After having such good luck with Phil's no stress recipe for 40% Rye and Caraway, I was additionally inspired by hanseata's seeded loaf's.  So, I thought I would try to marry up the two and take on my requirement for more whole grain and less white flour.  I was hoping that by adding some spelt and farro home ground berries to the rye replacing some of the white and adding some anise and fennel to the caraway, this new concoction would be a decent bread.  Plus, another important test, I could try out for the first time my new 'double Y chicken foot' slash!!!!

I also got a new way to final prove these ill shaped breads with a new bamboo containment thing-a-majig that has some doohickey handles for the containment challenged like myself.  Don't laugh.  This thing, what ever it is,  cost a buck.  We can't sleep at night worrying about these contraptions and they are real issues for us !!!  The used, so much better than new,  parchment paper is the crowning achievement of getting the loaves out of the trash bag and into the oven without disfiguring oneself unnecessarily - by hot oven.

The loaves sprang nicely.  The crust was crisp, crunchy yet chewy.  The taste of the bread was more earthy and more to my liking as expected.  The crumb wasn't quite as open as before probably due to the extra 20% whole grains in place of the white - but still OK.  The slash produced a wide flatish gash where the loaf pooled through lazily.  No ears - so fancy pants still needs some work before the double chicken foot slash is a keeper.

The disappointment was that I replaced some of the caraway seeds with the anise and fennel and the resulting seed taste was too slight and muddied.  I was too chicken to go for a bold taste with these seeds.  Don't you be !!! It would be much better just adding the same grams of anise and fennel as the caraway.  I think it would be perfect that way - if it didn't kill you of course ;-) 

Here are some more pics...

I really like it that you can make these breads in half a day if you have some decent rye sour built all the time.  Next time, and there will be one if only the for the double Y chicken foot slashs' sake, More seeds will be boldly incorporated.  I think I am still making progress.

Thanks again Phil and hanseata.

What a nice bread to make - and it only took half a day since I already had the starter build ready - retarding in the fridge.  It is what Phil calls simple baking which is why I chose it.  It has to simple and stress less after all these 3 day ordeals of late :-).  Rye SD with caraway is my favorite bread - by far.  This one besides being easy, is also top notch.  Phil knows his bread baking ! Lovely texture and taste, crispy crunchy crust to cut but soft and chewy when eaten.  I had it plain, buttered, toasted, creamed with cheese and it was all good.  The lox was frozen but I bet it too would have been fabulous with this fine bread.  This is a fine every day family rye that almost all will enjoy.  Here are some more pics of how I did it  - which is far away from what the pro's like Phil do and my sorry attempt proves it.  Still haven't got a decent camera, so the cell phone shots will have to do.......

I'm getting better slowly but surely.  It is a nice feeling .  Bake Phil's 40% Rye with Caraway.  You will like it.

I was until recently under the mistaken impression that all rye bread was the sort you get in supermarkets in the UK and Belgium and Sweden. Small, dense, dark, and exceedingly rich in flavour.

This is the picture of the common UK brand. Like in Belgium and Sweden it is sold in the UK in pre-sliced form. The texture is crumbly and the bread has a habit of falling in half when you take the slices out. 

Ingredients: Cereal (Rye Wholemeal, Whole Grain Rye Flour), Water, Natural Sourdough (Wholegrain Rye Meal, Water), Sea Salt.

I followed a 'deli style rye' recipe from the American artisan bread in 5 minutes book, and was rather surprised that it produced a nice tasting loaf but decidedly unlike the sort of 'rye' I have been wanting. Really quite light in colour, and far more subtle in flavour. Ignorant of me perhaps, but it was news to me that when recipes from other countries say 'rye' they don't necessarily mean the very dark bread I'm used to. 

Is it a 'dark rye' that this sort is called, or is it something more like pumpernickel, does anyone know? I notice the tendency of such loaves to be made in Germany- is this a specifically German style of rye bread?

Is regular rye flour different from the wholemeal and whole grain rye flour mentioned in the ingredients? The rye flour I have been using is unbranded stuff from my local health food store, so I am uncertain of the type, but it looks quite fine. 

Any advice would be appreciated on unravelling the mysteries of rye varieties.

