Rye adventures

Now that the season has slowed down and I am not baking for customers anymore, I thought I get myself some rye flour and start experimenting  with rye breads. I lived in Estonia for over 10 years and fell in love with their 'leib' (rye bread). There are hundreds of variants available in almost every shop. I had no idea that I would miss that bread so much. But now on the other side of the world, I feel the need of recreating their beautiful rye breads.

I started on this site looking for a way to start. I found Mini's blogs very helpful and adopted a formula 1:3,5:4,16. I have no idea if she still thinks is a good formula but for me it worked.(thanks Mini for all the information your blog contains..)   I used my starter and before I would make the dough I would feed it with rye flour. Once it was fully bubbling I would use it and incorporate it in my dough.I wasn't sure to start with 100% rye the first time but I thought; Why not... let's give it a go... The loaf turned out like this:  I was happily surprised by the crumb. I used caraway seeds in the dough to flavor it. As one of my favorite Estonian loaves has a lovely taste, that I thought was caraway. After tasting the bread I had to admit it was nice but it missed a couple of flavors. In my opinion it wasn't tangy enough and some flavors I couldn't describe.  So my next batch was gonna have a pre-ferment. And in the hope I would find a flavor I liked I added toasted sunflower seeds, a althus of the first batch, a bit of honey and molasses. that one turned out like this: Well, verdict is the sunflower seeds are a nice addition to the bread. Not sure about the honey it was a bit more tangy due to the pre-ferment. I could have it more tangy, but my wife liked it like this. Still am in search of the other flavors. So batch three, which we had this morning had a bit more molasses, no honey and I added some fennel and coriander seeds to my caraway. This made a lot more liquorice tasting...so next time less fennel seeds... picture of the loaf is the one on top.

Just wondering if wholegrain would create a tangier taste? Anyone more ideas about adding different spices to the rye? Thanks