This recipe comes from Pierre Nury via Daniel Leader's Local Breads, this is the second recipe I've made from the book (and it went a lot better than the first, which I still need to write up). I picked this recipe because it looked like it would make cute little loaves, and one of my friends is a fan of blue cheese. It had also been a while since I made a bread with a significant amount of rye flour, and that one turned out a bit brick like. I had some trepidation starting this recipe because I had heard of many errors in the book (and experienced some of them in the first bread I made), but I didn't notice any glaring errors in this recipe.

This recipe is built on a stiff levain, which I definitely prefer, seem to get better results from it, and I already keep a stiff levain so no conversion needed. Once you have the starter build for the recipe you mix the bread flour (55%) and fine ground rye flour (45%) with the water and let the mixture autolyse for 20 minutes. After the autolyse the small portion of starter is incorporated into the dough and the salt sprinkled on top and kneaded in.

This was a dense and very sticky dough to knead, thanks mostly to the rye flour I would imagine. The new (large) cutting board I got to handle dough on seems to help make the sticky doughs easier to handle than the plastic mat I used previously though, I was able to get this dough kneaded well enough with minimal flour use. I wasn't expecting a huge rise with the dough, both from comments seen online and experience with how my starter likes to rise, and it was good I wasn't expecting much!

I couldn't find the cheese called for in the recipe locally so I picked out an interesting looking selection at my local Whole Foods, Hook's Cheese Company Blue Paradise:

It was a little tricky getting the 4 separate pieces of dough evenly sized because the dough was so sticky! A little dusting of flour to control that stickyness for weighing and I got my 4 roughly equal pieces, and preshaped them into little rectangles (it called for squares, but the dough didn't want to go that way). Each of the 4 got stuffed with cheese, rolled up into little loaves, and put in the loaf pans. I was initially surprised that this recipe calls for scoring before proofing, but I guess that helps it to open up a bit more to make a cavity for the cheese you place on top.

When it came time to bake, I changed up the instructions a bit. I preheated the oven to 500, used nearly boiling water instead of ice cubes, and then turned the heat down to the suggested temperature as soon as the loaves were in the oven (the ice cubes just don't work so well for me). These loaves smelled really great as they were baking!

After they had cooled a little bit, I brought one out to show the person I had baked them for more intending just that he could see and smell it, but it must've smelled really good because he took a big bite out of it! It was really good warm out of the oven like that, I also made a few slices into crostini the other day, topped them with pesto and chicken!

Reinhart's Yeasted Rye was gummy

This weekend I decided to try Reinhart's Yeasted Rye, from Crust & Crumb p.104. I realize sourdough has its advantages when making rye, but the reason I went with the yeasted is that, sadly, my wife doesn't like even the mildest sourness of sourdough. I followed my notes (below in italics) based on that recipe closely. I had to use half high gluten, half medium gluten flour for the bread flour, and used half pumpernickel, half whole rye for the coarse rye. I also brushed the top with an egg white and milk mix, then sprinkled on colorful seeds.

Reinhart's Yeasted Rye: Combine sponge ingredients and ferment, covered, 4 hours, to rise & fall: 126g bread flour, 126g coarse rye flour, 1 tsp instant yeast, 1  c cool water;  After 4 hours, add to sponge: 252g bread flour, 1 TBSP brown sugar or diastatic malt powder (I used the latter), 1.25 tsp salt, ½ tsp IY, 1 TBSP caraway or other seeds, 1 tsp caramel coloring, instant coffee or cocoa powder, optional (I used 1/2 tsp cocoa powder), ¼ c buttermilk (4 TBSP). Mix on low in machine 1 min, then medium a scant 8 minutes; don't overmix. Should be smooth, stretchy, tacky, evenly incorporated. Should windowpane. Ferment covered until double. Shape (e.g. for bread pan), put in greased loaf pan, cover, proof until nearly double; bake in preheated 350°F (177°C) oven for pan bread, with steam, 45-55 min. until internal 195F. Cool on rack 90 mins.

