Brown Bread With Buckwheat and Seaweed

By Florence Fabricant

Brown Bread With Buckwheat and Seaweed
Sabra Krock for The New York Times
Total Time
2 hours
Rating
4(45)
Comments
Read comments

When in Brittany, eat oysters as the Bretons do: with Muscadet, brown bread and salted butter. It’s a felicitous marriage of flavors that is impossible to shake, even after you leave Lorient or Concarneau. In the United States, you can improvise. Most restaurants serve only unsalted butter, so you have to do your own seasoning. Whole grain or brown bread often shows up in the basket.If you bake, you can make the bread yourself. Here is a brown bread at its most elemental, a yeast bread made with a thick batter that rises only once it is in a loaf pan and yields very nice, dense slices. I added slivers of kombu (kelp) for a briny touch and some buckwheat flour, typical of Brittany, to give the bread a nutty, slightly tart edge. It begs for butter. Salted.

Featured in: Freeing Muscadet From a Pigeonhole

  • or to save this recipe.

  • Subscriber benefit: give recipes to anyone
    As a subscriber, you have 10 gift recipes to give each month. Anyone can view them - even nonsubscribers. Learn more.
    Subscribe

  • Print Options

Advertisement

Ingredients

Yield:1 loaf

    For the Brown Bread With Buckwheat and Seaweed

    • ¼cup slivered kombu
    • ½packet dry yeast
    • 1tablespoon honey
    • 1½teaspoons sea salt
    • ½cup buckwheat flour
    • 1½cups all-purpose flour
    • 2cups whole-wheat flour, more if needed
    • 1tablespoon unsalted butter
    • ½teaspoon coarse sea salt
    • Salted butter, for serving
Ingredient Substitution Guide
Nutritional analysis per serving (8 servings)

248 calories; 4 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 47 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 3 grams sugars; 8 grams protein; 163 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

Powered by
Cooking Newsletter illustration

Opt out or contact us anytime. See our Privacy Policy.

Opt out or contact us anytime. See our Privacy Policy.

Preparation

  1. For the Brown Bread With Buckwheat and Seaweed

    1. Step 1

      Simmer kombu for 10 minutes in a small saucepan with enough water to cover. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, dissolve yeast, honey and sea salt in 2 cups warm water. Set aside 10 minutes. Drain kombu well and add to yeast mixture. Stir in buckwheat flour and all-purpose flour.

    2. Step 2

      Add whole-wheat flour, ½ cup at a time, beating a good minute or so after each addition to make a moist, thick, elastic, sticky dough that does not quite hold its shape, adding a little more flour if needed. Dough should be too soft to handle and cling to the sides of the bowl. Beat another 2 to 3 minutes. The consistency should be almost like that of mashed potatoes.

    3. Step 3

      With unsalted butter, butter a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. Transfer dough into pan, smooth the surface, sprinkle coarse salt on top, cover lightly with a piece of parchment or wax paper and let rise until dough reaches the top of the pan, about an hour.

    4. Step 4

      Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake dough 45 minutes, until browned, then transfer pan to a rack to cool for 15 to 20 minutes. Run a knife around the edges, turn bread out onto the rack and continue cooling to room temperature before slicing. Serve with salted butter.

Ratings

4 out of 5
45 user ratings
Your rating

or to rate this recipe.

Have you cooked this?

or to mark this recipe as cooked.

Private Notes

Leave a Private Comment on this recipe and see it here.

Comments

Sue

I'm guessing that the author keeps ordinary unsalted butter around for cooking and high-quality salted butter (which shouldn't be squandered) for the table. Nothing bad will happen if you use salted butter to grease the pan, and I hope that no one is turned off from the recipe by the idea that they need multiple kinds of butter. The bread is a fine example of a yeasted batter bread, which I find especially tasty substituting a mild golden ale for the water.

Adeline Talbot

I am a pretty experienced bread baker & have to say I think I’ve found a new favorite. The sum seems almost magically greater than the parts. Delicious, keeps very well & slices as thinly as commercial party rye. I double the recipe & bake it in a lidded Pullman loaf pan. Only change. Molasses instead of honey. It is in a word perfect.

danielle

This was a very lovely bread. Very earthy with a bit of brine. I used the water that I simmered the kombu in for the starter and doubled the buckwheat flour (used less AP). I used less whole wheat than in the recipe so the dough was nice and wet

Louisa

How much is 1/2 a packet? My pack of yeast is 125g! Sorry am a bit clueless

Private comments are only visible to you.

Recipe Tags

Advertisement

or to save this recipe.