You’ll be amazed how easily and quickly you can make your own freshly-baked, scrumptious, crunchy-crusted, flavorful, hearty, whole-wheat, multi-seed, multi-grain bread with this Blitzbrot recipe.
It’s called Blitzbrot for a reason. BLITZ is the German word for lightning, and as a prefix can also mean lightning-fast. And BROT, of course, is German for bread. If you’ve ever been to Germany, you probably have a memory of the flavorful and hearty fresh-baked goods. Or maybe you’ve stood in the bread aisle of an American grocery store next to a German who said: “But where is the *bread* bread? All I see is toast bread in different shades of brown.”
Fret no more about longing for real German bread or appeasing frustrated exchange students, in no time at all, you can pull your own hot, fresh-baked multigrain loaf out of the oven and bite into that crunchy crust.
With a prep time of 10 minutes, letting the dough rise for 20 minutes (optional!), and baking the bread for 60 minutes, you can eat homemade, hearty European-style farmers bread in under 90 minutes.
Table of Contents
Timing of This Recipe
Of course, it’s not a coincidence that we’re sharing this recipe now. During this coronavirus pandemic crisis, many of us are under quarantine or simply staying mostly at home, shopping a lot less and eating mostly homemade meals. A lot of us are also trying our best to stay healthy and boost our immune system, which includes eating nutritious foods.
Right now, a lot more people are baking bread at home and looking for simple and fast bread recipes like this one. But it also means that as of this writing, in early April 2020, it’s challenging to find yeast and even flour at the grocery store. There’s no quick solution to getting flour (besides online orders and repeat visits to the store, timed with warehouse deliveries). But there are lots of recipes online for how to make your own yeast, e.g., this Make Your Own Yeast guide from Survival Mom. Thank you for recommending it, Braum!
Naturally, this is NOT a recipe just for emergencies or times of crisis. Although, admittedly, we consider German-style multi-grain bread “soul food for the northern soul” (besides potato salad, fish stick, and marzipan) – so it’s a personal pick-me-up when feeling a little down. The Mehrkorn Blitzbrot is excellent everyday bread and perfect for your next outdoor meal in your Happier Place.
Turn your picnic or lunch-at-home sandwich into a full meal, take your Nutella-delivery-food to a whole new level, or give your homemade soup the matching partner it deserves. This German-style homemade sandwich bread fits well with every meal. Or try it on its own with just a bit of butter. Guten Appetit!
Mehrkorn Blitzbrot Recipe Ingredients
- 350 grams – all-purpose flour – (12.35 oz. or 2 3/4 cups)
- 250 grams – wholewheat flour – (8.8 oz. or 2 cups)
- 150 grams – seeds of your choice – (or 15 tbsp)
for example: 40 grams (4 tablespoon) flax seeds + 40g (4 tbsp) sesame seeds + 40g (4 tbsp) sunflower seeds + 30g (3 tbsp) pumpkin seeds - 2 teaspoons – salt
- 7 grams – dry yeast – (2 1/4 teaspoon or 1 packet)
- 500 ml – warm water – (2 cups)
- Grease or parchment paper to line 9×5 loaf pan.
Mehrkorn Blitzbrot Recipe Instructions
This dough gets quite sticky. You can just use a spoon for stirring or a hand or standing mixer with dough hooks. If using food processor, use cold water so the water doesn’t overheat.
- Mix all dry ingredients. Just set aside a few seeds to add as a topping later.
- Slowly add water and stir until well-blended.
- Lightly grease baking pan and sprinkle in a few sesame seeds. Or use parchment paper to line pan.
- Add bread dough to pan and sprinkle handful of seeds on top.
- Either (preferred): Let dough rest for 20 minutes in a warm spot while you preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F.
Or (faster): Put loaf pan with dough directly into cold oven, then turn it to 200 C / 400 F. - Bake for about 60 minutes (if you let dough rise first) or for about 70 minutes (if you put pan straight into the oven.)
- Optional: AFTER baking, taking bread out of pan, and turning off the oven, THEN place only the bread back into the cooling oven, directly onto baking rack, for about 10 more minutes to get an even crunchier crust.
Happier Tips
For the cracked crust look, cut a line into the bread mix after it’s baked for about 10 minutes.
A lot of recipes for Blitzbrot emphasize that this bread recipe is extra fast because it’s no-rise yeast bread. This is true for this recipe as well. If you’d like, after mixing all the ingredients, you can put the dough straight into the not-preheated oven, then turn the oven to 400F and bake it for 70 minutes. But this doesn’t save much time; and in our experience letting it rise for 20 minutes creates a slightly taller bread. You choose.
If you’re using homemade or other fresh yeast, use 21g (1/2 a cube) or whatever the equivalent for about 500-700g of flour would be.
Choose your own grains… or nuts! The original recipe (from Luci’s Mutti in Germany) lists 50 grams each of linseed (aka flax seed), sunflower seed, and sesame seed. For our standard recipe, we added in the pumpkin seed – and adjusted the amounts to again total 150 grams. Use whatever you have and whatever you like, e.g. black sesame for visual drama or hazelnuts for a delicious surprise. Just make sure it adds up to about 150g – about 15 tablespoons of grains or nuts.
