
There, bread was baked again on the weekend in the specially built wood-burning oven, and 23-year-old benedikt seiler from weilersbach had his premiere as a baker. Together with his wife heike, who is two years older, he is continuing the long family tradition of baking farmhouse bread in the wood-burning oven.
"Even as a child, I was always there when my grandmother baked bread once a month", says benedikt seiler, who took over the tradition two years ago together with his wife heike. Until four years ago, the seilers still kneaded the dough by hand, but then they bought a kneading machine, which now makes the work much easier.
The seilers bake exclusively rye bread according to old tradition. "The back", this is the name given to the dough used to fill a wood-burning oven. It consists of exactly 37.5 kilograms of dough and the ingredients are only rye flour, sourdough, yeast, salt and some kummel. This dough then has to rise in the baking trough for about one and a half hours before it is formed into three-pound loaves or croissants. "It’s a bit like rolling klobe, only rougher", says benedikt seiler.
The dough is blessed with a few sprinkles of holy water and seiler also makes a cross with three bars on the raw dough according to old custom. The first loaf, which was then "shot" in the oven, he provides with a cross. This so-called "kreuzlaib is unsaleable and eaten only by his own family. Seiler does not know whether this is superstition. "It has always been done in this way, so that the bread becomes something", he says. For his baking premiere in tuchersfeld, he and his wife heike shaped 28 loaves and nine kips.
Bread is made with five well-seasoned and dry bundles of rice, a bucket of straw and two sheets of newsprint. Later, another three or four such "bundala" were appointed, of branches from beech trees, fruit trees or willow wood. This shearing process takes about three hours. After that, the ashes are completely removed from the oven with the broom and the bread loaves can be "shot in" one by one become.
The first ten minutes are crucial for the color of the crust. "After that, you have to decide whether to close the oven door or leave it open", says seiler. The baking process itself then takes about another hour and a half. In between and afterwards, seiler sprinkles the bread with a little water. So the crust doesn’t crack and the bread is shiny when it’s done.