Ok, on my first try I lowered the oven temp slightly (about 170C) in an attempt to get a softer bread, baked 55 mins, and tested to 195F internal so I figured it must be done. I brushed the top with milk to soften the crust, as it was to be sandwich bread. I noticed a slight collapsing of the top crust at that point. I let it cool in the loaf pan 15 mins then tried to turn it out onto a cooling rack, but it started sagging, collapsing slightly.  After 90 mins cooling, I cut a slice and found it was all gummy inside (inedibly so), despite having been very brown on the outside and having reached the requisite internal temp. I doubt I overmixed, as Reinhart calls for a scant 8 mins mixing, and I probably mixed 6 mins, stopping since it seemed smooth and springy and didn't tear when trying to get a windowpane of sorts.  So was this more likely to have been underdone, or to have been that starch attack thing?

I then made a 2nd (successful) attempt, but being more interested in getting a usable sandwich loaf for today's lunch than in doing a proper experiment where only one variable at a time is changed, I moved the rye flour from the sponge to the 2nd stage (and an equiv. amount of bread flour from 2nd stage to sponge), switched from diastatic malt powder to brown sugar, scalded the buttermilk, kept the temp at 177C (i/o 170C), tenting with foil after 15 mins, and baked to 203F internal  instead of 195 internal. I let it cool in the loaf pan half an hour before transferring it to the rack, and there was no sagging or collapsing. After 90 mins cooling, I sliced a piece. The result was a perfect loaf with a perfect crumb, nary a hint of gumminess, and a lovely, light caraway rye flavor.

Now, other than telling me to do sourdough (I understand that the higher acidity of sourdough will inhibit amylase activity in the sub-176F range), what advice do the rye bread gurus have for me? Which of the above bolded changes do you think was most likely responsible for the drastic improvement of the 2nd loaf?

Do you think it was the lower baking temp combined with a non-acidic dough giving more time in the starch-attack temp range which had caused the serious gumminess in loaf #1? Would the presence of diastase have exacerbated this? Would enzymes from unscalded homemade buttermilk exacerbate this? Or is is possible that the loaf was just underdone despite clearly reaching the specified internal temp and being nice and brown on the outside (well, the top)?

I've already succeeded in changing the recipe to produce a successful loaf, but I'd like your input on which change(s) probably helped the most. Thanks in advance! :)  

Dan Lepard had a great recipe in The Guardian magazine back on 19 September 2009. I don't recall anyone here posting about it, but when I tried it I encountered a problem. Nothing insurmountable, though, thanks to Dan's forum.

Anyway, I wrote about it in detail at my blog. I'm putting this here in case anyone else comes looking.

And here's the warning: be very careful not to overheat the initial mixture of rye and coffee.

Happy baking

Jeremy

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?

Hi all:

I just finished baking an extended fermentation, 3-build, 25% WW, 25% rye, 50% Bread Flour this morning.  VERY happy with the outcome. 

Hour 0:

1/4 cup ripe starter

1/4 cup water

1/3 cup rye flour

1/3 cup WW flour

Hour 16-24:

All of Section 1 product (about 8 ounces)

8 ounces of water

8 ounces of rye flour

8 ounces of WW flour

Hour 40 to 48:

All of Section 2 product (32 ounces)

32 ounces of Bread Flour

22 ounces of water

1.5 tablespoons salt

1-1.5 tablespoon caraway (to taste)

Combine Section 2 product and water.  Mix well, whisking until frothy with air.  Add Bread Flour, salt and caraway.

Knead for 5 minutes (will be pretty sticky)

Autolyse for 20 minutes

Knead for another 3 minutes.

Bulk ferment until doubled (2-3 hours)

Divide into two 43 ounce portions.

Shape and proof (1.5 to 2 hours)

Bake en Cloche at 425 for 50 minutes, 23 covered, and 27 uncovered.

I recently made some sour rye bread using Mark's recipe from The Back Home Bakery. I posted the complete photo step-by-step on my blog here if you want all the dirty details, but here's the final product;

I'm not totally sure the crumb is as open as it should be, although it's about 36% rye to 64% AP and is a 63% hydration dough. It seems just a wee bit too tight, but maybe that's just me. I'm thoroughly happy with the taste (and pretty dang proud of finally getting good slashes!) so if this is indeed "pretty much spot on" then I've got no complaints.

Can anyone suggest what one might do if that isn't what the crumb texture is supposed to be? 