Small Print for Pedants
“Mehrkorn” means multi-grain – and should indicate the usage of multiple different kinds of grains. Using a mix of all-purpose wheat and whole wheat flour stretches that definition. On the other hand, some consider flax in the recipe to be an additional grain.
Because this recipe uses some wholewheat flour, one would be tempted to call it wholewheat bread (German: Vollkornbrot). But that’s not the main ingredient. The defining factor of this particular Blitz-Bread, besides how quickly you can make it, is the complex flavor of the seeds. Depending on the choice of prominent seeds, at a German bakery this kind of bread would be referred to as Sonnenblumenbrot (sunflower bread) or Kürbiskernbrot (pumpkin seed bread). With a MIX of seeds, the pedant might call this a German Multi-Seed Bread recipe. In German that would be Mehrsaatbrot? But that just doesn’t sound right in either language, so we’re sticking with Mehrkorn Blitzbrot aka Super-Fast German Multi-Grain Bread.
Let’s Inspire Each Other!
Please leave a comment below letting us know if you’ve tried this recipe and which seeds you used or what other adjustments you might have made. Tell us what you’ve been cooking. And if you have your own bread recipe to share, feel free to add your link.
Got questions? Ask in the comments or start a live chat at the bottom right of the screen.
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Best Northern German Potato Salad (Norddeutscher Kartoffelsalat)
Quick Homemade Salsa in Just 15 Minutes
Our Favorite Picnic Food: The Happier Pasta Salad
Surprisingly Quick, Easy and Delicious: Homemade Hummus (Classic + Variations)
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Great recipe!!! I made it today for the first time. I will be making it regularly! What is the best way to store it?
Does it make a difference if we use raw or roasted seeds?
I’ve not tried it with roasted seeds, so can’t be sure. Someone else may have. I prefer the raw seeds because I wouldn’t want them to get “overcooked” by baking something that has already been roasted. But if I only had roasted seeds on hand, I’d probably give it a try.
I used raw flax, sesame, pumpkin but only had salted sunflower seeds to use on salads. So used them. Worked fine.
I did add 2 tsp honey dissolved in the water but will increase that next time as we like it a little sweet.
Bread rose a lot in 20 minutes. Baked for 60 minutes per recipe. PERFECT. Serving with split pea and ham soup
That’s great to know that the salted (and presumably roasted) sunflower seeds worked. Nice balance with the honey, I suspect.
Hi. Did you use a quick rise yeast or just a regular dry active yeast?
Hi Rose. I use just regular dry active yeast for this recipe.
This is now my go to bread recipe! I only bake it for 50 minutes, apply butter to the crust right out of the oven and store it in the refrigerator. I do allow the yeast to bloom while getting everything else together. I had looked for sges for such acrecipe. Thank you!
Thank you so much for letting me know it’s become your go-to bread! I’ll have to try your variation myself. Thanks for the ideas!
xx Luci
Hi. I’ve made this bread twice and each time it came out great on the inside however the crust is so hard that I can barely get my very sharp bread knife through it and it’s definitely too hard for teeth to chew. I’m wondering if you had any thoughts about what went wrong.
Hi Kate. I have no idea what is happening to your bread. The crust is definitely supposed to be on the crunchier side (compared to American packaged bread anyway). But it certainly should turn out in a way that you can chew it and cut it with a sharp bread knife. To make the crust crunchier, I recommend putting the bread back in the cooling oven for an extra ten minutes after having taken it out of the pan. So in reverse, I would suggest to take it out a bit earlier.
Absolutely delicious! Making again today in mini loafs to use with cheese platter. For my seeds I used a salad topper blend I found at Costco with white & black sesame seeds, pepitas (pumpkin seeds), sunflower seeds, cashews, and almonds ( I picked out the almonds though as too large and couldn’t be bothered to chop, cashews were in smaller pieces and easier to break larger pieces into smaller ones. So easy and I’ll definitely be making again & again.
Thank you so much for sharing this tip, Sheryl! That sounds like such brilliant and super-simple variation on the bread. I’ll definitely have to try it like that myself (I even have a Costco card).
xx Luci
Hi Luci, I tried this yesterday with regular flour and rye. It didn’t rise very much, but is a lovely, heavy, seed laden bread—just how I love it. I did the slow rise method in a very warm room, but it grew only a little. However lovely taste, texture and seeds throughout. A success.
Any tips on how to make it rise a little more? Or is that how it’s supposed to be?
Melanie
Hi Melanie. I’m glad you already liked the bread as it turned out. I really need to try it with rye flour myself to taste and test that variation. Yes, it’s supposed to be pretty dense – which by American standards might just seem “wrong”. However, there are a few tips to make it rise more and make it a little airier. It’s all about how fickle yeast is and how much you can create ideal conditions.
