20% rye

For a long time I wanted to bake this bread. It sounds like home, and it tastes like home.

I am from the Black Forest, here a photo taken during my last visit:

Wolfgang Suepke posted the formula in his blog - quite a nice read because he sheds light on some regional eating habits in Germany.

The bread is a 20% rye bread with 80% (almost) white wheat flour, containing 1% of lard. 12.5% of the total flour is prefermented in a rye sourdough, and 40% of the total flour is prefermented in some kind of wheat biga.

The rye sour matures at ca. 26C for 16 hours, and the wheat preferment is put into the fridge after 2 hours (just when yeast activity becomes visible) and left there overnight (or up to 2 days).

Mixing and shaping as usual (folding works well), the dough needs ca. 1 hour bulk proof and 1 hour final proof.

The formula is on google docs. You can export the spreadsheet to excel and adjust the quantities according to your needs:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkcYHhPxccKtdGJ2WVY4ZHV1bHdocGprdkhOam5UMFE

Mr Suepke uses wheat flour Type 812, which I do not have here in the UK, and light rye flour Type 997, which I get from Shipton Mill.

For the wheat part I use 50% high extraction flour and 50% bread flour (Shipton's No 4).

Here a picture of the bread:

It is proofed in a basket seam side down, and left to crack open at the seams. This creates the characteristic look.

The crumb is niceley elastic, and typically not too open.

The taste is complex with a strong wheaty note, due to the large amount of prefermented wheat. Despite the small amount of lard used it gives this bread a special note that goes very well with the regional meat products, especially with the famous Black Forest ham, see e.g.

http://www.foehrenbacher.de/audfox.php?action=7&id=1&method=detail

A very rewarding bread!

Happy Baking,

Juergen

I recently bought a 9"x4"x4" pullman pan and a pound of SAF instant yeast from Amazon.  Other stuff kept me busy for a few days and I didn't get a chance to try em out, but then I (shudder) ran out of bread. Only one thing to do do when that happens!

I washed out the new pan, lubed the lid a bit with a spritz of olive oil (after which it was much less inclined to stick), and whomped up some dough as follows:

400g unbleached bread flour

100g dark rye flour

1 Tablespoon SAF "red" instant yeast

1 Tablespon brown sugar

1.5 teaspoon salt

1.5 teaspoon dill seed

1.5 teaspoon caraway seed

333g very warm water

I put all the dry ingredients in the bowl of the Kitchenaid mixer, added the water, and mixed it up.  I let it sit a minute or so to hydrate, mixed it a bit more, then made a nice warm log out of it, plopped it in the pan, put the lid on and a towel folded up on top of that to keep the heat in, and left while I watched an hour of television with my wife.

I checked the pan after the tv program and was surprised to discover the dough had risen to fill the pan!  Admittedly I doubled up on the yeast to get a fast rise, but I was mucho impressed - the active dry yeast I've been using previously just doesn't rise like that no matter how much I goose it.

Anyway, I quick preheated the oven to 450F, popped the pan in, and set the timer for 25 minutes.  When the timer went off I pulled the pan out, took the lid off and popped the loaf out of the pan with no problem (even though I only oiled the lid, not the rest of the pan).

loaf and pan^

crumb shot^

For a first try at a pullman loaf I'm happy as a clam with the way it looks!  Tastes good too!