I had occasion to try several new things last weekend: Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipe for "Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread, one of my recently acquired bannetons from SFBI, and the Pampered Chef equivalent of a La Cloche (which has been sitting around unused for years).  This also marked the second time that I have made bread on the new soapstone countertops that were recently installed.

The recipe comes from RLB's "The Bread Bible".  The bread contains 3.3 oz of rye flour, vs. 8.5 oz of bread flour, so it is scarcely any more sticky than a wheat dough would be.  And with 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds, rye isn't the dominant flavor.  The bread begins with a yeasted sponge, which is allowed to ferment 1-4 hours.  It eventually bubbles through a flour layer that is placed on top of the sponge:

Once the sponge has fermented, the flour mixture, oil and salt are stirred in.  The dough is then kneaded and left to ferment under an overturned bowl for a 20-minute rest:

After the dough has rested, it is kneaded again and then allowed to rise until it is doubled.  At that point, it is given a letter fold, then returned to the bowl until it doubles again.  After the second rise, the dough is flattened slightly and then shaped into a ball and allowed to rise until it has doubled.  Ms. Levy recommends that the final rise after shaping occur in a covered bowl.  I opted to use a fabric-lined banneton, dusted with rice flour, covering the exposed surface with plastic wrap to keep it from drying.

Ms. Levy suggests baking either on a baking sheet with steam, or in a cloche.  In both cases, she recommends having a baking stone in the oven as it preheats, then setting either the baking sheet or the (also preheated) cloche on the baking stone.  It seemed like overkill, but I followed the instructions as given, using the cloche.  The risen loaf was tipped out onto parchment paper, slashed, then placed in the cloche and covered.  I'll need to practice the technique a bit.  I was a bit gun-shy about burning myself on either the cloche base or its lid, so I wasn't as gentle with placing the loaf as I should have been.  It deflated slightly but recovered most of the loss with oven spring.

Based on the directions, I pulled the cover from the cloche about 10 minutes before the estimated completion of the baking time, expecting that it would finish browning during those last few minutes.  Instead, I saw that the loaf was already well-browned.  So, I stuck a thermometer in it, which quickly registered 210F.  At that point I declared it done and placed it on the rack to cool.  Here's how it looked:

And a shot of the crumb, taken the next morning:

More of the color comes from the malt syrup in the recipe than from the whole rye flour that I used.  The crumb is firm and moist, the crust thin and chewy.  It makes a mean ham and Swiss sandwich. While I like caraway in a rye bread, the amount in this bread is more than I would use for my tastes.  Next time I make it, I will either cut back on the caraway, or substitute fennel or dill, which will be more to my liking. 

Thank you, RLB.  This is good stuff!

Paul

Hello everyone.  I'm posting this as a feeler for anyone interested in whole, unground wheat berries.  We're a small farm in kansas, and are currently looking to cater to home-millers by producing and shipping custom amounts of wheat/rye/triticale depending on the demand for each.  We currently will have hard red winter wheat available as of about july or september, and depending on the interest, can make hard white winter wheat, rye, and triticale(a cross between rye and wheat) available as needed (by next year)  Please e-mail your interests, i.e, what kind of product you wish to see, typical amounts and shipping methods you wish to have available.  We want to be able to make our processes and services user-friendly, and meet the needs of as many people as we can.  Any suggestions are welcome.  kansas_winter_wheat@yahoo.com

Hi,

Just moved to the Boston area and am looking for good local sources for flour and grains.  I've searched the forum archives and haven't found any local sources other than the typical mail order sources.

In particular, I'm looking for good sources of stone-ground flour (wheat, rye), along with whole or cracked grains (again, wheat and rye particularly).  Strongly prefer organic products.  I expected there to be a "health food store" that offers these kinds of things, as it did in Cape Town where I've just moved from.  However, I've not been very successful at finding these.

At present, I use Arrowhead Mills from my local Whole Foods, but only the WW comes in a larger packet and they don't offer any rye flour or cracked/whole grains. 

Thanks in advance for any pointers you can offer. 

Cheers,

 MammaT

Do we have any survivors reports of using sweet onions (Vadalias in particular) in Onion Rye?  I was weeping over two reds I was dicing for the Sourdough Rye from Reinharts BBA and the fact I'd seen Vadalias at the market today. (Not to mention the bake sale at church this weekend).

