Rye with Everything

Everything Rye-Crumb

Today I made a batch of my favorite rye and decided to go all out for a flavor treat. The first thing I did was borrow Norms idea of using the water for re hydrating dry onions as part of the dough water. That alone guaranteed the kitchen would smell like "Heaven" or a Jewish Bakery which could be the same place it turns out.

Next I added a few slices of old rye that I have saving for this occasion for altus. I soaked the old bread and squeezed the water out and added it into the dough.

After the dough was shaped I borrowed Mark Sinclair's idea for egg wash on rye and topped the proofing loaf with some of the re hydrated onion, white India poppy seeds, blue poppy seeds.

It looks and smells wonderful. I'll post the crumb later after the corned beef arrives:>)

ADDED BY EDIT: I just posted the crumb image. The bread is only 2 hours old and it's very good. The aroma is mildly onion and caraway. The 20g of seeds is about right for our taste. I'll do this again, the onion and garlic is a nice addition to this old friend. 

Eric

I thought this might be a nice idea for those of you looking for different ideas for your bread shaping.  I made these three breads into 12 ounce rolls.  It's a great size for freezing as it thaws relatively quickly, and also it's nice because you can eat the whole loaf before it gets stale since it's 'half sized'.  It'll also work well as a dinner loaf - just thaw, wrap in foil, then toss it in the oven during the last 10 minutes with whatever you're baking and you have a 'fresh baked' loaf to enjoy. From left to right, Multigrain, Eric's rye, Rustic White.  All three final proofed for 45 minutes and baked for 22 minutes at 410 (convection).  No bannetons were used, just free form loaves on parchment paper.
-Mark
12 ounce rolls

I tend to be a bit picky when it comes to rye bread, so I've been searching for a while for 'the perfect recipe'.  This is it.  This is the same bread that was posted as 'Eric's Fav Rye' by Susan late last year, and I finally gave it a try.  I followed the recipe except for a few slight modifications (AP instead of clear flour) and kept the hydration the same.  Instead of a cornstarch glaze, I brushed on egg before the bake and sprinkled poppyseeds to top them before scoring.  I cut into it after only an hour of cooling just to try it, so the inside looks a little bit soft, but the flavor is great.  I was looking for a harder crust and since he described this as a softer one, I upped the temperature to 405 (convection) and the timing was for 33 minutes.  The proofing stayed the same.

Edit: The internal temperature after baking was 201.7F.

Eric's rye
Thanks Eric, for the great recipe. 

-Mark

This weekend I decided to make some Swedish style breads reminded of a conversation Ive had in an arlier thread about the ultimate book on baking ryes. So instead of rushing out to get the "holy grail" of rye books I decided to make some from a Swedish baking book that I own.

The rye bread Is actually one of the best ryes I have ever made although the method seemed strange to me. First of you make a sourdough preferment with an hydration of roughly 60-65% wich is really dry for a whole rye dough. This is left to ferment for at least 12 hours after wich the final dough is made with a small kicker of commercial yeast, the recipe calls for fresh yeast wich is availble all over Sweden so that is what I used. The dough then ferments 60 minutes and is punched down once during fermentation after wich it is shaped and left to ferment for 45-60 minutes more before going into the oven for 50 minutes. Really great bread, can´t stress that enough!

The barley flatbread was a big faliure, It was far too salty and that resulted in to slow fermentation and though salty crumb. I then re read the recipe and realised that there must be a mistake, the authour specifies 2.3% syrup and 3.3% salt (roughly) which I think is a mix up the salt seems much more resonable at that level. Will probably try them again some day as I love the taste of them with some hot bean stew.

EDIT: Ho hum! Here is a pic! The loaf on the right has been man handled a and that is the reason for the flour being a bit splotched over the top of the loaf but the other is as beautiful as a newborn baby, whitch it is in some regard...

I figured that I'd make myself a blog rather than posting back into the forums all the time. No point cluttering up a perfectly good forum with my one-track-minded baking experiences! 

Last weekend I took another shot at the 100% Sourdough Rye recipe kindly passed on to me by a good work colleague. My previous attempt had been a fair to middling success, and I was confident that this would turn out even better than the first. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the loaves turned out, given my total inexperience in making bread. 

