Spruce needle tip bread

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 20 spruce shoots, young
• 500 ml water
• 2 dashes lemon juice concentrate
• 500 g spelt flour type 630, or as desired
• 20 g yeast, fresh
• 1 sugar cube
• ½ tsp salt
• some fresh ginger, if necessary

Instructions

Working time approx. 45 minutes; Rest time approx. 1 hour 45 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour; Total time approx. 3 hours 30 minutes

Lightly chop about half of the fresh spruce needle shoots with a knife and, if desired, add the finely chopped ginger to 500 ml of water and bring to a boil briefly. Allow the liquid to cool to lukewarm in a saucepan with the lid closed. Once cooled, pour the liquid through a sieve into a clean container; do not discard the sieved mixture yet. Crumble the yeast and a sugar cube into 300 ml of the prepared spruce needle tip liquid and stir well with a whisk until everything is dissolved. Let the yeast liquid rest for a moment until a light foam forms on the surface. Pluck the remaining spruce needle tips from the stem. Place all but one teaspoon (for the optional sprinkling) of the liquid whole in a mixing bowl with the flour and salt. Add one teaspoon of the boiled spruce needle tip mixture. Now add the prepared yeast liquid and the lemon juice concentrate and knead the dough thoroughly for 15 minutes, ideally using a food processor. Cover the kneaded dough in the mixing bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes. If necessary, place it in the oven at a very low temperature (about 30°C). After rising, press the dough together with floured hands or a spatula and place it in a 24 cm loaf pan. Brush the surface thoroughly with the brewing water and, if desired, sprinkle with a few pine needle tips. Place the remaining brewing water in an ovenproof dish at the bottom of the oven to create enough moisture for the bread. Bake the bread at 200°C fan-assisted oven for about 45 minutes. After baking, remove the hot bread from the pan and let it cool on a wire rack. Funnily enough, the bread doesn’t smell of the needles, but they develop a distinct, but not overpowering, flavor when eaten. Note: Pine needle tips are a seasonal product, only available from May to early June. Please make sure that you are really using spruce and not the poisonous yew. The needles look and feel different. In principle, the bread should also work with pine needle tips. When collecting spruce tips, you should be considerate of the tree and avoid collecting from young spruces. Especially not from the front and upper shoots, where the tree wants to grow. It’s better to collect from already large, “fully grown” spruces.