squattercity's blog

'life is good when the rye bread is good'

Rob/Bor

another one from 'the "who kidnapped Rob?" cookbook.'

Adapted from Sarah Owens. I changed the recipe to whole wheat (basically because I wanted to use up some of what I have in my cabinet.) I subbed in violife faux-butter, soy milk, and a flax seed faux-egg for the animal equivalents.

Results:

a fun experiment, but -- 

The extraordinary heat and humidity of the past few weeks in NYC has meant that I haven't been baking.

I read about Tony's Brotgewürz rye/wheat loaves & Ian's Onion Caraway Rye -- so, in a bout of cross-polinated insanity 🤣, I baked something you might categorize as halfway between the two.

It's got a chopped rye scald & a diastatic rye malt scald. I added a little lactose-free kefir (because it's what I had on hand) and 1% caraway.

final proportions (including the 2 scalds):

So, as some here may remember, I have had a variety of inconsistencies with my rye starter and my rye breads over the past year or so ... and, among the thoughts that the kind people on this site suggested was that I change up my routine and try some different rye flours. Though I'm not generally good at taking advice, I decided to have some fun with this. So I lined up 3 ryes:

As promised, a delayed side-by-side assessment.

So on Monday I baked a Chleb Sandomierski

crust like it emerged from a caveman's campfire, taste/aroma that makes you feel like you're picking fresh produce, and look at that glowing solar-flare-crumb:

Staring at this boule for too long can give you a sunburn! Better to eat it.

from Sarah Owens' book Sourdough.

45% whole rye/55% bread flour (all the rye prefermented with a 3% inoculation for 12 hours) ... 1% caraway ... 1% salt ... total hydration ~80%

20% hazelnut flour/20% rye (all prefermented)/60% bread flour, hydrated (mostly) with homemade hazelnut milk, lightly sweetened with grated white sweet potato.