Here's how they turned out: 

and the interior:

What I'm most happy about is that the resulting loaves - apart from tasting great - have my mind working to figure out ways to improve them. The scoring didn't take, so I'll need to think about different ways to work the scoring out. Plus the surface tension is probably not right, so I'll need to work on my folding.

Lastly - for my own benefit as much as anyone else's - this is the recipe I've been using successfully (all credit to OliverN from my work. I've made a couple of small annotations over time). Any suggestions or variations are absolutely appreciated!

Stage 1:

Mix together

4 x cups rye flour.

3 x cups luke warm water

2 x cups starter.

Leave for 16-24 hrs, until the mix has a domed top.

Stage 2

Mix into previous mixture

3 teaspoons sea salt

4 x cups rye flour.

Leave for 12 hours.

Split mixture into two bread pans and leave for a couple of hours (I never do that though). For rye flour you do not need to kneed it. I just flatten the mixture and roll into a log.

Bake in 180 preheated oven for an hour. 

I was happy with my first attempt at 40% Rye with Caraway, until I saw SteveB's. After looking at his post on his blog I tried his method modifications minus the covered steaming. I like the steam cover I just can't bake 2 loaves this size at the same time.

I also used only 8 grams of caraway and it was ground. I just wanted a hint of spice. The sour came through very nicely. I used my rye starter and let it age for 18 hours for maximum sour flavor.

Thanks Steve, I don't know how this could be any better.

Eric 

Greenstein’s Corn (RYE) Bread. This is my first try. :) 

I'll re-do it tand make it:
- less salty
- I'll give it about 30 minutes of proofing after shaping (not more!) - maybe this will help me to avoid crust cracks
- I'll try to add more sourness by fermenting my rye sour overnight, cos I am ethnically Russian and we like sour rye breads
- I'll try to make the crust softer, cos my husband likes it softer. :)

Front view

At night :)

In the morning :)

Thanks in advance for your comments!
:)

Ahhhh. Experiments. Sometimes they go right. Right = Happy Paddy. Prancing about the lounge, lovingly gazing at my creations, and hopelessly covetous; I regret eating the beautiful food I have created! Even though it tastes sooooooo good! Bad experiment. Sigh. Bad = Sad, Angry Paddy. A divot in my brow like a hole in a golf course. Not even Survivor is enough to make me smile. Today was a success. Four baked goods, three experiments, and potentially three successes - two guaranteed.

1. Cinnamon Scrolls
From my lovely friend Sarah. I have been meaning to make these for a while. Sarah said they were easy, and hot damn she was right! I'll be making this babies over and over. Delicious, and surprisingly low on the butter and sugar. Yeasty though. Lord are they yeasty!

2. Danishes From the inimitable Wild Yeast. I confess - I had grave doubts and concerns about this one. The recipe is really (ultimately a little needlessly, in my opinion) complex - there are dozens of steps, with hours rest in between. Puff Pastry traditional works through a kind of lamination process - where you roll it out flat, and butter it - over and over and over. Keeping the dough cold is crucial. It's not a fun process, and in my opinion the gains over store bought puff are marginal at best. This is a different process, it involves rolling out a barely incorporated dough with _huge_ chunks of butter in it. I admit I was skeptical, but wouldn't you be? Look at this! Look at the butter! Ye gods! THE BUTTTTTTTEERRRR!

So you have to roll it out:

*Hands belong to Awesome BakeFriend Pat. Unbelievably, it started to incorporate. The dough - partly because it's so cold - is very stiff. Stiff and yellow. It reminded me of nothing so much as pasta dough in its qualities. After appropriate chill-out times, you have to shape it. Because I need to change my middle name to: "Let's Make A Double Batch!", Pat and I had quite a few danishes ready to go: way too many for my meagre kitchen.... 38 or so...

After, smear on the cream cheese mix, peach halves, morello cherries and boysenberries, then you're good to go!

I couldn't believe it: they tasted as good as the looked!!!