Marc B

http://onetanksummer.blogspot.com

So, I got incredibly sick of really boring tasting bread, and decided that I would do something I've wanted to for a while, and make a wild yeast starter.  I'm... 4 days in, I think, and my baby is now having troubles.  I started with equal amounts of rye, whole wheat and unbleached white flour, and a few whole rye berries, and warm filtered water. I had bubbles in the first 24 hours, (and it was starting to smell a bit sour.) I've been feeding 1/3 cup of starter every 24 hours with 1/3 cup of white, unbleached, organic flour, 5 tsp of dark organic whole rye flour, and 1/3 cup of skin temp tap water. I rinse the jar, just so I don't get a bunch of dried junk on the walls and can see in, then I put it back in the jar, cover it with a dishtowel, and let it sit.  Its definately yeast in there, it smells like it. (ok, it smells kind of vile, like a yeast infection or something, but very very YEASTY) I've been feeding every 24 hours.  In terms of temp, its been fluctuating a lot. we've had days where its probably 85 or so, and then days when the house temp is probably closer to 65.  I'm not really sure how to keep the temp constant and warm. can't set it on top of the fridge because there is a cabinet there.

 so the problem is, its starting to die one me! or at least, its bubbling less. and it never really increases in size hardly at all.

does anyone have any suggustions? do I need to keep my baby warmer? how? do I need to feed it more often? something else? should I cap the jar instead of draping a towel over it?  Thanks :D

I've been absent from TFL recently, as work and home have eaten up just about every waking minute, and there have been far too many waking minutes in the past couple of months. I could have stood for a tad more sleeping minutes.

Nevertheless, a family has to eat, so I've still been baking. One thing I learned: Don't double the amount of salt in a bread recipe. I did this by accident, doing the math for 2% in my head and adding 20 grams instead of 10 grams. Not even the birds would eat this stuff. Yuck.

I have had some nice loaves come out of the oven, however. Last week, I made the same doubling error as before, but with the starter. I used a 40% innoculation instead of 20% for this largely white flour sourdough (I added 10% whole wheat). All in all, the loaf was fine, though it wasn't as flavorful as I'd have liked. Rose quickly though, and looked beautiful.





I also revived my rye starter to make a 40-30-30 rye to whole wheat to white flour loaf. I didn't add caraway, and missed it, actually.

Starter is amazingly resiliant stuff. I'd not fed it for months (probably three at least ... maybe even four), and it had acquired a nasty black crust that could have been mold, could have been hoochy gunk (the rye is kept at 100% hydration, but it's still pretty pasty rather than liquid). In any case, it started right back up and made a wonderfully sour rye loaf. The shaped dough stuck a little bit to the baker's linen, so I had to slash it strangely to incorporate the rip and avoid a blown out side. Turned out OK, though, in the end.



And, of course, I regularly make my standby overnight whole grain sourdough hearth loaf (60% whole wheat, 30% whole spelt, 10% whole rye. The secret to getting a good "grigne" I think is not to proof it too long. Two to two-and-one-half hours seems to be just about right.





Mmmmmm. Grilled cheese sandwiches on whole grain sourdough hearth bread.

Hello Folks, this is my first post on The Fresh Loaf, altough I have been reading and trying out recipes for a long time.

I wanted to share a very easy recipe for Sourdough Onion Rye, which is an adaption of pretty much everything I have learned from this site. It's really quite easy to make and comes out fine every time, so good luck and please give me feedback, I would love to hear about your experience.

The Starter

I use a fairly wet "batter" style sourdough starter. I keep it in the fridge and refresh it after I use it and then let it sit out for a while. Right now I am living in Zambia, this starter is therefore infested with Zambian yeast - I wonder if there is a difference? In any case, it's pretty active and works really well.

The Flour

I love reading the discussions about the various types and properties of flour, and how important a specific type of flour is for one recipe or another. In Zambia, we get two types of flour: Bread Flour and Cake Flour, that's it. I use Bread Flour and it works great. Rye flour is harder to come by, I get mine from a local bakery that imports it from South Africa. I have no idea exactly what kind of Rye it is, it looks sort of a like a medium extraction. I have learned not to worry too much, it all comes out tasting pretty good.

The Recipe

The night before baking, start the poolish.

about 1/2 cup starter

3 cups bread or all-purpose flour

1 cup Rye flour

2 cups of water.

Mix it all together, cover and let sit overnight.

The Next Morning.

Add to the poolish:

3 cups of flour as before

1 cup of Rye, as before

1 large (raw) Onion, finely chopped

(Optional) 1 Tablespoon Dried Dill

1 Tablespoon Salt

3/4 Cup water.