For a while now I was thinking how to incorporate several doughs with different rye:wheat ratios into a single loaf, for various purposes( aestatics, spot the difference ...).

On the weekend I had some spare time and went the whole way (that's the madness component)

Using my single-step Detmolder formula I made 9 doughs with rye:wheat ratios of 20% to 100% and a simple white yeasted 100% wheat dough to wrap it all up.

I decided to bake this in a 1000g loaf tin. The flat rectangular pieces of dough were stacked on a bigger sheet of white dough (lower rye % first), and the white dough wasthen wrapped around, to give this thing some kind of structure.

This is the result, and I am rather pleased with it:

The white bit at the bottom is the seam /overlap of the white dough sheet. Just above is a thin layer of 100% rye, then 90% etc.

With 10 layers the transition between the layers is almost invisible.

An interesting experience,

Juergen

Just fed my sour beasties this morning and decided to "play", made a bread with sourdough starter, 1 cup whole wheat and 1 cup of light rye flour... 1 tsp. salt. Looks great to me, smells even better.

Diane

I like experimenting with different flours to see the nuances they bring to breads.  Here is a recent bake using a small amount buckwheat flour.  It is a large batch that I built for the amount of starter that I had made the night before using the Hamelman method for Vermont SD.  It made 4 loaves that averaged about 750 gm after cooling.  Besides the beautiful color it brings to a loaf, it adds a nutty flavor that, it turns out, works surprisingly well with brie and camembert cheese spread on it.  The crumb is moist and chewy and the crust has a great crunch.  If you like dark baked loaves, this one's for you.

Recipe:

Scored and ready to go:

Finished loaves:

Crumb:

Let me start by apologizing to the generations of German bakers before me. I have been trying to learn about the dense style dark bread sometimes called Pumpernickel or Schrotbrot or Roggen Vollkornbrot.  I've baked the Hamelman Horst Bandle bread and liked it after I finally figured out how to bake it at home. Then I have been fooling with the Barm process and Barm breads, both white and rye flours. I read a comment from Dan Lepard about soaking whole berries in dark ale after simmering to soften. So finally all of this came together for me and I decided to try incorporating a couple of these things into the basic Vollkenbrot recipe and make some changes to the sweetener. 

It isn't really an honest Ale Barm that soured the rye chops. I started with my white starter and fed it a couple cycles with ale and AP. It provided the sour component with a very nice aroma and fluffiness after it had aged. This bread doesn't rise like a conventional loaf to any great degree. You can see the domed top with some cracks that indicate there was some spring.

The Vollkornbrot and Schrotbrot do not normally contain any flour. Not Hi Gluten or Rye flour. Perhaps  a meal or another finer grade of chops but no flour. I like to mix all of the pre ferments and scalds and soakers and then adjust the hydration to a thick paste with dark rye flour. There is a last minute addition of chops that have not been soaked that absorbs a lot of the extra water/ale but I usually need at least 100 grams of dark rye to get it where I like it. Several of the recipes I have studied call for kneading (stirring) for 30 minutes every few minutes until the dough becomes sticky. I believe this occurs when the last chops and flour additions have become hydrated. It is obvious when it happens.

The recipes call for using treacle or black strap molasses. I have been slowly increasing the amount and also adding honey at an equal amount in addition. The bitter of the black strap and sweetness of the honey seems complementary to me and I am liking the combination. I have another small batch in ferment now that will be sweetened with sorghum. I think that will also be a nice flavor.

Anyway, not to be disrespectful to my forefathers, this bread is delicious beyond my dreams. We sliced a few pieces from the smaller loaf and ate it with butter while still warm. It was soft and loaded with full deep flavor. The color is darker than it appears in the photos due to my wanting to show the detail. The 10 hour overnight bake at 240F in a sealed pan did the job. My thanks to Andy, Juergen, Franko, Shiao-Ping and Jeff Hamelman and Dan Lepard to name just a few who helped me get this far.

Eric

Crumb shot shows the course and dense nature of this bread.

There are several sub components of the formula. The amounts will make enough for one standard  steel bread pan and give you a 1Kilo loaf, pre bake weight. If you have a pullman pan, seal the top first with foil and then place the lid on.

