Exploring rye breads

I've finally (finally!) managed to make a rye sour starter that is active and able to rise bread. I don't know why this has been so difficult for me, but I've had a few disappointments when trying to make 100% rye bread. I make a pretty decent deli rye, but the three-stage starter alternates between wheat and rye flour and starts with my very active wheat starter, so that didn't count. I have a customer who had requested bread that was 100% naturally leavened and had no wheat (Kamut, spelt, etc.) in it, so was challenged to come up with something good. I baked him a couple of bricks that I wasn't happy with and really needed to make something better.

So, over the course of about ten days I patiently fed a rye starter (again), and voila, this time it worked!

I have 100% rye recipes in a few places that I want to try - some on Stan Ginsberg's site (The Rye Baker), some in Daniel Leader's book "Local Breads" (this is the book I used for the rye starter), and some from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's book "How to Make Sourdough".

The first one is the Rye Berry bread from Leader's book. I changed it a bit by cooking (rather than soaking) the rye berries, and adding some kasha and millet to the cooking mixture. I find that rye berries don't soften enough when just soaked. I should have added the kasha after cooking though, as the grains sort of disintegrated in the mix. Oh well, the taste is still there. So this bread is a fairly high percentage of fermented rye along with the cooked grains, a bit more flour, water and salt, and that's it. No flavouring or seeds added.

I could have baked this in a Pullman pan but I only have a 13" one, and the dough would have fit into a 9" one. So I improvised. I have a couple of nice 8" x 4" tins from Fat Daddios. I used one of these, sitting on an old baking sheet, and covered it with a deep pan that I got for $5 (used) from my local restaurant supply store. These are steam table pans and come in different sizes. Food grade stainless steel, so very good quality. This way I didn't need any steam added to the oven either.

This loaf cooked at 325F for two hours, the last 15 minutes uncovered.

This customer likes his loaves cut in half and wrapped, as he keeps it in the freezer. So I was able to cut it the next day (and take a thin slice to taste it, just in case!).

The second bake was Hadjiandreou's Orange Coriander Rye bread. Again a fairly high proportion of starter, with dark rye flour, grated orange zest, crushed coriander seed, salt and hot (just boiled!) water. I didn't have any whole coriander seed (darn, thought I did) so I used ground coriander instead, and sprinkled a seed mix that I had made for something else on top (I think this was poppy, sesame, cumin and fennel seeds).

I baked it with the same pan cover, but this one baked at 425F for 30 minutes, then the cover off for an additional 10 minutes.

I had to get a crumb shot (and again, check that it tasted okay), so I sliced it too early and it looks a little gummy. However, by tomorrow this will be moist and lovely, and the taste is amazing! A keeper, this one.

I've got several more to try, including a pumpernickel with three kinds of barley malt (Maris Otter, crystal malt and a dark chocolate malt), a rye and barley loaf and a Lithuanian rye bread. I'm so excited! I'm such a bread geek, and I'm so glad to have this forum and wonderful bunch of other bread geeks who understand this. :)