1. Make sure the water you use is warm – but not scolding hot.
2. Not sure if this really makes a difference: mix the flour, salt, yeast, water first – then add the seeds. It’s a little more challenging to get the seeds evenly distributed in the now already sticky dough; but now yeast and water can connect more evenly before seeds getting in the way.
3. Once the dough is the baking pan, cover tightly with cling wrap. And make sure it sits in a warmish place, away from any draft or air conditioning.
At times I’ve been amazed how much more it would rise when I was diligent about all these steps.
Thank you for sharing your experience, and the rye inspiration! Good luck and Guten Appetit!
xx Luci
Ah, thanks Luci! I will make it again for sure, as I love a dense bread! I didn’t cover it for rising, so will definitely do that next time (perhaps add that to the instructions?) and will try the post-mixing seed adding.
Yeast breads often like a lot of mixing. Do you think mixing it for longer will help as well? I might have been a bit light on that. I’ll let you know how it turns out next time and if these tips make a difference. It’s a very easy make!
Vielen dank!
Thank you so much for your comment. Love reading that someone enjoyed one of my family recipes. Very curious about how the bread turns out with using rye flour. Hope you’ll report back. But maybe I’ll just need to try it myself. Rye flour is quite traditional for German bread, after all.
This is really good! I’ll definitely make it again. Think I’ll try substituting rye flour for the whole wheat next time just for fun
Thank you so much for your comment. Love reading that someone enjoyed one of my family recipes. Very curious about how the bread turns out with using rye flour. Hope you’ll report back. But maybe I’ll just need to try it myself. Rye flour is quite traditional for German bread, after all.
I do a lot of baking for my neighbors and one in particular asked for a dense, crusty, seedy German bread. This sounds like it fits the bill but maybe not “crusty” enough? Can I bake in my Dutch oven to get a better crust? Or maybe a water bath on the bottom rack?
How nice of you to bake for your neighbors! If the one who requested the German dense, crusty, seedy bread has experience with actual German sunflower or pumpkin seed bread, they may have exactly this in mind – even the level of crustiness, which is traditional for German seed bread, but not quite as crunchy as yeast + white flour bread baked in a Dutch oven. I’m a German living in the US, and this is exactly the kind of bread I missed from home until I started baking it myself.
My tip for getting a crunchier crust: after baking and turning off the oven, take the bread out of the loaf pan and put it back in the oven for 10 minutes as the oven cools down. I haven’t tried this bread in a Dutch oven or with a water bath. The Dutch oven would give it the wrong shape and might just result in a disk, not a loaf. My mom (still living in Germany) adds a little bit of lemon juice. She says it’s for a bit of “sour dough flavor”. But recently I also heard that lemon juice has an effect on crunchiness. If you do try a different variation, please let me know how it turned out.
The good thing: this bread is so easy and fast to make, if you just follow the regular steps, you’ll know in 70 – 90 minutes if this is what your neighbor was hoping for. Keep me posted.
This looks so delicious that I wish you were local to me as I would order some asap. Do you ship to New York?
Unfortunately, you’ll have to bake the bread yourself. We just provide the recipe. The good news: the bread is super easy to make, just stir all ingredients and bake. Also: all the products we do sell, we DO ship to New York 🙂
Amid locdown we are trying to to make everything at home that could add a little change to our routine. This looks delicious and a recipe which I would add to the list
Looks ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!!! 🙂 I love your tip on trying different seeds, grains, etc. We made cornbread this morning and it turned out more like a cake! Thanks for sharing!!!
Great recipe and so useful at a time like this, especially the link on making your own yeast.
XO, MJ
https://lush-fab-glam.com
Interesting background, The recipe sounds really great and truly it is worth a try. And I will give it a try.
Looks delicious! I think it is a great idea to make your own break esp if you are a bread lover
Thank you for your comment, Lyosha. It is bread lovers’ kind of bread.
I love baking so much. Especialy at times like this. Very nice post thanks for sharing!
I love baking, too. It’s a kind of magic how you can mix all these things together, put them into the oven, walk away… and when you come back: voila here is delicious bread, cake or cookies. Thank you so much for your comment. Let me know if you try the recipe.
This looks delicious! I love the addition of seeds and I bet it tastes amazing toasted with honey!
Oh yeah, it would be great with honey. The seeds and the honey would make such a lovely combination. What an excellent idea! Thank you.
Yeah, I’d mess this up too lol. Anything to do with flour, yeast, soda, rising & kneading is not my forte. I’ve taken to making no-bake desserts not requiring yeast or rising and I wanna try banana bread soon. This looks mighty delish by the way.
Haha. Those must have been some kitchen adventures you’ve had. But I don’t really think you could mess up this bread at all. It would even be easier than banana bread – because with banana bread it makes a difference how ripe the bananas are. Here you just stir water into all the dry ingredients, put it in a baking for and let it sit for 20 minutes, then bake for 60 minutes. It doesn’t really rise much anyway – so you can also put it straight into the oven, turn on the oven and let it bake for 70 minutes. I’ve done it both ways and the difference is barely noticeable. In any case: good luck with whatever deliciousness you make next!