Sour:
150g Rye Chops
150g dark ale
25g active starter

Scalded Chops and Berries:
100g Rye Chops
150g boiling water
8g Salt

50g whole Rye Berries
100g Hot Ale

Final Dough:
120g Rye chops
Dark Rye Flour as needed for consistency (100g)
30g Black Strap Molasses
30g Honey

Method:

Combine sour and soakers the morning of the day you want to bake so they have 12 hours to age.
When preparing the dough, combine all the ingredients and mix well with a large spoon. Add Dark Rye flour as needed to lower hydration to a sticky paste. You want it to be wet enough you could not roll it. Stir every few minutes for 30 minutes and the paste will become sticky.
Prepare a 8x4 (approx) steel bread pan with side edges all around with butter or crisco.
Spoon paste into corners and level the top with a spatula. Now create an edge with the tip of the spatula and a slightly domed surface. The idea is to have a domed top so any water condensate will run down to the edge and down the sides of the loaf.
Brush the top with water.

Seal the top of your bread pan with a double layer of foil being carefull to get a good seal around the edges.

Put the pan in a preheated 350F oven for 30-45 minutes. Lower the heat to 240F and bake for 8-10 hours. I lower the heat to 220F for the last 2 of the 10 hours.

Decant the loaf and allow to cool on a wire rack for at least as long as it takes to cool completely. At this point you can wrap in saran or a tea towel for a day or so. This bread may be kept in a plastic bag on the counter or refrigerated. It would last a long time if you could keep from eating it.

Enjoy

Just curious if it is reasonable to make a rye starter using my wheat starter? If I feed some of my sourdough wheat starter with rye flour for a few days will I get something that resembles a rye starter?

For what it is worth, I've had a rye starter in the past but it tends to slowly loose its potency in the back of the fridge over the summer when I don't use it as much.

UK-based, electric oven, degrees Celsius temps.

Three attempts listed below, each with observations and results...

I reduced all the measurements because currently I only have a single small Pyrex dish. I also read somewhere that Pyrex can get too hot during the baking process and can scorch the dough and consequently oven temperatures should be reduced by about 20 degrees C, which is what I have done.

--- ATTEMPT #1 ---
100ml of warm water.
One miserly (less then level) tony teaspoon of treacle dissolved in the warm water.
100ml of cold milk.
Added approx. 8 grams of dried active yeast (Allinson).
Yeast mixture allowed to settle for 10 mins to activate the yeast and develop a head of froth (less than 1cm).
Sieved 250 grams of wholemeal bread flour (Sainsbury's own brand) into a warmed mixing bowl.
Two small pinches of salt added and mixed into the flour.
Left the bowl to warm the flour for a few mins.
6 grams of butter added that to the warm flour and mixed in by hand.
Added the frothy yeast liquid to the flour and mixed in using a wooden spoon to clump into one large ball of dough. This was then left to stand for a few mins to allow the flour to absorb the moisture.
Dough hand-kneaded for 10 mins.
OBSERVATION: the dough was heavy and VERY sticky.
Dough covered and left to rise for 30 mins (in a warm place).
The dough roughly doubled in size.
Knocked down and then kneaded the dough the second time for 10-12 mins.
Dough covered and left to rise for an hour (30 mins in a warm place, 30 mins at room temperature).
Dough placed in a Pyrex dish.
Dish placed in oven pre-heated to 210 degrees C for 15 mins.
Reduced the over temperature to 180 degrees C and baked the dough for 30 mins.
RESULT: loaf flat with a thick and heavy crust. The inside was softish but more like a crisp-bread such as Ryvita. It was tasty enough. Edible, but only just. Very hard to slice with a bread-knife, although slices did stay intact. Obviously over-cooked. Possibly "broken dough" syndrome from excessive kneading. Possibly insufficient water. Possibly insufficient yeast.