Key learnings from this: Breaking up this recipe as Wild Yeast implies can be done is probably a good idea. Individually, the steps are not too time consuming. All together they are pretty damn time consuming. The biggest step is combining the butter and the flour. That's a lotta rolling!

This said, I think that this recipe could do with some work: all those refrigeration times are definitely not required. They are only there to keep the dough cold. If the weather is cold, or you're able to contain yourself and keep your groping hands off the dough, they won't be necessary.

Also: I would be reluctant to refrigerate the dough to the outside of those time limits. 4 days, etc. is a really long time in the fridge. Too long, in my opinion. Sure it would work, just maybe not well. Finally: don't use too much cream cheese; it will inhibit the rise a bit if you do.

3. Jeffrey Hamelman's 66% Rye Sourdough from Bread. Still getting the hang of Hamelman, I think. His book is a tremendous wealth of knowledge, but the two recipes I have tried so far, whilst not bad, haven't been up there with my favourite recipes.

I am finding his doughs in general have a higher hydration than I would expect, and the dough then has a kind of satiny, silky feel. Also, I'm not getting the proofing rises that I general ly expect from these doughs.

Both recipes I have made so far have stayed very flat in the proofing process, far less than my trusted recipes. I've waited over his leavening times, and still, not much action. I get an oven rise, to be sure. but it's - hmmmm - it's just not quite right.

Despite slashing, I get rise lifting up the bottom of the loaf (hexagon loaves! No fun!). Also I find on cutting the bread that I get a slightly dense, almost rubbery texture - not the soft or chewy texture I generally prefer. This all said, I haven't cut the loaf yet, so the jury's out. Has anyone else tried out this loaf or the Vermont sourdough? The loaves are the front two in the first pic.

4. My Trusty, Delicious Wholemeal Loaf. From Boas, formerly of Folding Pain, now of Grain Power. I have to say; this is the my favourite bread that I have ever cooked, and that's saying something. The flavour is brilliant. The texture: both soft and chewy. It keeps well, and makes great toast. And most importantly, it's practically indestructible - you can screw around with it endlessly and it still holds up. This recipe is fantastic.

What a blissful day of baking! I wish every day was like this!

Greetings! Wanted to create a blog, and give a bit of history and aspirations. I have looked over this site a few times and finally decided to join. I am 31, I have been baking for almost 2 years. I was an army brat, and grew up in Frankfurt and Stutgartt. I first started with pretzels, and have come up with a realy good simple recipe that can be made with packaged yeast or starter. I live in south florida now though, and I'm not so sure the wild yeast here is quite up to snuff. Perhaps the heat and humidity play a role, the first batch and second batch yield a good bread, but the starter then tends to sour too much and turn into a grey lump of bla. I am also quite the avid ametuer chef, and take pride in measuring nothing. This is not a skill that is transferrring well to baking breads. I have been trying to bake a good baguette. Traditionally I have started with my yeast and warm water, then add slowly the flour, of course type depends on what I want, until I get a good dough. But there are books that say to measure and add all at once. There are books that say to knead vigorously for 8 min. There are books that say to knead lightly for 15 min. Some say to add the salt last, some immediatley. Some want a cold rise, some want a warm rise. Some want 3 rises, some want 1. To spray or not to spray? So I will be interested in some recipes and techniques, and I will try and figure out what i am doing when i make pretzels and post. Aufwiedersehen!      

I have never had good luck with sourdough starters. When I lived in "Nearly Canada, North Dakota" my starters never developed any sour taste. I think it was just too cold in our home, even when I placed on our hot water heater. Then again, I only tried them in the winter.

Now I live in "Nearly Mexico, Arizona". Our home is a constant 74 degrees. This time I'm trying a rye and water starter with the 3 step method of 2 oz rye/2 oz spring water for 48 hours, 2 oz rye 4 oz spring water 18 hours, 4 ounces wheat flour, 4 ounces spring water.

I just started stage two. At the end of stage one, I've got great bubbling, but little volume growth (was supposed to double, I gained about 25% volume). The smell is very tangy, but very unpleasant tasting. Not to be gross, it tastes like barf. It is not the definite musty taste. No sign of mold. Is this the normal taste for rye starter?

Thanks, and 17 1/2 hours to go until stage three!