Lucy Bakes Her New Favorite Sourdough Rye

Borodinsky bread was being baked long before the Battle of Borodino that supposedly led to its name and way before the Commies in Russia decided to standardize the recipe to make sourcing the ingredients for the bread much easier.  When the Soviet government says this is the way this bread is to be made then that is it – no variants or options allowed.  Free people don’t live like that of course.

Sprouted rye

Nothing wrong with this bread but it sure could be better – much better….at least according to Lucy at any rate.  She found the 80% rye, 20% wheat, 85% hydration recipe with beet molasses and coriander a bit boring.  So she has been working on a better version that suits her crazy bread attitude and weird way of making any kind of bread really.

Aprouted wheat

Hanseata got her hooked on a mixture of bread spices, Mini Oven got her hooked on walnuts and altus in high percent rye breads and Andy hooked her on prunes.   She didn’t have any prunes, at least not ones she could find as easy as black mission figs, so they subbed for the prunes.  If I have a bottle of Boulder Beer’s Chocolate Shaker Porter, it is going in the rye mix every time – regardless of what Lucy says – well at least most of the time.

That is a lot of add ins

So this is a 75% whole grain rye and 25% whole grain red and white wheat with 37.5% of the grains sprouted.  We kept the overall hydration at 85% with the levain water and dough liquid the Chocolate Porter with 2% salt. 

Way too small for the pan.

We 5% red rye malt and 3% each molasses and barley malt syrup with another.  The toasted and lightly ground seeds were 6% with half being caraway and the other half equally split between fennel, coriander and anise.  The walnuts and mission figs were 20% each and the altus was 25%

It rose about 50% before the pepitas went on.

The 15% pre-fermented bran levain was made from 10 g of NMNF rye starter that was at least 20 weeks old.  It was a 2 stager over 18 hours.  Then we did a 3rd stage of the malt, molasses and barley malt syrup and another 15% pre-fermented high extraction rye and wheat at 100% hydration that was left to sit until it rose 25% as the dough flour and porter were autolyzed for 1 hour with the pink Himalayan sea salt sprinkled on top.

Once the now 30% pre-fermented levain hit the mix we did 30 slap and folds with wet hands followed by 2 more sets of 6 slap and folds – all on 20 minute intervals.  Then we did 3 sets of 6 slap and folds to incorporate all the add ins and get them evenly distributed.  Then we let the dough sit for an hour before panning it in the oriental Pullman that was way too big or it.

Now that is some fine corn bread

We did dome the top with a wet spatula to give it some shape and then let it sit for 4 hours when it did very little proofing for some reason.  It was very slow and we were getting restless but we were patient at least at first and then Lucy started biting my ankles before I realized it was almost time to feed the poor beast.

We then remembered we were drying some red and white malted wheat to make into diastatic white malt.  So that took a half an hour to get out of the dehydrator and milled into the malt we like.  We then fired up the oven to 425 F preheat and plopped on the squash seeds to gussy up the top if the dough.  In another half an hour the oven was ready and we dropped the covered pan in the oven - 5 hours after it hit the pan.

Lets have a salad to go with that home made Okinaowan Spicy Shrimp Soba with Habanero

 We turned the oven down to 400 F when the bread went in for 15 minutes and then another 25 minutes at 365 F. before we removed the lid to end the steaming.   Another 20 minute later and bread was done at 205 F just like Mini Says to do in her famous post here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33328/minis-100-dark-rye-chia-recipe-love-104-hydration  Can’t go wrong with anything Mini says about rye bread.  I call her the master rye bread baker but she yells at me for that!  So much for trying to be nice to the ladies:-)

This bread didn’t spring much but it didn’t collapse either – yea!  So there is hope it isn’t a brick either.  I can't tell you how powerfully good this bread is - but you don't want to meat it in a dark alley without a bread knife.  it slices so easily a quarter of an inch thick without effort.  The taste is incredible.  No wonder Lucy says this is her new favorite bread!