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
Comments
correct. 70% rye with 30% whole wheat could be all kinds of German Bauernbrot :-) Your version is a classic one and looks to be the spitting image of Something German's would call Bauernbrot! Well Done and
Happy Baking
Thanks so much dabrownman. I think no bread for weeks has made me a little nuts. I keep having to smell the bread and savor the aroma before I take a bite - that's pretty far gone, I think. This bread does put me in just the right frame of mind to work on Karin's Iron Hand challenge, though... as long as I'm in the neighborhood. I think that will be next up.
Hardly. My favourite pastime is taking in the aroma of bread, esp. rye. :) The texture and crumb looks perfect!
I like that too, "Something-German Bauernbrot"
Thanks, Mini! I guess it's all relative, I feel a little better now :)
Nice baking. Looks perfect for this style of bread.
Always comforting to get back to baking after a short or long layoff. Nothing like the smells and tastes coming out of your own oven.
Thank you, Ian. As soon as the aroma started coming out of the oven life felt a bit more "normal" again. Hard to go wrong with one of Hamelman's rye breads!
That's gorgeous! Makes me wish (again) that I had a grain mill. Is the pattern mostly from your slashes, or did the bread do some of that on its own?
Thanks, Catomi. The pattern is all from the bread, no slashing. I shaped the round very gently, making no effort to seal the seams, then proofed it seam side down in the basket. I gave the basket a little extra dusting flour so the cracks would stand out more against the white surface. When it was time to bake I dumped it out of the basket so that the seams were facing up and let them open on their own. Easy as can be!