Bringing spring into the house

Especially when the temperatures feel so spring-like, I think many people get the urge to be outside as much as possible and to see and feel the air, the wind, nature. Do you feel the same??

Every year I look forward to the varied tasks that spring brings. Even if up here in the mountains not much is poking out of the ground yet and the snow is still looking down from the mountain, you still have to bring one herb or another into the house and process it. :-)

In spring I especially like making nettle bread, but it also works great with wild garlic if someone has some. It’s best to harvest young nettle shoots without stems, or wild garlic; with gloves there’s no tingling either …

Wild garlic bread OR nettle bread:

• 500 g strong wheat flour
• 100 g cooked potatoes
• 10 g salt
• 130 g fresh nettles or wild garlic, finely chopped
• 50 g sunflower seeds
• 30 g yeast and 25 g sugar
• 1 tbsp chopped onion
• 1 tbsp butter and 3 cl olive oil
• 160 g lukewarm water (or the juice from the squeezed nettles)

If you like, you can add pumpkin seed oil instead of olive oil—then the dough turns a little greener.

Preparation

Stir together the yeast and sugar. Meanwhile, sweat the onion in butter, blanch the nettles (or wild garlic), then squeeze well, chop, and gently sauté with the onion.

For the bread, put the dry ingredients (flour, sunflower seeds, salt) into a mixing bowl, add the yeast mixture, then the remaining ingredients, and finally the sautéed onions and nettles as well as the cooked potatoes. Knead everything well into a yeast dough and leave to rise. Let the smooth dough rise for about 20–30 minutes. Then halve the dough (it makes 2 loaves) and shape two breads. Put into a greased loaf tin, press the dough down lightly with your hand so no holes form in the bread, and let it rise again. Spray the bread with water and then bake in a preheated oven at 190–200°C for about 30 minutes. If you like, you can also sprinkle a few sunflower seeds on top of the dough before it rises.

Once the bread has a nice colour and is done, take it out of the loaf tin and let it cool. It tastes wonderful with butter or as part of a Jause (snack), and it’s very healthy.

Good luck, your farmer Katharina!