My mind navigates toward bread. Whether biking city streets, traveling New York’s subways, or walking our wonderful avenues and less wonderful boulevards, my mind inevitably brings me back to bread. Baking it, savoring it, chewing it. The web is particularly inspiring for bread. And among my many digitally-based inspirations is Austrian baker, Christian Ofner. His online presence offers recipes and videos for the style of breads from the Styrian region of Austria.

Among my favorites of his breads is what is termed “a Krustenbrot-Doppelt gebacken,” which translates as a crusty doubled baked wheat and rye bread. Wanting to adapt it to use with my own rye sourdough, I reached out to him for advice. He was kind enough to respond. Here is what he wrote.

“You have to take 5 times the amount of natural sourdough! And deduct the flour and water from your natural sour from my recipe, that’s it!”

And so I followed his advice, leading to results that were “saftig lecker!” Translated, juicy delicious.