Rye Crust DiaryRye, water and time in a fourth-floor Frankfurt kitchen

Frankfurt am MainHesseNet contents: one oven, one jar, one notebook

Card box · complete

Bakes

Every card in the box, newest at the front. The oldest one that survived being written up is from 18 April 2024; the two years of loose notes before that are in a drawer and mostly unreadable.

  • Starter
  • Mixed rye
  • Rolls
  • Flour
  • Whole grain
  1. Card 05Whole grain

    Vollkornbrot in a tin: six failures and a very long bake

    A whole-grain rye loaf that took a winter to get right: a soaker, a scald, a lid on the tin, three hours of low heat, and a full day of waiting.

    Corrected 6 Sept 2026 · 9 min · 4 parts

  2. Card 04Flour

    Flour from two small mills, and what it changed in the loaf

    Whole rye ground last week behaves nothing like sacked flour: what the type numbers mean, how much more water it drinks, and how to store it.

    Corrected 15 Mar 2026 · 8 min · 4 parts

  3. Card 03Rolls

    Sunday Brötchen: the small-oven routine that survived three winters

    Six rolls on a Sunday morning without getting up early: a Saturday half hour, a cold night on the middle shelf, and an oven that only fits six.

    Corrected 7 Sept 2025 · 6 min · 4 parts

  4. Card 02Mixed rye

    Roggenmischbrot at seventy percent rye in a small oven

    The mixed loaf I bake most weeks: why seventy percent rather than ninety, a sour in one stage or three, and a bake without any steam.

    Corrected 2 Feb 2025 · 8 min · 4 parts

  5. Card 01Starter

    Nine weeks before the rye starter was worth baking with

    How a jar of rye flour and tap water took two months to become reliable, and the things I got wrong while waiting for it.

    Corrected 25 Aug 2024 · 7 min · 4 parts

Cards are corrected rather than rewritten. Where a later bake contradicts an earlier card, both stay in the box and the newer one says which it replaces — the reasoning is in the note on how this is written.