Rundstykker - Danish breakfast bread

Yesterday we finally got to use the thing that lived in the kitchen - the sourdough...

It didn't smell acidic, which apparently is a good thing, but as it said in the recipe, like a good beer.

The recipe for the rundstykker is not that difficult, but it takes almost a full day. One thing to consider is that this recipe makes 30 pieces of bread! so you'll need a lot of space, time and oven trays if you make a full one.

Rundstykker

Pre-dough:

2 1/2 dl cold water

25 g fresh yeast

500 g plain flour

Dough:

8 dl cold water

3 dl sourdough

300 g fine durum flour (which is basically pasta flour)

1.1 kg plain flour

35 g salt

For the topping:

Poppy, sesame and linseeds

Predough: Pour the cold water in a bowl and mix in the fresh yeast. Then add the flour and mix it all together. You will need to use your hands and you should get a quite hard, stiff and just mixed dough.

Put the mix in a plastic bowl, cover with plastic film and refrigerate for 12 hours.

Dough: Mix the water, sordough, durum flour and salt with the predough in the mixing machine (obviously this can be done by hand, but you'll need to mix and knead for at least 10 minutes). After the mixing/kneading the dough should be elastic and pliable.

Leave to rest (at room temperature) covered with a kitchen towel for approx 30 minutes until it begins to grow.

Cut in three pieces and roll each one into a roll. At this point I have to say that the dough is quite sticky, so you might want to use quite a lot of flour for this. Cut each roll in 10 pieces. Make a ball of each piece, dipping it into the seeds before putting it on an oven tray (with either greased baking paper or the magic teflon sheets, I recommend the latter).

Cover them with a loose kitchen towel and leave them to rise until doubled in size (1-2 hours).

Put an oven pan on the bottom of the oven and heat to 200C. Once the oven is hot, pour a glass of cold water in the oven pan and put the bread in. Bake for 20 minutes and then leave to cool in a wire rack.

If you don't have any sourdough, the recipe suggests replacing it with the same amount of water, but I tried this the first time I made them and they got really flat.