My family has handed down a Swedish rye bread recipe that I've made many times.  It's a slightly sweet bread that includes a fair bit of molasses.  When I had the luck to travel to Sweden I learned that while our recipe tasted pretty close to similar bread in Sweden it didn't have the right texture -- the crumb on ours was much too open.  Our bread rose tall like a loaf of white bread whereas the similar bread I had in Sweden was dense and baked in a small square like a pullman loaf.

More than a dozen years ago I got a recipe from a friend's Mother who lives in the country side an hour or so North of Lund, Sweden.   The recipe was intimidating to me at that time -- no mention of how long to knead things; it called for hand mixing and I had only done doughs in a stand mixer or food processor; and the measurements were in liters or grams.  Until I found this website a year or so ago I was just too bewildered to attempt this bread.  Between general advice about rye breads on this site and insights from Hammelman's fabulous "Bread" book I finally gave it a try this weekend with amazing results.  I couldn't be happier!

First, pictures, then the recipe below.

Per Hammelman I waited 24 hours before cutting into the loaf.  It was hard to wait, but here's what I got:

And, now the recipe, converted by me to use weights not measurements. 

Ljus Kavring

The recipe has 3 stages:  First soak some of the rye flour in boiling water and let that sit overnight; second mix more rye flour and the yeast and let that sit for 4 hours; then make the final dough, rise shape and bake.

Soaker:

700 grams water

355 grams rye flour (recipe calls for fine, but I used Hodgson Mills whole rye flour, which is pretty coarse)

18 grams salt

Mix salt and rye flour.  Boil the water and add to the flour mixture.  Stir till well blended.  Cover with plastic wrap and let sit over night.

Rye & Yeast:

350 grams water

355 grams rye flour

15 grams instant yeast

Mix yeast into the dry rye flour, heat water to 98 degrees and mix the water, yeasted rye flour, and soaker in a large bowl.  Mix till well blended.  Use a large bowl because the dough will rise to about double.  Let the dough rise for 4 hours.

Final dough:

276 grams molasses

385 grams wheat flour (I used KA bread flour)

152 grams rye flour

Stir the molasses into the risen rye dough.  Bit by bit stir and knead in the remaining flour.  The recipe said to "knead thoroughly" but this stuff is *sticky*.  I kept the dough in the boal and used my dough scraper to mush the stuff together and gradually I could see that some gluten strands were developing, but in no sense was this a "dough" that formed into a nice ball.   This recipe is 70% rye flour and not counting the molasses has 84% hydration.   You won't ever get it to come togehter like a "normal" loaf.  Thankfully Hammelman had addressed this issue in his various recipes that used a lot of rye.  He warned that you'll see "no perceptible gluten development."  So, I pressed on!

After the dough is well mixed let it rise for 30 minutes.  The dough inflated, although I would not say that it doubled.

While the dough rises, grease a pullman pan and sprinkly the sides and bottom liberally with rye flour.  Grease the pan top as well.  This quantity of dough filled a 16 X 4 X 4 pullman.  It's probably about 300 grams too much dough but I easily lost half that or more to the bowl, my hands, the counter top.  It's a very messy dough!

After the 30 minutes, dump the "dough" onto the counter and knead.  Again, this wasn't "kneading" in any sense that I have previously understood that word.  I just smooshed this amazingly gloppy stuff around on the counter.  Think of your stickiest cookie dough, then make it twice as wet as normal and you'll have some idea of the texture.

Form into a loaf the size and shape of the pan and dump it in.  Smooth it out to fill the pan, flattening the top and squeezing dough to fill the corners.  A slightly dampened dough scraper helps.  The dough filled the pan about halfway.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 175 C (my oven lets me choose either C or F so I just used the C temp setting.  I think 175C is 350F)

At this point I was confident that there was no way this gloppy mess was ever going to make bread.  But to my surprise at about 30 minutes I looked and the dough had risen to within a 1/2 inch of the top.  I used my dough scraper again to smooth it out and flatten the top, which had domed a bit.  Sprinkle the top of the dough with rye flour and put the lid in place.

Bake for 50 - 55 minutes till the internal temp reaches 190 degrees.

Remove from the pan immediately.  Let cool under a towel.  When completely cooled wrap in a linen towel and let rest for 24 hours before slicing. 

Then enjoy a lovely Swedish breakfast, such as this one:

Forgive me if this is the wrong place for this, but I didn't see a general forum on techniques for shaping dough where this question might be more appropriate.

I tend to gravitate toward high rising doughs, since I mostly make sandwich breads for my family's consumption as sandwiches and toast. I have one recipe in particular we all like that's a wheat germ bread, calling for 4c bread flour, 2 c ww flour, 6 tbsp wheat germ and 3 tbsp flax seeds or sesame seeds, and 2 eggs (among other things). The proportions are pretty similar to most of the other breads we prefer, since we like whole grain or multi-grain breads.

However, I seem to have a consistent problem with this particular recipe, and have this problem enough with other recipes, and I'm wondering if my technique is off in the shaping or somewhere else. I'm getting big air bubbles, either right under the crust or sometimes elsewhere throughout the bread.

My usual technique is to knead, grease the dough ball and let rise until double, punch down, rest, divide into two balls, work each with my hands by folding the opposite way and squeezing out as much air as possible, working the dough pretty well with my hands until I have a suitable loaf shape, putting into greased loaf pans and letting rise again, then baking.

I'm thinking the problem is with my shaping process? But I suppose it's possible it's something about the way I'm baking. I usually preheat the oven with a rectangular stone on the bottom rack to 400 for 20 minutes, then bake for 30 minutes (or so, depending on the recipe).

