Film 2 · 9:26 min · German with English subtitles
Firing, loading, baking – the oven in the black kitchen
Bread baking as in our ancestors’ time: the oven is fired with wood, the dough is kneaded in the trough, the loaves rise in baskets and go into the oven on the peel.
Eggerhaus documentary 2008 · Kulturverein Eggerhaus · digitised 2026
Transcribed automatically and reviewed. Click a time to jump to that point in the film.
Baking bread the way our ancestors did? It is still possible today. At the Eggerhaus in Altmünster. Quick and effortless? It is not quite that simple. Join us as we make fragrant farmhouse bread the way our forebears did.
On the eve of baking day, the stoker is needed. The large, roughly two-metre-long solid oven in the smoke kitchen has to be preheated. The biting clouds of smoke this produces give the "black kitchen" its name and its look. This lets the solid bricks in the oven's vault store the warmth needed for baking day all night long.
On baking day itself, the stoker has to rise early to fire up the oven again. The oven at the Eggerhaus is shaped and sized for twelve loaves of bread. Each one about two kilos. To reach the starting heat of about 300 degrees Celsius, you reckon one log per loaf. In our case, twelve one-metre logs of spruce. They are stacked carefully and now have a few hours to heat the oven thoroughly.
Meanwhile the baker goes into action. An experienced master of his craft who knows how to make farmhouse bread, and who now gets to work. For twelve loaves, the following are mixed in a wooden kneading trough: 2 kilograms of organic wheat flour, 10 kilograms of organic rye flour, about 8 litres of water, sourdough, salt, yeast. Spices such as crushed caraway, coriander, aniseed and fennel are added. From this total of around 21 kilograms, once you subtract the loss from proving and baking, you end up with twelve loaves of a good 1.5 kilos each. The mixing that follows is laborious and exhausting. Careful and persistent. Only then does the bread get the right consistency. After mixing, the dough has to rest for at least 30 minutes.
The oven is cleared out, then wiped with wet cloths to take off the so-called sharp heat and remove the last of the ash. The dough, weighed out in the meantime, is now shaped by hand.
Shaping brings the dough into form, and it goes straight into flour-dusted "Simperl", as these bread baskets are called. Now comes the final proving, in as warm a place as possible. This means the dough may no longer rest; it has to rise. If stoker and baker have timed their work well, the fire has burned down by now, the oven has reached its starting heat of about 300 degrees Celsius and the loaves have risen just right. Then it is time to load the oven.
Each loaf is tipped onto the so-called baker's peel, brushed with water, sprinkled with spices and scored a few times so the bread does not tear too much or uncontrollably.
Now they bake for about 80 minutes until done and nicely coloured, before the baker takes them out and, as here, can enjoy the result of his work. Baking bread the way our ancestors did. Four hours of hard work, from laying the logs to the finished bread – on baking day alone, mind you. Farmhouse bread, fresh and fragrant from the wood-fired oven: simply incomparable. Enjoy your meal!
