#DDBwerkbank – Digital Cooking Studio - Baking Bread from Wood

Bread made from wood: in addition to the hottest food supertrends of 2021 like mochi ice cream, adaptogens and sushi bakes, is THIS the next big hype of the year? Or again just the latest stomach upset?

In any case, we’re heating up the oven and daring to venture forth into this previously uncharted culinary abyss with a historic recipe for wooden bread in this issue of #DDBwerkbank: so that namely no one else will have to do it (which we would, incidentally, – spoiler alert – strongly advise against at this point …)!

Searching for a recipe:
What many people don’t know: there are the one or other highlights of haute cuisine hidden in the German Digital Library! And so we begin our search for a recipe on www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de, where we enter the search term “Brotzubereitung aus Holz” (“making bread from wood”). In this way, we get the hit Gründliche Anleitung zur Brodzubereitung aus Holz (An in-depth guide for making bread from wood) by Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth from 1817, made available by the University Library of Kiel.

The Anleitung (guide), with its almost 30 pages, is indeed considerably longer than usual recipes, but Autenrieth – as a medical man and Chancellor of the University of Tübingen and a complete and utter scientist – was clearly interested in more. Namely about establishing and demonstrating with scientific methods (partly questionable by today’s standards), that wood-based food was equally nutritious and digestible (which of course it is neither).

In the course of this, the “smaller members” of the Authenrieth family, among others, also had to serve as test subjects in the experiment in the name of science and try out different types of wood (from lime to beech) as well as methods of preparation (from “Schwäbischen Knöpflein” (Swabian noodles) up to pancakes) for their digestibility and flavour. And lo and behold: the wooden foods didn’t – apparently – “cause any inconvenience whatsoever”.

The background to Autenrieth's love of experimentation in culinary matters, however, is actually a serious one: with his wooden bread experiments, he tackles a pressing problem of his Württemberg homeland that affects large parts of the world from 1816 onward: famine.

In 1815, the Tambora volcano erupts in Indonesia. The emissions travel around the entire globe and - most likely - cause the so-called "year without summer" in 1816, resulting in crop failures and famine.*

1. Recipe for wood flour

• Time required: a considerable amount
• Degree of difficulty: easy
• Usefulness: questionable

First of all we have to make the flour, which is, after all, the basis for our goods baked from wood. Autenrieth recommends using particularly beech or birch wood for those inclined to be xylophagous.

Before we begin to chop up the living-room furniture, however: we can simply order smoking chips from an online barbecue shop, for example – all in all, this is much cheaper.

Ingredients:

• wood chips /sawdust or similar (beech or birch), free of pesticides and wood preservatives
• water
• “something which produces slime” e.g. marshmallow root (can be found in health food stores or chemists)

1. First boil the sawdust in plenty of water (this serves to boil out the “bitter wood sap” according to Autenrieth). Then dry this in the sun or in the oven.

2. Grind this finely, very finely. (I used an old East German coffee grinder from the flea market for this – this is also good for the upper body muscles.)

3. “Bake moderately” (that is, not too hot).

4. Grind the dried flour again.

5. Boil the water with the marshmallow root until it develops a slimy consistency.

6. Form into flat cakes together with the wood flour.

7. Bake in a moderate oven until the cakes are “quite thin and brown-yellow on the outside” and show the consistency of rusks or like “bread crusts”.

8.“Crush roughly and then put them on the grinder again”.

9. And grind them again.

Et voilà! All in all, the wood treated like this has now become flour. It was quite easy …

2. Recipe for “well-baked bread” from wood

• Time required: average
• Degree of difficulty: easy
• Flavour: see below

Now that we have got the finest wood flour, we can turn to our real concern – baking wooden bread with such a flavour that would have made Autenrieth’s mouth water.

Ingredients:

• wood flour
• sour dough
• cereal flour
• all in the proportions 5 : 2 : 3.
• “Sweet, non-skimmed milk” (Caution! Autenrieth warns against using water for reasons of flavour).

1. Mix the cereal flour and sour dough together with one third of the wood flour.

2. Knead to a “pre-dough” with milk.

3. “Leave it alone in a moderately warm place for several hours”.

4. Knead in the rest of the wood flour and add in more milk.

5. Bake small bread rolls: form into “thin cakes pressed flat”.

6. “Leave the cereal bread-dough in a moderately warm place for a longer than usual time for the bread to ferment”.

7. “Bake well” in the oven.

Autenrieth’s tip for gourmets: “The crustier the bread, the better its flavour.” So bake until nice and crispy!

Et bon appétit!

3. Tasting

Visual impression:

Ambiguous. Is it a burger? A grey schnitzel, burnt in patches? A cirrhotic liverwurst? Well – the main thing is that is tastes good, isn’t it…(?)

Aroma:

Not unpleasant – like fresh bread, sawmill, camp fire and earthy forest soil.

Consistency:

Biscuit-like, slightly crumbly, somewhat dusty inside.

Flavour:

The rustical flavour of the wood, – polarising among the tasters, from time to time, – is especially complemented by the way by simple, down-to-earth toppings like butter, cold meats, cheese, quark etc. – author’s note – but the combination with Nutella is also obvious!

Texture:

Dry, like a mouth full of dust – and a wooden, stiff consistency at the same time – quite simply impossible to chew.

Repugnant and quite choking on the palate. (The wood flour must presumably be ground down to an almost molecular level of fineness – otherwise this will all come to nothing…)

Digestibility:

Since the testers avoided swallowing the bread (see above), mostly with the greatest resistance, no well-founded statement could be made here, taking into consideration the small amount of bread which was actually consumed. In any case, the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek expressly recommends NOT to consume the Autenrieth goods baked from wood according to the recipe above.

Conclusion

For those of you who wish to spare neither time, costs, efforts nor nerves in making bread which is only good for lighting a fireplace or gritting icy pavements, Autenrieth’s recipe is warmly recommended. In short:

Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth in the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

Note

This information was not included in the original DDBwerkbank publication and was added on 11 October 2021. Read more in our DDBspotlight on the topic.