Hopefully even a word from Mark would be great but I assume he's got a day job that keeps him busy. And "day" is pretty subjective here, from what I've been seeing lately ;) 

Normally, I'd include the recipe but since Mark has taken them off his site after going into business full swing, I don't want to be giving away the shop secrets.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Much of the bread you can buy in shops in Italy remains remarkably good. Some things, though, aren't available, at least not nearby. One of those is rye bread. So I resolved to make some this weekend, using a recipe for Heidelberg Rye from the 1973 edition of Bernard Clayton Jr's The Complete Book of Breads.

Conclusion: A fine loaf, but I do need to internalise that stuff about watching the loaf not the clock. If I can do it while the bread is in the oven, why not while it is rising?

More pictures here.

The first task was to convert Clayton's volume measurements to weights. Time consuming but worthwhile. My strong (Manitoba) flour averages 140 gm a (8 oz.) cup, the rye a little lighter, but I decided to use the same conversion factor. So here's the list of ingredients with my conversions.

1. 420 gm All-purpose or bread flour (3 cups) I actually used 345 gm, allowing for the flour in the starter.
2. 420 gm rye flour (3 cups) I used 100% rye, stoneground, biological, Demeter brand.
3. 2 packages dried yeast. I used 150 gm of my sourdough starter, freshly fed at 100% hydration, based on an approximation of 10% starter.
4. 20 gm cocoa (1/4 cup)
5. 1 tablespoon each salt and sugar (Didn't weigh. Used 15 ml measure, demerara sugar and fine table salt).
6. 1 tablespoon caraway seeds. (Small Italian dictionaries give comino for both cumin and caraway. The real thing is carvi.)
7. 480 ml hot tap water (2 cups). Bizarrely, my 1 cup measure is marked 250 ml, but contains 240 gm of water. I actually used 405 gm, allowing 75 gm from the 150 gm of starter.
8. 100 gm molasses (1/3 cup)
9. 2 tablespoons shortening. I used peanut oil.

Clayton says to mix half the flour with all the other ingredients for about 3 minutes "until the dough is a soft mass and is no longer wet and sticky". Got there using a wooden spoon, but it is a stiff dough even with only half the flour, and a pretty exhausting three minutes it was. Then adding the flours, white and rye, in 70 gm lots, trying to stir them in. After about 210 gm I switched to the spatula to cut the flour into the dough, and when I had about 70 gm of rye left I turned the dough out onto a wooden board to knead.

Slowly I worked the rest of the rye into the dough, kneading all the while, for about 8 minutes. Clayton says "finally it will become a soft velvety dough, a delight to work". That's possibly stretching it a bit (haha) but it did become soft, not sticky and OK to work, but it didn't have the elasticity of a pure wheat dough. Maybe that's because I used whole rye.

Now here's where things went off track. Clayton says to cover the dough and let it rest on the work surface for 20 minutes before shaping the loaves. I did, but it changed not one whit. He doesn't give any indication of doubling or anything in this recipe, not at this stage nor for the shaped loaves, and so I thought it best to leave the dough resting until it had at least risen somewhat. In the end, even after 3 hours at 29℃, it was very hard to see any movement at all, but my timetable required me to shape the loaves -- one round and one long one that I put in a parchment-paper loaf tin. Then into the fridge they went, brushed with olive oil and loosely covered with a plastic bag.

This morning I did as Clayton suggests, heating the oven to 400 ℉ (Gas Mark 6 on my oven) and bringing the loaves out of the fridge 10 minutes before they were to go in. Slashed them with a wet ceramic knife, and in they went.

I resisted the temptation to peek for the full 30 minutes, as advised, and when I did I was very pleasantly surprised by how well they had sprung. Too much, in fact, clear evidence of under-development, I think. Clayton says check after 30 minutes for that elusive "hard and hollow sound". I prefer a thermometer, and mine barely reached 150 ℉. I gave it another 10 minutes, then another, then a third, which was perhaps five minutes too long as the internal temperature had somehow climbed to just above 200 ℉. Out of the oven, onto the rack, and ready for their close-up.

Three hours later, lunchtime, and time to cut. Great smell of caraway, good fine crumb, moist, a hint of chocolate (which gives the lie to Clayton's claim that "the chocolate's contribution to taste is so slight as to go unnoticed) and a very definite molasses sweetness. All in all, a great success. A tad too sweet for my normal taste, although I think the molasses flavour is really good. I wonder, might it be a good idea to get rid of the tablespoon of sugar -- I mean what is it going to offer to the dough that 100 gm of molasses doesn't? The cocoa? I like the rich dark colour, but if it can barely be tasted, what's the point? And finally, it might be better if the dough sat in an oiled bowl, rather than on the counter, until it had doubled, or at least risen noticeably?

