Is it possible to bake the following Reinhart recipe, from his Whole Grain Bread bk., p. 175, without using a rye sourdough starter?  Yes, I know a starter is much better, but is it at all possible to work around that and still deal with the acidity of the rye flour and get a reasonable loaf of this bread?

Thanks. 

Soaker

Starter

Final Dough

Note: Forgot to add:

I had baked this bread and posted some pics of this recipe (from Daniel Leader's Local Breads book) a week or so ago.  The crumb on the previous post was not as open as it should have been and the loaf, as MiniOven said, was not nearly "ugly" enough.  So, a couple of days ago I decided that the problem I was having was a result of my starter not being active enough before introducing it into the dough mixture, and I had not baked it long enough.  Anyway, I received some good critiques from a number of TFLer's and greatly appreciate the advice and suggestions I received.  I gave it another try a couple of days ago with better results.  It could, as MiniOven and Jane said, use some more "ugly" but I believe I'm making progress.  I doubled the recipe. I divided it into 3 pieces, 2 smaller loaves and one larger loaf.  Here's pics of the larger loaf.  I froze the 2 smaller ones without cutting them but assume they're fairly similar to this one in crumb. They look about the same as far as crust and color.

I left my K.A. on the shelf and mixed it completely by hand, as MiniOven suggested, in a large bowl using a large rubber spatula with more of a folding technique than a mixing action and followed Mr. Leader's recipe to the letter.  I retarded it for 18 hours before baking.  That, I think, gave it greater flavor. It tasted really good.

Pierre Nury's light rye no. 1

Pierre Nury's light rye no. 2

Thanks to:

Mike Avery for his refreshment/feeding instructions for my starter.

Janedo for her suggestions about handling the dough and baking.

MiniOven for her advice on mixing by hand and making them more "ugly".

David Snyder for his numerous posts showing what it should really look like.

Howard - St. Augustine, FL

I am looking for info on an unusual rye "old dough" starter...my 75 yo dad (born in Hungary/Slovenia) recalls his mom starting her rye breads with a hunk of old dough that was permitted to dry out.  A day or two before she was ready to bake, she would crumble this dried dough into water and once it started to form a "sponge" she was ready to bake.

I will have to check with him if the bread was 100% rye, but I suspect so...they were poor and wheat was hard to come by.

 I have looked in various books (by no means exhaustive, yet!) and the closest I've seen was Nancy Silverton's liquid starter which can be dried into flakes.

Anybody?

thanks,

Paula