BUCKWHEAT BREAD WITH WALNUTS - SOBA BREAD

Every part of the world has some basic foods typical for their cuisine. For example, while an important basic food in Asia is rice, in the West is corn, wheat, bread... In many countries bread was or still is the basic, everyday food, which can be consumed as a main dish or as a side with almost every meal. 
Bread plays a special, very significant role in Slovenian diet and in Slovenian tradition. In the past every farmer's household baked their own bread in Krušna peč - special bread owen that was built of bricks and ceramics and was the centre of the house. Baking day was a special day. A day when bread was made  for the hole week. The hole house and air around it smelled on freshly baked bread - for many the smell of "home".

Buckwheat-Soba bread with walnuts

Bread was traditionally made of fresh whole grain wheat flour or rye, buckwheat, corn, oat flour usually mixed with wheat flour. 

Today we usually do not bake our bread unless on it is a special occasion. Bread-making became an important industry. Wide variety of freshly baked breads can be bought every day. Whenever I go back to Slovenia I enjoy the the wide variety on the merchants' shelves. It is really amazing and it shows how important bread is in Slovenian culture and society.

Among all the variety, buckwheat bread with walnuts or ajdov kruh z orehi in Slovenian language, was always something special. Today we can buy it like any other bread. It can be also found on the menu in many good restaurants with traditional Slovenian food. I bake buckwheat bread when I have guests and I want to present Slovenian food. 

Buckwheat bread with walnuts recipe

Ingredients:

400 g buckwheat flour
400 g wheat flour
400 ml boiled water + 400 ml warm water around 30 degrees C
1 to 2 packs of dry yeast - read the instructions on the bag
200 g walnuts 
1 tbsp salt or to taste
4 to 5 tbsp olive oil

Main ingredients for the bread

Making the dough:

Put buckwheat flour in a big bowl, slowly add the boiling water and stir with a big wooden spoon until all the flour becomes wet. Keep aside to cool below 40 degrees C. Than add wheat flour and evenly stir in with your hands. Than put oil and salt on one side of the flour mixture and yeast in the middle.You do not want to mix salt and yeast directly. 

Flour mixture with oil and salt on one side and yeast in front.

Now start adding warm water slowly. In the beginning mix only yeast with flour then knead everything into a soft dough. Kneading the dough with hands takes around 15 minutes. The dough is finished when it does not stick to your hands and the bowl anymore. This is a beat hard with this flour mixture. The bread will taste better if the dough is softer. As they say: "The exercise improves the results!" 
You can also knead the dough with a special machine - food processor if you have one. Than you will need less water, so be careful and do not add all the water at once.

The dough should be very soft. 

Cover the dough with cotton and put to rest for about an hour, better a few minutes more than less. It has to rise to double in size. Than add the walnuts which you can roast a bit and cool them down beforehand to get a better taste, if you wish. Split the dough into smaller portions to make few smaller loafs. 

Traditional way of making many loafs of bread.

When the dough rises again...

...cut triangle with sharp knife

and put it in the owen to bake.

Or make one big bread in a baking tray. That is good option when you have very soft dough that is very likely to spread to much and the bread is likely to end up being very flat. The dough must rest again to rise for half the size. Bake it for 40 to 50 minutes at  around 180 degrees C. If you are baking small loafs then baking time is shorter. When baked take it out of the oven and wrap it with cloth to cool down. 

Buckwheat bread with walnuts baked in baking tray. 

You can find more photos on this LINK!