All good thoughts, which I may try when I repeat the recipe. I'll also be looking for a good caraway-rich light Jewish rye.

I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.

Last week I finally got a decent sourdough starter going, based on the instructions in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I used it successfully to make Pierre Nury’s Rustic Light Rye and some Sourdough Waffles, both of which came out well with the clear instructions provided. I decided to try making some 100% whole grain bread, which I've never had much success with, and finally settled on jmonkey's recipe.

I used the stretch and fold technique for kneading, shaped it into a boule, and baked it in a 450ºF oven on a stone. Also, since I can only get soft whole wheat here, I added vital wheat gluten to the flour to compensate (around 2-3 tsp/cup).

It might be too caramelized for some tastes, but I liked the way it came out (thanks jmonkey!). I expected the crumb to be more open based on what the recipe said, but I think I may have underproofed the loaf a bit. Next time I will also put the stone lower in the over since the bottom took much too long to finish. As far as taste goes, it was delicious, one of the best whole grain breads I've had. What do you think?

Chris

Every single time that I have been to Russia (which is quite a few times) I always went to the nearest supermarket as quickly as I could after my arrival in order to buy a loaf of rye bread. There are, just as in many parts of the world, various types of rye bread in Russia, but the one that I really crave is the black, extra-dark rye bread that I, basically put, grew up on. These pictures (http://russianreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/black-rye.jpg and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bread_%28buhanka%29.jpg) are the closest examples of what I'm looking for that I could find on the net. Does anyone know a recipe which will give me similar results without having to use a starter? Thanks.

Here's a recent translation I made of Auerman's Borodinsky recipe, in case it's of use or interest to anyone. You can find the original at https://www.slashtmp.iu.edu/public/download.php?FILE=feldstei/95081siBxp8

Auerman's Borodinsky Recipe
For a loaf weighing between .5 and 1 kg:

Ingredients
Rye flour (95% extraction)--------80
Wheat flour (85% extraction)------15
Red rye malt---------------------- 5
Salt------------------------------ 1
Yeast----------------------------- 0.1
Sugar----------------------------- 6
Syrup----------------------------- 4
Vegetable oil--------------------- 0.05
Coriander------------------------- 0.5
Potato flour---------------------- 0.2
Total----------------------------111.85

3-Stage Process: Scald-Sponge-Dough

1. Scald
Rye flour--------------25 kg
Malt------------------- 5
Coriander-------------- 0.5
Water---------------65-68 liters
Preparation of scald: mix malt and coriander into 7-8 liters of cold water, add flour, mix and pour in 55-60 liters of boiling water, mixing constantly. In 2-2.5 hours mix the scald again for several minutes and cool to 35 C.

2. Sponge:
Scald--------------------All
Sour-------------------  15-17 kg
Yeast--------------------    0.1 kg
Thoroughly mix the sour into the cooled scald and then let it ferment
for around 4 hours. Note: older, mature dough is used as the sour. Or the following mixture can be made:

Mature dough------------------ 5 kg
Rye flour--------------------- 5 kg
Water------------------------5-7 kg
This sour should ferment for around 5 hours at 27-29 C.
(Translator's note: the sour has a hydration of 100-140.)

3. Dough
Sponge------------------------All
Salt-------------------------  1 kg
Sugar------------------------  6 kg
Syrup------------------------  4 kg
Rye flour (95 extraction)-----55 kg
Wheat flour (85 extraction)---15 kg

Dough temperature should be 30 C and after 10-30 minutes it can be formed into loaves. Loaves are elongated and smoothed with wet hands, then placed on boards that have been sprinkled with flour and left to stand for 15-20 minutes.

After standing and before going into the oven, the loaves are coated with a wheat flour and water mixture and sprinkled with coriander. The loaves are first put in a 320-350 C. oven for 4-6 minutes and are finished up at 240-250 C. The surface is made shiny by coating with a starch mixture.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aside from the use of a tiny amount of yeast, which I just omit, two things bother me about this recipe:

1. One quarter of the flour is put into the scald (zavarka). Others (e.g. Royter) only use 16% or less. What is optimal?

2. After forming the loaves, they are put into the oven after only 20 minutes. That sounds like too short a time.

Ron