Baking bread at the farmhouse

Freilichtmuseum Glentleiten offers regular demonstrations showing how bread used to be made in farmhouses (Upper Bavaria, district of Großweil). The fragrant. wood-fired bread can be purchased directly in the museum.   

Arget is a small village near Munich. Up to 17 people lived on the farm in the 1930s: The farmer and his wife, their four daughters, four sons, and around five to seven maids and farmhands. The women baked around 20 loaves of bread every 10 to 14 days.

To start, a "Dampferl" made the evening before from sourdough, yeast, and milk is mixed with part of the flour. Early in the morning on baking day, she mixed the pre-ferment with the remaining ingredients and kneaded the dough for the first time, then again for the second time two hours later.

In the late morning, Barbara and Elisabeth would heat the baking oven using dry spruce wood, and around an hour later the oven would be hot enough.

While the oven warmed up, the dough had to be kneaded one last time.

Then the sisters would shape the bread loaves, lay them on a rolling board and coat them with water. To make the loaves rise better, they placed them on their sides and scored them with forks.

Now the loaves would finally be ready for "inserting". This is when they would be lifted from the rolling board one by one and placed in the oven. They would stay there for one and a half to two hours.

The baked bread is placed on the rolling board to cool. By the early afternoon, the loaves could be placed on an airy rack in the pantry.