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Just waiting to be slathered with fresh butter and a favorite jam, you can almost hear the crust crunching on a slice of this rustic Swiss Farmer’s Bread.

One of my fondest childhood memories is of visiting my favorite auntie in Switzerland and talking with her in broken English and Swiss over my favorite breakfast: cafe mit schlag with a schniteli: milk coffee and farmer’s bread slathered with freshly made creamery butter and jam.

As I began baking different kinds of bread last year, I wanted to see if I could create Burebrot in my own kitchen. It turned out that every recipe I could find included rye flour. So, I had to wait until this fall, after we did our annual summer shopping.

After the bread finished baking, Jacked whipped up a small pot of tasty broccoli soup. I cut two generous pieces of Burebrot and topped them with butter. The bread was just the way I remembered it: hearty and wonderfully crusty. This is the perfect bread to pair with a slice of savory swiss cheese. We have a few pounds of rye flour for the year, so this bread will be making several encores.

The following recipe is a result of adaptions of several recipes to match the ingredients that are in my pantry. I processed the dough in my Zojirushi bread machine so it would rise properly in my Arctic home.

Burebrot

Ingredients

• 8 oz buttermilk
• 7 oz water
• 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups rye flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp dry yeast

Directions

1. Place the above ingredients in the bread machine pan according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.
2. Turn on dough cycle.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
4. Shape the dough into an oval on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.
5. Cut a lattice pattern into dough with a sharp knife.
6. Bake for 40 – 45 minutes. Bread will be crusty when finished.