Any ideas, questions or advice are welcome :)

I know this is not new, but I just found this site a few weeks ago, and exploring all the old posts and recipes, this is the first 100% whole grain bread that I've really liked.  It makes fantastic toast, and is moist and soft enough for sandwiches.  It keeps for several days on the counter, and freezes well too.  JMonkey, your biga method is a real improvement over the original recipe, which I have made.  I have yet to try the poolish method, and I'm not sure I ever will -- I don't see any need to change anything.  Here's the link for anyone else who is new to this site and wants a really good whole wheat bread recipe:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/1073/biga-vs-straight-dough-whole-wheat-buttermilk-bread-experiment

Now that I have made a white naturally yeasted bread, I want to try one with mostly whole wheat flour. I have been searching the forums because I thought I had read something about sweeteners and whether they affected the whole grain breads adversely. I usually prefer a touch of sweetness to my whole grain breads so I am thinking of adding a bit of sugar to a basic whole wheat sourdough recipe (not sour tasting, but leavened with a starter). 

Can anyone shed any light on what the sweetener will do?  I don't want to have the yeast eat up all the goodies before it has time to rise long enough. I just think a touch of sweetness brings out the flavor of whole wheat bread. 

Catherine

Since many white artisan type recipe do well from refrigerating the rise over time, I wonder if I might get anything from doing the same with my multigrain?

Has anyone tried or using refrigeration for the rise, then letting the dough come to room temp before baking?

Hi Everybody,

I am a newbie at bread making. A transplant from Southwest Florida. I am a little confused about the amount of flour needed to knead dough by hand. I followed the recipe that I had, but I kept needing to add flour and then I ran out of flour. The recipe called for 4-4 1/2 cups of flour, but I know that I added about 6 cups and it was still sticking to the counter top.....as well as my hands. When I ran out of flour, I just threw it in a bowl and now I am hoping for the best. I read in one book that kneading by hand will take more flour than if using a mixer. I wonder if someone could confirm this for me. And......if the dough is still sticking to the counter top and your hands, do you continue to add flour until it is no longer sticking to anything?......even if you end up using WAY more flour than the recipe calls for?

Thanks for the help.......looking forward to spending time with you all.

Debbie

Hi,
I have recently gotten quite obsessed with baking new and delicious types of bread (I moved to a rural village in Alaska and have little else to do). But I was interested in recipes using rye, barley, and oat flour, as I have ten pounds of each and no idea what to do with them.

Any good recipes?

I have a bread baking blog where I posted some information about sprouting wheat berries at home, then dehyrdating them and grinding them to bake bread.  I posted a topic called WHY SPROUTED WHEAT?

http://valeriejaquith.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-sprouted-flour.html#comments

Someone posted a comment to my topic saying that there was a good chance that my berries where in fact DROWNED and not sprouted!  Here is an excerpt from that posted comment:  "...and of utmost importance, they conduct the falling number test to determine that the grain has been sprouted and not drown...all steps that cannot be done in a home operation. Based on convention wisdom about how to sprout grains, most of the grain is being drown and not sprouted"

I conducted a test to see how many of my sprouts had actually sprouted and to see if any of the berries did not sprout, indicating that they are drowned I suppose.  I could only find a few berries that may not have sprouted after 24 hours of sprouting following a 10 hour soak.  Here is the photo of the sprouts:

I plan on waiting another 24 hours to see if the berries that are questionable did develop a full blown sprout.

Can anyone provide me with some more information on this topic?   

Hello everyone,

If you bake with sprouted flour and have some tricks to share, I would greatly appreciate it.  I made my first bread with sprouted flour today, Multigrain Struan from Reinhardt's Whole Grain Baking.  It is a recipe that uses biga and a soaker, and proceeds to combine the two with other ingredients (flour, yeast, honey, oil, salt) during the final dough mixing.  then bulk fermentation, dividing the dough and final rising.  The loaves start out in 425F oven with normal steam, but once the loaves are placed there, the temperature is lowered to 350F.  Loaves bake about 40 min and are rotated half-way through the bake.  I followed the recipe and baked on quarry tiles.  I made two loaves (one batard in La Cloche and one loaf in a loaf pan) with organic stone-ground whole wheat and two with organic sprouted (also one batard in La Cloche and one loaf in a loaf pan) for comparison. 

Sprouted flour loaves of either shape did not rise much in the oven, and the scored area sort of sank in.  Stone-ground flour loaves of both shapes had great oven spring and the scoring worked out fine as well.  Now, the taste...  Sprouted loaves were chewy and a bit "wet" to the taste, a bit sweeter than the stone-ground ones, with a more pronounced nutty flavor.  Yummy and delicous is the only word to describe them!  Now if I could only make them more visually attractive.  So, if you have secrets to share, I am eager to learn! Thank you so much in advance.

Kroha

Hello! I had some problems with a recipe yesterday and would like to know if you all can help. I made a new recipe from a new German baking book which seemed a bit strange. The recipe called for:

500g spelt wholemeal flour     250ml buttermilk, warm

250g rye flour                 1T "Brotgewürz" (mixture of fennel, caraway, etc.)

30g yeast                       2T salt

100g sunflower seeds

This seemed like a lot of flour for only 250ml of liquid, but since I had a whole 500ml of buttermilk, I decided I could add more if needed. The mixture as in the recipe turned out very dry, more like streusel, so I ended up adding the rest of the buttermilk and another 100ml or so of water! The bread turned out okay, but it made me wonder if something was left out of the recipe or if I should have handled it differently. The only thing I changed was that I added flaxseed and sesame instead of the sunflower seeds, albeit much less in weight than 100g, probably closer to 50g and used wholemeal rye as well as the wholemeal spelt called for.