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Monday, February 2, 2015

Real Seelen

I first made something like Seelen for S (from this recipe) a few years ago, and he loved them! He didn't stop talking about them, and I made my approximation a few times since he liked them so much. They are regional bread from where he grew up in Germany, and apparently they are hard to get even elsewhere in Germany.
But I could never track down white spelt flour in the USA, not even in the fanciest grocery shops (or Eastern European ones). Not long after coming here, we went to Lidl (another German thing S loves), and found white spelt flour there! And pretty cheap too. So we decided that real Seelen were in order.

They don't take too many ingredients or special equipment, so it seemed do-able, even without my own kitchen. Finding the other ingredients was actually kind of a challenge. We had salt, that was fine and easy. I thought caraway might be easy too as it seems quite popular - there is a caraway seed cheese I see everywhere and want to try, but it only comes in gigantic blocks so haven't yet. But we didn't find caraway in any of the grocery shops we checked. The Turkish market had a bewildering selection of spices though, leading to a fairly lengthy debate between S+I over whether cumin (spidskommen) and caraway (kommen) seeds were the same or not (they're not! but he wouldn't believe it!). Anyway, we got the caraway there, and the next challenge was yeast, Again, I checked near the flour on the shelves of various grocery shops, until S found some in the fridge in a wholefoods shop - of course! Fresh yeast is the way here, dried yeast seems to be hard to find.

So, real seelen - not only with white spelt flour, but also with fresh yeast!

(makes 12 - I doubled the recipe as I had 1000g flour, 42g yeast, and no scales... and S loves seelen)

1000g white spelt flour
42g fresh yeast
600 ml warm water
4 tsp salt

For sprinkling: caraway seeds and coarse sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and knead all ingredients for about 10 minutes to get soft and fairly sticky dough.  Leave to rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes, kneading briefly after 20 min and after 40 min.

When the dough has risen turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and split in two.  With wet hands shape one piece into a square of about 20 cm.  Use a wet knife to cut the dough into six strips. Transfer the strips onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough (you'll need two baking sheets). Irregular shapes are fine, even good.  Cover with a clean dish towel and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to about 240C / 460F and place a bowl of water on the bottom shelf.

When the Seelen are ready to go into the oven wet them again with your hands and sprinkle with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


They definitely look different -lighter, more golden, with a very slight sheen. Perhaps a little more dense. But the taste is dominated by the caraway and salt so I find it hard to make out a difference in taste from the spelt. No complaints though, and it took us only two days to demolish the whole lot!
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