Mlinarica bread
We often hear our guests saying that our bread is so good that it tastes like a cake and that it can even be eaten as a separate dish. How do we make the Mlinarica bread, and what is the secret behind the softness of our dough, you will soon find out in the rest of this text.
In the process of making the bread, we use a large plastic bowl in which we mix all the ingredients and in which the main fermentation of the dough takes place. We call this bowl „a bread bowl“.
Before we start adding the ingredients, we leave 5-10 % of the dough from the previous bread making in the bread bowl. That serves as a pre-fermentation. In this way, the future bread will ferment faster, it will get fine holes, and have a more delicate taste. Then we add flour and water to that „older“ dough and let it
rest for about 20 minutes. We use 80 % hydration (sometimes even higher), which means that to 1 kg of flour we add 0.8 l of water.
After that we add fresh yeast, which is previously mixed with milk so that it combines better with the dough. Then we add salt, some oil or other similar fat, and some sugar. Once we have added all the necessary ingredients, we mix the dough well with our hands or a wooden spoon and let it ferment at 25 °C for about 60 minutes.
After these 60 minutes, we mix the dough once more and let it ferment again, this time for 60-80 minutes (the duration will also depend on the temperature of the room where the dough is fermenting). When the main fermentation is over, we put the dough into a baking pan, which must be oiled beforehand so that the dough does not stick. After we put the dough in the pan, we let it ferment for another 30-60 minutes and then we put the pan with the dough in the preheated oven.
The bread is baked in the oven at 180 °C for 20 minutes. After taking the bread out of the oven, we sprinkle it a bit with water and let it rest for at least 60 minutes.
And how to make your own Mlinarica bread at home? Here comes the recipe!
What do you need?
• A plastic bowl
• A wooden ladle
• White flour
• Water
• Fresh yeast
• Oil
• Salt
• Sugar
• Milk
• Pan for baking bread
Ingredients
• 1 kg white flour
• 0.7 l water
• 0.1 l milk
• 0.05 l oil
• 5 g sugar
• 20 g salt
• 5 g dry yeast
Step 1 – Autolysis
If you don’t have any dough from previous baking to use as a base, you can make the bread in the following way:
First, mix 1 kg of flour with 0.65 l of water. The water should have a temperature of 32-35 °C. The dough should be at room temperature. Once everything is well mixed, let it rest for 20-30 minutes so that autolysis can do its work.
Step 2 – Mixing
Add salt, dry yeast (if you use fresh yeast, add double the amount of yeast; in our case, it is 10 grams), sugar, and oil to the dough. Mix everything well by hand. The mixing process should take 5-10 minutes.
The temperature of the dough after mixing should be around 25 °C.
Step 3 -Kneading the dough
The dough must be kneaded twice. The first kneading can be done as early as 15 minutes after mixing the main ingredients, and the second one should follow 30 minutes after the first. The kneading is done in the
following way:
First, make a little bit wet the hand with which the kneading will be done. Then grab the dough from the bottom, stretch it upwards, and fold it, the upper part over the lower. This procedure must be repeated from four sides of the dough.
If you do not do the kneading immediately 15 minutes after the mixing, you can do it later, but the dough must not be touched during the last 60 minutes of fermentation. The fermentation of dough will take 4-5 hours.
Step 4 – Shaping
After the end of the main fermentation, it is time to shape the dough. Since the hydration is 80%, and the dough is quite sticky, the following needs to be done:
Take a larger pan that you have oiled previously and put all the dough in it. If you don’t have a large pan, two smaller ones will also serve the purpose.
Spread the dough around the pan so that it is evenly distributed in all parts of the pan.
Once everything is nicely and evenly arranged, let the dough ferment for 80-90 minutes at 21 °C. If the temperature in your kitchen is higher, let the dough ferment for only 60 minutes.
Step 5 – Baking
In the 4th step, it is necessary to heat the oven to 180 °C. Heating the oven can take about 45 minutes (it depends on the type of oven you have).
Once the oven is heated to the required temperature, place the pan in the oven and bake the dough for 30 minutes at 180 °C. After 30 minutes, use a toothpick to check if the bread is baked by inserting it in the middle of the bread.
Now take out the toothpick and feel with your fingers if it is still a bit moist. If the toothpick is moist, the bread needs to be baked some more.
After baking, let the bread cool for at least 60 minutes, and then you can cut the first slice.
Enjoy your bread!
