70% Rye with Whole Wheat
The first bake in my new oven! After weeks of no baking I have been craving something hearty, so I went to Hamelman’s Bread and opened it to a bread I had had bookmarked for a long time. This has got to be one of the most cumbersome and prosaic bread names ever: 70 Percent Rye with a Rye Soaker and Whole Wheat Flour. It feels like it should be a “Something-German Bauernbrot” but I can’t come up with anything better either so I will leave it alone for the moment.
I baked this one by the numbers in the formula (without the instant yeast) but I did use the rye a little differently. Instead of a using medium rye in the sourdough and rye chops in the soaker I ran rye berries once through my grain mill, called it good, and used that in both the sourdough and soaker. A single pass through my mill produces a mix of fine and coarse bits that I decided would be close enough to the intent of the formula. The whole wheat flour was also freshly milled and slightly coarse.
The book calls for this bread to be baked in pans but also mentions that in Germany it can be found baked as enormous rounds. Well, that’s all I need to hear! I stopped short of enormous but did bake the 1800g of dough into a single round, seam side up.
The aroma of this bread is magnificent! So good that, as usual, I couldn’t wait for the loaf to cool completely, much less sit for 12 hours, before cutting into it. The result was dense and intense, just what I was going for. It sure is nice to be baking again!
Marcus