Sourdough Rye Video Posted

This was an interesting loaf to say the least. Initially it was going to be another ciabatta, but I left the prefirment in the fridge for 4 days and was thinking I’d probably have to discard it. However, once I got it out and saw it was still fresh, but with a nice aroma to it, I thought this might just turn out to be a good rye loaf—and it was!

I’m happy about this loaf for a lot of reasons, chief among them was that this was the first time I was able to use some hard red wheat berries that I purchased at my food co-op which I later milled on the Nutrimill that I bought on this site ( unless you are given one for your birthday, Eric has the best price for this wonderful little mill). Another reason, I’ve always been intimidated by making a rye loaf, a dark rye loaf to be more specific. But adding 1/4 cup of cocoa and 2/3 cup of molasses did the trick. But, I think this is what worked: My prefirment was 1 1/2 cup of bread flour, to which was added tonight: 2 C fresh milled whole wheat (hard winter red); 2 C AP bread flour; 2 C of Rye flour and, because we all know that Rye and whole grain whole wheat is a tad lacking in the gluten department, I added 1/2 C of Vital Wheat Gluten. Something else I did that was different was I added 2 Tbs of sea salt (I use sea salt exclusively because it produces a slight nuance of taste that seems better than iodized—sorry if that sound’s pedantic, but I really think there’s a wonderful taste difference, and I got it at Whole Food’s open bin of sea salt.) I used 2 cups of distilled water, which also was different–normally I use tap. I added the preferment to the water in 12 pieces, then I added the cocoa and molasses. I’m sitting here chewing a piece of this delicious bread and I can really taste the notes of molasses and the cocoa and, occasionally, a toasted caraway seed. I used about an 1/8th of a 1.9 oz bottle of the seeds. I mixed my bread flours, salt, gluten and (heresy) 2 packets of Fleischman’s instant yeast. My reasoning here was that the Rye and Whole Grain Whole Wheat was going to be really stiff and I remember reading in a Reinhardt text where he had the same context and he compensated with the extra yeast. As you can see from the photos, it needed the extra boost. The loaf, btw, is heavy weighing in at 3.6 lbs. After I added all the ingredients, I mixed them w/ a paddle for about 3-4 minutes and let it sit for 5 minutes to give the flours a chance to hydrate; I then changed to a dough hook and kneaded for 5 minutes at medium speed and then let it rest again to hydrate the flour and help start the gluten development; finally, I gave it one more vigorous kneading for 5 minutes at medium speed.
I let it rest again for 10 minutes. I could tell ever so slightly that the dough was developing the gluten and it still remained tacky, slightly wet. I let it rise for about 20 minutes and decided to change proofing vessels since I do not have a large banneton—I switched to another Romertopf that I use to bake vegetables and is glazed inside the bottom. I sprayed this with a light coating of oil, put the bottom in first and then reversed so the top was on the bottom. I let it proof for almost two hours while I planted some seeds in the garden. I came in to fire the oven up to 450 (which I later bumped to 485 after I had already put the dough in the large #111 Romertopf–after about 5 minutes of being in at 450.) ( I guess it pays to write your steps down instead of trying to guess what Eric said in his video!). Anyway, it baked at 485 for about 27 minutes, then off came the top of the Romertopf and it baked at 350 for 12 more minutes. The thermometer read 203 and I took it out of the oven and let it sit for about 3 minutes in the clay pot to finish it’s residual cooking.

That was it and I’m a happy camper because now I have some great bread to use with my corn beef sandwiches tomorrow. Happy flour trails. Bernie Piel

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