What exactly is Polish Bread?

Actually Polish rye isn't very difficult to make, there are great recipes in both "Secrets of a Jewish Baker" by George Greenstein and "Local Breads" by Daniel Leader.

A quick question. Does the average polish bread contain yeast? I am allergic to it and would like to know wheter I will be able to eat bread when I go over there in a few months...

thanks in advance! x

no such thing as average Polish bread anymore, too much variety (many bakers use those nasty "Western" raising agents too). Check the ingredients yeast = drożdże. If you buy unpacked bread (no label then), ask "Czy w tym chlebie są drożdże?" (use ivosoftware.com to learn the pronounciation of this sentence).

Yes, rye bread is very popular in Poland and for rye to raise, it needs to have yeast as it doesn't form gluten (the stuff that raises bread) very easily. You might try some kind of sourdough bread but many sourdoughs are "kick started" with a small amount of yeast.

i've only had ones with real caraway and i can't stand it. never seen bread with anything else besides the plain variety.

here is some info on dark bread:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpernickel


american style yes but not the polish ones.. way more rye then wheat or any other flour.


you're not from chicago then because there are plenty of polish bakeries there that make the stuff there on site and you can't beat the freshness and quality of that.


those are not polish type breads which is the title of this thread.


check out the pumpernickel linky above

My Babcia made a sourdough rye bread from old scraps of stale bread she would save. I've been trying to figure this out for years. My mother can remember her making it but doesn't remember the process too well. She did say it would take days. My Babcia would take the bread and soak it over two or three days and then create a wet dough, which used to drip off the sides of the bread pans after it's last rise. Looks like the chleb razowy picture on page 1. Was great, had an acidy flavor you'd expect of a sourdough, but was dense without seeds.

Anyone have any recollection of this or a recipe? My Babcia was off the boat so she learned this while living in Bialystok.

Polish bread is not a secret recepie but the way it's made.no artificial preservatives and no ingrediants that you can't pronounce.Also the ovens have a lot to do with the flavour.We have tried making it but it's much cheaper just to go to the Polish store-Staripolska-and pick up a couple of fresh loaves.While there we also get the Polish kielbasa--What a great combination to eat !!!!

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I'd be interested to know as well. Sounds great.

Most Polish breads are too soft and bland for my liking :(

Industrially pre-sliced bread exposes more surfaces to airborne microbes, hence more chemcial spoilage retardants have to be used in the dough. Unsliced bread is better also becasue you can regulate the thickness you want.

Proper polish bread is black with gone off wheat, you cant have the proper polish bread today that you would years ago, my taids from poland and thats what he ate. The bread you have now they say its polish bread but it isnt :)

They say the wędliny (cold cuts) has changed more but I doubt that bread has really changed that much.

The bread with a sesame crust is really tasty :)

Just to put in a plug for bread made with spelt (orkisz in Polish).

Chleb orkiszowy is really yummy. My favorite is sold in a whole loaf that they slice in the store if you want it that way. Really nice taste and structure, not too hard or gummy or soft and it keeps well. I don't understand why it's not more popular.

Orkisz has been sort of re-discovered lately. Just a few years ago it wasn't available in most shops, then they started to bring spelt flour from the Czech Republic and some bakeries picked it up. Now I think it's mostly Polish grown.

Orkisz is the original, non-modified wheat, it doesn't yield much crops, therefore it is much more expensive than regular wheat. 1 kg of orkisz flour is about 8 zł in a shop. So the bread is more expensive too. A lot of people buy the cheapest bread, either to save money or because they got used to it.

It's called "altus" - if you google altus+sourdough you'll find out how to make it and use it.

suite101.com/content/polish-rye-bread-recipe-a51675
This one looks OK, except for such 'innovations' as the bread improver and the brown sugar. Brown sugar is never used in authentic Polish baking or cooking.

astacy: I would give a lot to get the answer to your question. The taste of still warm black bread from the stone oven of a pre war Polish farmhouse is absolutely unforgettable. I have seen dozens of recipes on the net, and the fact they all purport to produce black bread, makes their dissimilarities striking. I think that the intervening war, followed by a half century of a repressive regime, and shortages of virtually everything has allowed the recipe to die out from endless attempts at substitution or deletion of ingredients.

It is probably sacrilegious but Polish bread makes good toast.

Here's some Polish bread from my cousin's very Polish wedding. I think the bread looks too pretty to eat.