--- ATTEMPT #2 ---
50ml of warm water.
Added one level little teaspoon of treacle and stirred well until it had completely dissolved. Added 50ml of cold water. This made a total of 100ml of water.
Added approx. 4 grams of dried yeast (Allinson).
Stirred the mixture well and allowed to settle for 15 mins to activate the yeast and develop a head of froth (approx. 1.5cm).
100 grams of wholemeal bread flour (Sainsbury's).
Approx. 30 grams of slightly lighter Rye wholemeal flour (Dove's Farm Organic).
Sieved the combined flour into a lightly warmed mixing bowl.
One small pinch of salt mixed into the flour.
Left the bowl to warm the flour for a few mins.
Added 2 grams of butter to the flour along with a small slice of margarine and mixed in.
Added the frothy yeast liquid to the flour and mixed in using a wooden spoon.
OBSERVATION: dough VERY sticky again and I had to add a lot of flour to my hands. This made the dough quite "dry".
After a few mins the mix started to clump into one large ball of dough. This was then left to stand for a few mins to allow the flour to absorb the moisture.
Kneaded the dough for about 4 mins.
Dough left to rise for an hour in a warm place. The dough hardly rose at all.
Dough knocked down and shaped into two small clumps/balls.
Placed both dough balls side-by-side into a Pyrex dish lightly dusted with flour and baked for about 20 mins at 180 degrees C and then turned off the oven and left the bread in the oven for another 30 mins to cook in its own heat.
From an online source: I placed 5 ice cubes into a metal tray at the bottom of the oven when I first put the bread in to generate steam and help prevent a hard crust.
RESULT: much softer bread (more like soft bread rolls), although still a little flat but incredibly tasty. Thin and soft crust. Easy to slice with a bread-knife. Slices remained intact.

--- ATTEMPT #3 ---
One miserly (less then level) little teaspoon of treacle added to 50ml of warm water and stirred well until it had completely dissolved.
12 grams of dried yeast (Allinson) stirred in.
Yeast allowed to activate for 15 mins (head of froth 3cm).
110 grams of wholemeal bread flour (Sainsbury's).
60 grams of Rye wholemeal flour (Dove's Farm Organic).
Sieved the two flours together into a lightly warmed mixing bowl.
One miserly (less then level) little teaspoon of salt added to the flour.
Left the bowl to warm the flour for a few mins.
Added the frothy yeast liquid to the centre of the flour and lightly covered with flour, then left to sit for 10 mins ("Setting The Sponge" technique).
Added slice of margarine (equivalent to about one large teaspoon) to the flour and mixed in.
Mixed the ingredients using a wooden spoon.
OBSERVATION: the dough was VERY sticky again.
This was then left to stand for 5 mins to allow the flour to absorb the moisture.
Kneaded the dough for about 8 mins (the window-pane test didn't work properly because the dough was too heavy - I think?).
Left the dough to rise for an hour in a warm place (didn't rise much).
Punched down the dough.
Shaped the dough as before and placed the into a Pyrex dish lightly dusted with flour.
Baked for 25 mins at 180 degrees C and then turned off the oven and left the bread in the oven for another 30 mins to cook in its own heat.
As previously, I placed 5 ice cubes at the bottom of the oven for steam when I put the bread in.
RESULT: bread soft but barely rose at all. Tasty. Crust soft. Easy to slice with a bread-knife. Slices remained intact.

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

POSSIBLE MISTAKES
I wonder if adding treacle (even a tiny teaspoon) is having the following effects:
- it initially makes the yeast clump together, which then separates before frothing
- it may be causing the dough to be particularly sticky and difficult to work with
- it may be causing the yeast to exhaust itself before it has time to work on the dough and hence the dough doesn't rise much

My attempts are based on a number of sources:
- a very basic recipe for white bread that was taken (and adapted) from the video at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zf9vd (by the chef Michel Roux Jr, broadcast on BBC2 at 19:00 on Monday 14 November 2011. See also - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2011/03/great-british-revival-the-lost.shtml)
- http://www.allotment.org.uk/allotment_foods/bread-making/baking-bread-home.php
- http://www.bakingmad.com/recipes/grainsandseedbreads/traditional-handbaked-wholemeal-loaf-
- http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/bread/how-to-make-white-bread.html
- http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/tips-techniques/bakers-techniques-how-to-do-the-windowpane-test-when-kneading-bread-070784

I would appreciate any comments of where I might obviously be going wrong.

(NB. I shall be getting proper metal loaf tins this weekend)