I just did a quick once over. The only things that might trip me up are:

1. accidentally using 1 tablespoon salt when it calls for 1 teaspoon.
2. accidentally using a coarse rye flour, as he explicitly calls for a fine rye. Last week I tried to make a Pane di Altamura with coarse semolina durum flour when the recipe called for very fine semolina durum flour, and I had a similar problem: almost no oven-spring. I had no problem with levain or dough fermentation, however.

Thanks!

The flour is very very fine.  German 1150.  So I don't think that's it.

The starter appeared active both times--there were big bubbles when I scooped it out.

And no, not too much salt.

I am more likely to be wrong about the starter, than about anything else, I think, so maybe I should re-build.  Thanks!

FWIW, and not meant as a criticism of Lepard, but since I started using Richard Bertinet's recipe and method of refreshing the leaven I have not looked back at Dan's book for sourdoughs - rye or otherwise.

I therefore highly recommend Richard's.

Sorry not to help you; my ferments from Dans book were very 'holey', and they worked ok, but many loaves flat objects with flying tops, but that's maybe my fault in over-proofing.

However, Richard's are much stiffer doughs, even with high hydration, and the ferment is more compact, creamy-looking, delicious to work with, very satisfying.

Hope you find a solution, as rye is a lovely flour in bread.  Try the walnut fo Dan's too, or Richard's chestnut - out of this world.

I thought so but I just had the thermostat re-done.

mmzz

I using his book, 'Crust'.  The thing is, his ferment is refreshed differently to Lepard's.  Bertinet says to take 400g (just an example, ok?) of ferment, and add the same amount of water and double that amount of flour.

What you get is a very dense ferment that you think will come to nothing, but then increases in volume amazingly!  I found Lepard's resulting refreshed ferment to be much more liquid at every stage.

You might need to do this a couple of times to get away from the wetter ferment and approximate Bertinet's.  Give it a go perhaps?

Of course, Bertinet's recipes are based on HIS ferment NOT anyone elses, so be careful about transferring one to another, as you might end up with gloop.

100 per cent rye will never have much oven spring, but it shouldn't be gooey inside. Be careful of the amount of salt ... I made rye sourdough for four years or so and once in awhile had a customer following the Gerstein (sp???) diet ask me to make her a loaf without salt. It actually rose more than the stuff with salt, although the taste was really flat. (She also wanted us to bake it without oiling the pan, so we floured the outside of the dough thoroughly and it released fine.) I always panned my rye, but the artisan baker for whom I'm now working does his free-form. He's been putting them in the oven soomer than before, so perhaps slightly under-proofed, and they are getting more spring. 

for me to take a guess.   What is the ambient temperature of your kitchen and where can I find the recipe?  Drying dough crust sounds overproofed to me.  Did you score it?  What was the internal temp of the loaf before removing from the oven?    Did you take any pictures?  Tell more about the starter.   Is the rye flour old?

Thanks, everyone!

These would not make a bagel.  At most, a sushok.  :D

The dough was, if anything, under-proofed.  Kitchen temp, according to thermometer, was around 75 - 78 (it's a nice summer here).  However, it looked *about* double.

Salt... it says 1 tsp.  Perhaps it's the sea salt?  No, recipe says fine sea salt and that's what it is.

I did not score it, and I was too depressed at the time to take a picture.  The inside looked like... you know really moist brownies?  The gummy ones?  Like that.  Only ashen-brown instead of brownie brown.  Only with a hard-ish 1 mm crust and then about 1 - 2 cm or so of bread around it.  The ends looked like bread.

He says to rise it on a floured towel.  In my opinion, that dries out the dough but I don't have a bread pan.  He has another pan rye with caraway.  Perhaps I'll buy a bread pan and try that.  In the meantime I will try scones or something else very easy to make sure the oven's working.

I thought it was the oven but I had the thermostat  checked and re-installed recently.  He checked it.  I will check again.  Definitely no power outage :D  The whole house beeps when that happens.

I am mixing up some dough right now, with 20% rye flour added. It seems dry. Should I add more water so it's not so tough and dry? I want to save this batch if I can. I WISH there was some real time forum for immediate answers instead of this and having to wait hours to get feedback.

Sanchiro, I have resigned myself to maintaining my culture at 200% hydration level (50g dark rye and 100g water) at room temperature with daily feeds. 24 hours before use, I feed with a ratio to bring it to the "best fit" in hydration to match the formula of the loaf. It was the best way to see that I was maintaining an active growth, but I am no expert on rye and doubt I will ever understand rye well.

Hope that is of some help.

zÖÖm Ron

Not completely, anyway.  Hamelman's 80% rye worked almost a charm.  Still slightly tough crust (because the freaking top coil apparently only works on the broil setting and manufacturer insists that's how it's SUPPOSED to work) but the crumb is delicious--very flexible, moist, and lovely open holes.

I wish I could remember what I did that first time, but I will do a couple of Hamelman's version with 20% white flour then work down.  I did not feel Hamelman's dough was significantly different than Lepard's in texture, though the rise time was totally different and Hamelman's had yeast added.  That is probably where I got the nice open crumb, LOL.  But still, even without that tiny bit of yeast, it would have cooked all the way through.

I strongly suspect, in retrospect, that it was rising the loaves in the floured towel that dried out the crust pre-bake and prevented it from rising when it really needed to.  I don't remember how I did it he first time but I will try it again without doing that this time and see how it goes (Hamelman's I just rose on my baking sheets).

Thanks much again to everyone... you all are so encouraging!