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  Polish wedding bread
  

Nice :)

I never had bread like this at my wedding! haha


Now, this is something I must disagree on.

In my experience, Polish bread simply becomes too hard when toasted. I like my food, but for some reason, I always find that the best toast is made with... plain old bargain-basement English white sliced bread from the supermarket lol.

Same with English fry-ups: there's no point using "Sainsbury's extra-special sundried tomato and extra-lean free-range pork" sausages which cost £15/kg with your beans and toast, just use the cheapest, chavviest plain old sausages from Iceland for 90p a pack. Why this is the case, is beyond me! lol

Yes. Even those made with "zakwas", which is just a kind of yeast naturally occurring in rye grain. Unless you are allergic only to specific kind(s) of yeast you probably safer not eating bread.

The best in the world:

/polish-bread.jpg - bread from Poland

Polish bread and cakes top export lists for 2006.
Polish vodka and ham are well-known internationally. But it's bread that became No. 1 on the Polish export list lately.
Polish bread and cakes worth more than 400 mln euro were exported abroad in 2006, the National Research Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics reported. In comparison, vodka and other alcoholic drinks brought exporters only 77 mln euro, reported Informacyjna Agencja Radiowa (IAR), a press agency working with Polish Radio.

According to the Warsaw-based research center, exports of baked products were about 20 percent higher than in 2005.

For Easter my grandmother bakes bread in a two piece copper lamb-shaped mold. Is this a widespread custom in Poland today?

Not really in the city. I don`t remember the last time we baked our bread. Bought bread is good enough.

I am making my own bread from very simple recipe. The biggest obstacle for anyone who would like to make one is you need zaczyn, which I would translate as a starter. I made a jar of starter from Red Mill's stoneground whole rye flour i can buy in the grocery store in the USA. You add water and let it sit for a week. Zaczyn gives distinctive acidic taste and acts as a rising agent in the bread making process.

I combine 2 parts of white wheat flour with 1 part (0.5 liter) of zaczyn plus 1 Tbsp of salt, 1 tsp of sugar, 2 Tbsp of oil and 100 ml of warm water. I throw it all into bread making machine and hit dough making option, which let me avoid messy dough making procedure. After I have the dough I form a loaf and let it sit for min. 3 hrs until it will rise to be about twice in size. I make few cuts on top of the loaf to prevent cracking during baking and brush the loaf with water. Pre heat the owen to 460 F and bake 15 min with a container holding water standing in the owen. After 15 min I take water out and change the temp to 400 F and continue baking for next 20 min. When done take the bread out and let it cool. Bread will be hard outside and soft inside.

You need to add 1 part of warm water and 1/2 part of whole rye flour and let it work for few hours. You can store zaczyn in a fridge for up to a week so you have it ready for another loaf when needed.

I bought a yeast free wheat free 'Polish Rye' from the local German bakery. It is so good I almost spritzed in my pantaloons.
These guys make some fine bread.

It is the bastion in which Polish Culture is stored. Kielbasa is the lance. Vodka is the sword. Beer is the shield. feel free to add your own or change mine...

That it is. When is hot out the oven it tastes so good, can eat it just with butter.

Unfortunately 90% of 'bread' sold here is factory-made stuff like 'Chleb' Baltonowski, barely edible.

I have heard that there are breads made in Poland from grains other than wheat and rye. Does anyone know of these, what they are called?

no it isn't sacrilegious - one of my favourite dishes is a simple bread topped with hard cheese (though rather mild hard cheese, way milder than cheddar) fried on butter or margarine - add tomato concentrate on top - delicious - you may add tomato slices, onion slices or paprika slices under the cheese - fry covered (otherwise it will burn)

also Polish bread is very good for croutons that you add to soups (one soup that is particularly good with croutons is the pea soup (zupa grochowa)) - I make my croutons on a good cooking oil (in Poland there is something like 'virgin rapeseed oil' (however hillarious or disturbing it may sound) - 'olej rzepakowy z pierwszego tłoczenia' - apparently it has the best combination of unsaturated fatty acids you can find in nature - and a bit surprisingly it actually tastes really good - regular rapeseed oil doesn't taste as good - virgin rapeseed oil is also very good for salads - (while olive oil is good generally (I feel like having a sip or two from time to time) it does not combine well with Polish food or the recipes that I use (it has too strong flavour in my oppinion) and virgin rapeseed oil (like 'Olej Kujawski') wins all the way)