Autumn Maple Rye Bread

Below is my experience baking the Autumn Maple Rye bread based on a recipe from Bien Cuit The Art of Bread, with my changed ingredients for one loaf (~744g). My changes: replaced some white flour with white whole wheat flour, replaced white rye flour with sifted Bob’s Red Mill rye flour, used 2% milk instead of whole milk, used ADY instead of instant, and added a bit more milk to account for the whole wheat even though I knew this was going to make a wet dough wetter. The challenge of making this bread was dealing with very wet dough. 

I liked the schedule for making this bread. I was able to do the poolish the night before (Day 1), mix the next morning (Day 2), be done by 11am -12 pm, retard, and bake the following morning (Day 3).

Here is a google sheets link for the ingredients: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Gg_apDnmOk4owsqpgeRHiwk-v-dHVLdbUHkmahJwpu4/edit?usp=sharing

Day1 at night: made poolish at 8 pm, ready at 8 am next morning

Day 2 morning: mixed final dough at 8 am

Added milk, maple syrup, and poolish to large bowl and mixed to disburse poolish. Mixed rest of ingredients together in another bowl and added to poolish/milk mixture using handle of wooden spoon, then switching to bowl scraper to mix dough thoroughly. Dough is extremely sticky. Rested covered in same bowl for 45 minutes. Directions say to put the dough back into the bowl seam side down: there was no seam side to this dough – it was too wet to make a seam.

1st fold: I put copious amounts of flour on the bench for folding. Folded letter style putting my hands underneath the dough so the flour could protect me from the sticky surface. I dusted off any excess flour along the way. Placed seam side down back into bowl. Covered/rested for 45 minutes.

2nd fold: repeated using same process and lots of flour on bench. Covered/rested for 45 minutes. 

3rd fold: gently stretched dough into a rectangle on well-floured bench and added butter in pieces. I spread the butter as best as I could using my hands and then a soft rubber spatula. This is particularly hard since the dough wants to move at same time as I wanted to spread the butter onto it. Directions say to tightly rollup the dough and do 4 to 5 roll and tucks (Golper’s interesting method) to incorporate the butter. It gets harder and harder to roll and tuck since the dough starts tightening but it was doable. Rested/covered dough in bowl 20 minutes.

Pre-shaped into 8” tube as directed, then rested for 5 minutes. Shaped into 10” oval loaf, put onto floured couche, and immediately retarded for ~21 hours (recommendation is to retard for 18 to 28 hours). This could have easily been retarded in an oval banneton that was appropriate for ~ 1.5 lbs. of dough instead.

Dau 3: bake at 8 am

Directions say to pre-heat at 480° F, then bake at 440° F for 20 minutes, with an additional 5 minutes, if needed. This appears to be an error (too little time for a bake). Instead, I pre-heated and baked the dough on a stone at 440° F with normal steam for 15 minutes, and 25 minutes without steam. I left the bread in the oven for an additional 3 minutes without heat and door ajar. I usually bake at 460° F but thought that the 440° F temp was right because the maple syrup might cause the bread to darken too quickly.

Golper says to let bread cool for at least 4 hours but preferably 8 to 24 hours.

The crumb looks like the picture in his book with irregular holes. The bread is light, as in lightweight for its size. Taste is delicious, with notes of butter and maple syrup coming through but not strongly so. This was worth making – it is a keeper. 

Karyn