Bread Baking in Poland

I have just taken up home breadbaking. Has anyone got some receipes please, also is home bread making common in Poland.

Ta,

*Wholegrain Rye Polish Bread Recipe*

This is a traditional recipe of our grandmothers to bake bread, with
hints how to make sourdough starter according to the book /Kosowska
Kuchnia Jarska/ printed in 1929 by M. Arcta, Warsaw. Rye bread is very
popular in our country because rye is one of the few crops that are
successful in most areas of Poland.

*Sourdough starter: *

* *

Mix half cup of rye flour with 1/3 cup of lukewarm water, cover with a
kitchen towel and leave in a warm place for 3 days. Stir at least once
every day. When bubbles appear at the top of the mixture and sour odor
is released, the starter is ready. Some of the starter can be stored in
the refrigerator or dried up for next time.

* Ingredients: *

5 ½ lbs wholewheat rye flour

4 cups water

3-4 tbs sourdough starter

salt

Mix a quarter of the flour with lukewarm water and sourdough starter and
leave in a warm place until the next day.

Mix half of the remaining flour with the blend prepared the previous
day. Let it rise for a few hours. Afterwards, add the rest of the flour
and salt to taste, and knead the dough until smooth. Form into two bread
loaves with wet hands, sprinkle the loaves with flour, and place on a
floured pan in a warm place to rise for a couple of hours or until they
almost double in size. Bake for 1- 1 1/2 hours at 375 degrees.

Here's a typical Polish bread picture.

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  polishbread.gif
  

I make my grandmothers recipe, she was blind and did everything by feel but she taught my mom and we mastered the recipe, it is for home made sweet raisin bread, raisins optional. Smatnego(spelling is wrong)

Geri

There is no bread in the world as good as Polish Bread. Sigh. I have had Polish Croissants too... don't know what they are called in Polish.... but the pasty was light & crispy & they were shaped list a crescent and filled with this amazing apricot filling. Yum.

Rogaliki

Is there a Polish bread recipe that works with a bread making machine? I know it sounds lazy but my baking skills are probably not upto much!

not one for the machine that will come out anything like the pic a few posts above.

i don't think that the recipie given will yield that result unless annab left out a step or two.

i was wondering if anyone on here new the exact recipie for the kind of bread in the pic i mentioned. thanks


no kidding. i make a 300+mi round stock-up trip just so i don't have to suffer on wonderbread. lol

What about bread machines?
My bread is always an awkward size and shape and always has a hole in the bottom.
If I use rye, should it be 100% or mixed with wheat flour?
Are there any seeds or anything else I could add for 'authenticity'?

I didn't know you're a baker too. My goodness so many talents!

Without the machine, my speciality is bagels. The boiling bit is the most fun.
Supermarket bagels (in the UK at least) are just ring-shaped bread.
Kneading is good for stress-relief.

If you like chewy, hard, stale if you don't eat it that day kind of bread, then, yes, Polish bread is for you. Ugh. Give me good old fashioned home-made white bread!

And not only bread sucks, why does everything in Poland have to be fried??? You have an oven - use it!!!

Zapiekanki???? They are put in ovens. The Czechs are worse for frying things.

Poland has many types of bread. I like it but the Poles exaggerate how good it is I feel.

When I was growing up. My best friend was a Jewish boy. and his Dad was a baker.. Many a night that I spent helping them make bread and bagels.

For sour dough he used old rye bread soaked in water then squeezed dry. It was then added to the other ingredients and made beautiful rye bread. With caraway seeds.

I make it all the time. But just like the old guy. He never measured anything. He just looked at it and could tell when everything was right.

I've seen stuff for sale in the UK that's just cheap bread with the word chleb on it.


The way food should be, but I find bread ingredients just have to be measured. But then I'm an amateur.


- quote from the Deep-Fried Times.

U quoting my sources again? LOL

Some bread here is heavenly but it goes off too quickly

Then eat it quickly.

Smartass, I don't have a family to pass it round to. Their loaves are fairly big. The half-loaves are usually gone by the time I get there.

i have not had better bread then polish varieties. pita is good so are a few others but nothing in comparison. american breads are just yuk.

The Japanese bread was nice, Izumo bijin. Quite sweet. Bijin means beautiful woman.

The best ever Polish bread is made by the Baltic in Chłopy!!!!!
Paluchy

Polish bread rolls are phenomenal too. What a great way to start the day.

Then you'd like Paluchy. It's a long braided roll. They're only made in 1 place and by a family who only sells it there (off season maybe a local market...who knows). It's made fresh every morning and you have to wait in line to get it fresh, but no matter how long you wait it's worth it.

In the recipe ingredients you list wholewheat rye flour. Did you mean wholegrain rye flour as in the heading?
Do you use only rye flour which is very low in gluten and does nto rise too well. Usually some white (wheat) flour is added. In fact the breads now comemrcially made in Poland contain less and less rye flour, only 30-40%. Many brands are becoming more and more like the cotton-fluff stuff the Brits call white bread.

Try Hovis or Warburton. My GF is very critical of GB/UK bread but she liked those 2.

Really? Surely this is a novelty thing?

Give me Polish bread any day.

Could well be a novelty thing.

Even if Polish bread starts to go off, u can always toast it. That's what I'm doing now

with marmite? :P

No, with tuna and mayo

When I’m abroad what I miss is the polish bread. So, I sometimes make bread in the similar way like you do, annab. But, I think that you forgot about one very important ingredient – that is yeast. We can mix it together with some sugar what boots yeast’s work. It’s essential, otherwise bread will be flat.

Another suggestion will be keeping in jar some bread dough as a starter for next time.