a passionate baker. But because you have to get up very early for that, I prefer to leave my baker's and visit the bread maker in the market hall instead. At ten o'clock in the morning, Philipp has long since finished his day's work and is just handing one of his freshly baked loaves over the counter. Pure original grain, grown and ground by the family business, baked only with sourdough (instead of yeast) and brine (instead of salt). Baker's yeast is just one of many ways to save a lot of time when making bread and dough, winks the master baker. Incidentally, all the ingredients for real artisan baking are available directly from the Brotschmiede: spelt or emmer flour (ancient wheat grain from the stone mill) are always in stock, and even the sourdough starter is available in a jar on request.

Good bread starts with the ear, the master explains to me. The original varieties are grown on the farm in the Swabian Alps and ground into the finest flour right there. While the baking industry adapts the flour and degree of grinding to the machines, the master baker adapts to his flour. How exactly is revealed by the flour analysis from the laboratory - and years of intuition.

Everything from a single source at Philipp, because this is the only way to maintain the high quality standard of his baked goods. A few anecdotes from the bakery, where some customers with digestive sensitivities were sent by the doctor, bread recipe included, prove that the old original varieties are also better tolerated because they are not overbred for commercial purposes. The master baker then laughs and cheerfully recommends his entire range because everything is particularly easy to digest. Such sourdough products can also be stored for longer - in a closed oven and wrapped in a tea towel, such bread stays fresh for weeks.

Master baker Philipp sorts out his recipe for the sensational sourdough Easter pinze for me by hand on a piece of paper. It is exactly the same recipe that you can also find in the Brotschmiede branches at Easter. If you want to save yourself time and effort, you can simply pre-order there (by Thursday at the latest for collection on Saturday). However, I have already tried the recipe and am completely thrilled - a big baking recommendation!

Ingredients:

1000 g spelt flour
300 g whole milk
100 g egg
100 g butter
60 g rye sourdough
50 g fresh yeast
10 g real vanilla
a little lemon zest
a pinch of salt

For the Dampfl (pre-dough), soak 10 percent flour and 10 g yeast with a little warm water. Then mix with all the other ingredients to form a smooth dough and knead briefly but vigorously. Cover the dough in a bowl with cling film or a damp kitchen towel and leave to rise in a quiet, warm place until it has doubled in volume. Then turn out of the bowl again and pull and fold until the dough has good tension. Then cut into portions, shape into a suitable Striezl form, brush with the (remaining) egg and milk mixture and leave to rise again for about half an hour.

In the meantime, preheat the oven (with two baking trays) to 220 degrees. As soon as the sourdough Easter pinze goes into the oven, brush again with milk egg, pour some boiling water onto the bottom baking tray, turn the oven down to 200 degrees and bake for 10 minutes in steam. Then remove the water baking tray, leave to finish baking at 180 degrees for 10 minutes and turn the temperature up again for the last 1-2 minutes (if necessary) until the Osterpinze is golden brown.

As a parting shot, the master baker collects a few dough tips for me: if the sourdough becomes a little too sour, simply whisk it with a whisk until it is frothy, this will make it milder again. Bread dough should also be kept cool when kneading, as the gluten in the dough starts to break down at 37 degrees Celsius (body temperature). A kneading machine, a handful of ice cubes in the water, more stirring than kneading and a longer resting time for the dough (kneading in the spring) help to prevent this. Really good bread needs one thing above all: time. And sourdough teaches you to take time for something really good, and not just at Easter. It's always worth it.

One last tip at the end: because the environment and sustainability are important to good bread makers, some goods are sometimes sold out in the branches. This was unpleasant for some at first, but it's actually just a question of education, smiles the baker. Throwing things away is a bad thing and frugality is a virtue that fasting also teaches. But hell: there's an online store for pre-ordering for breaking the fast and all other occasions. For special orders, such as an offshoot of the two baker's sourdoughs, simply send an e-mail here.

Photos: All pictures in the article were taken by the author himself.