Onion bread is a savory loaf loaded with sweet fried onion. Featuring a soft, pillowy crumb and a salty crust, it fills the kitchen with an irresistible aroma.
Fried onion makes everything better. Whether it’s the base for a sauce, a condiment for a pork roast or this extra something to make the bread special. Especially in the mountains, people’s diet consisted of bread, potatoes, cabbage and not much more and so they came up with these little things to make their diet more interesting. And when you eat pretty much the same thing every day, I imagine that these small changes are very important.
You can spice up any bread recipe with onion but in this recipe, I’ll give you my own very basic recipe with ingredients measured by cups and spoons! I usually use exactly weighed ingredients for bread but why not, let’s make it a little easier for once.
If you want to try some more Czech bread recipes, I have a whole category dedicated to those. You’ll find there such classics as the Wheat-Rye Bread or Beer Rolls.
Onion Bread – Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups of wheat flour
- 1 cup of rye flour
- 1,5 cup of lukewarm water
- 1,5 tsp of salt
- 1 tsp of dried yeast
- 1 large onion
- a little oil
For the crust
- 0,5 cup of water
- 2 tsp of salt
- optional: caraway seeds
How to make it
In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, yeast and water and knead for a while until everything’s well combined. Sprinkle with some flour, cover the bowl and let the dough proof. Meanwhile, chop the onion (into small pieces but not too fine) and fry it on a little oil. Then place the fried onion into a sieve so the excess oil can drip away.
When the dough has doubled in volume, sprinkle your working table with some flour and put the dough on it. If it’s too sticky, add a little flour to the dough. Knead it with you hands and fold it. Add a little fried onion into each fold. Put the dough back in the bowl or into a bread basket and let it proof some more (the time depends on the temperature, what can take one hour in summer might need several hours in winter).
Preheat the oven to 200°C/392°F. Mix half a cup of water with 2 tsp of salt. Place the dough on a baking tray, glaze with salty water and you can also sprinkle it with caraway seeds. Put the tray in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Then glaze again with salty water and repeat again in 5 minutes. Finish baking. The whole baking time is about 40 minutes but here’s where you need to know your oven. The crust should be medium brown and when you tap it, it sounds hollow.
Let the bread cool down and serve.
