Unbelievable …

I can’t believe this: I was just writing this article for the Bread Baking Day #23, this time hosted by imafoodblog.com, when I looked into my feed reader. And what do I detect? Eva of Deichrunner’s Küche has also baked a bread with hemp seed and presented it today. Quite a coincindence, isn’t it?

But whereas Eva did a quite a professional job with long rising times and multiple kneading and folding, I took the easy way: A yeast bread with a very short rising time because of the preheated loaf pan (which wasn’t really necessary at these outside temperatures we have right now: even without preheating the dough tried to leave the pan in record time.)

The hemp seed I found in the organic section of a large department store. According to the brand label it should be found in Germany in almost every second organic supermarket. I always wanted to bake something with it, but somehow for the last six months I didn’t get around to it. Now isn’t this event the best opportunity to use it in a bread, which I haven’t done before?

Ballymaloe Wholemeal Bread with Hemp Seed

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Put not quite half of the hemp seed in a mixer and ground it medium fine. Take the other half and let it soak in some milk for about an hour, then drain.

Butter a loaf pan (for 500 g) and preheat in the oven at about 120 °C.

Take 150 ml water and put the yeast in. Let sit for 5 minutes, then stir to dissolve the yeast. Add the melasse and let sit for another 10 minutes. Finally stir in the remaining water.

Mix flour, ground hemp seed and salt in a large bowl, make a depression in the middle and pour in the dissolved yeast. Stir until the dough is strong and heavy. Keep 2 table spoons of the soaked hemp seed and add the rest to the dough. Knead it for approx. 1 minute, until it doesn’t stick to the bowl any longer.

Put the dough into the prewarmed loaf pan, cover it with a clean towel and let it rise for about 25-30 minutes, until it is 1 cm above the pan. Sprinkle the remaining hemp seed on top.

Preheat the oven to 220 °C and bake for about 30 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200 °C and bake for another 15 minutes. Remove the bread from the pan und put it back in the oven upside down. Bake for another 10 minutes until it sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom of the bread. Cool for some time before cutting it.

Index: Bread, Yeast, Hemp Seed, Blog Event,