Mix well and let sit for twenty minutes.

This makes a pretty wet dough, one of you scientists can figure out the hydration. Because of the rye flour its quite sticky. I find the best way to mix it is to just get my hands in there and squish it all together.

After it sits, knead for 10 minutes. You will need to use quite a bit of flour as the dough is very sticky. After kneading cover and let rise until doubled, about two hours.

After rising, dump the dough onto a well floured surface and cut in half. Stretch each half **gently** into a ball, then **gently** stretch into a loaf shape. You don't want to squish the air bubbles. I find the "envelope" method of shaping just a bit too vigorous.

Transfer the the loaves onto baking paper, cover and let rise for about an hour.

Sourdough Onion Rye - Ready for the Oven

Meanwhile, preheat your stone and your oven to 450/220. Then transfer your loaf onto the stone, I use the back of a cookie sheet as a peel. When the loaf is in the oven use whatever steam method you prefer, I simply toss a cup of water into the bottom of the over and shut the door. Bake for about 25 minutes, turn the loaf once. I have a very small oven, so I can only bake one loaf at a time.

Take the bread out, and let it cool for as long as you can, and then enjoy! Also makes great toast!

Sourdough Onion Rye - The Finished Product

Your feedback greatly appreciated

Cheers!

This was something of an unusual weekend in bread-baking for me in that I made two recipes that were fairly experimental.  I just posted my experience with this week's sandwich bread, a 100% sprouted wheat bread.  My dinner bread this week was the German Sourdough Rye recipe from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book.  I had not originally planned to make this, but got both whole wheat and rye sourdough starters going this past week and just couldn't resist trying one out.  I was leaning toward this recipe for my first attempt, and decided to give it a try after reading some positive reactions from other Fresh Loafers.

My preparation started Thursday night when I began striving to get my rye starter as active as possible (thanks to advice I got here earlier in the week).  I followed Laurel's directions for this starter, which means that it's around 200% hydration, but even so it was doubling between feedings.  I may stiffen it up in the future, but want to keep it like this for now to experiment (by way of comparison, my new whole wheat starter follows the 75% hydration instructions in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads).

On Friday evening, I added a bit of rye flour and water to create a much stiffer mixture, what Laurel calls the "basic sour".  This sat overnight, then more rye flour and water were added on Saturday to turn it into the so-called "full sour".  No pictures of these, since they were pretty nondescript.  The basic sour did have a terrific aroma after fermenting overnight, however.

Around four hours after forming the full sour, it was time to add the final ingredients.  These included a good amount of yeast, so I haven't really proven whether my starter can leaven anything, but I decided not to deviate from the recipe on my first try.  Other than the yeast, flour, and water, the only ingredient was caraway seeds, making this a much leaner bread than most of Laurel's.

One piece of advice in the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book that I've found quite useful is her technique on steaming bread.  The dough is placed into a casserole (a two-quart, round-bottom Pyrex dish in my case) to proof, then just before baking, several tablespoons of water are added to the casserole and the lid is placed on top.  It's a very convenient method of steaming, plus it gives your bread a neat shape.  I'm not yet experienced enough to tell whether it's as effective as other methods.  Below is a picture of the setup at the beginning of proofing.  I added a bit of cornmeal, partly to help prevent the loaf from sticking to the pan and partly because I think it complements the rye very nicely.

After adding the final ingredients, the only recommended rise was a 45-minute proof.  Because the bread was made of 2/3 rye flour and 1/3 whole wheat, I was not expecting much of a rise and did not check on the dough during this time.  Oops!  When I came back, I was greeted with the below site and popped it into the oven as quickly as possible.

I was a bit worried about overflowing my casserole after that proof, but fortunately the bread did not rise much further in the oven.  I rarely get spectacular oven spring from breads with a high percentage of rye, so I'm unsure how much of this was due to my overpoofing and how much was due to the nature of the recipe.  In any case, here are photos of the resulting crust and crumb.

The cornmeal gave a nice color to the sides of the crust, but was invisible on the bottom, so I may try using a bit more there next time.  The crust was thin and crispy, just as I was hoping.  My camera doesn't do so well at closeups, but I was also extremely happy with the crumb (except for a few larger air pockets, which I'll tentatively blame on poor shaping).  Before this, the breads I've made with a high percentage of rye ended up extremely dense, coarse, and crumbly.  This loaf had a much more open and incredibly smooth crumb.  Even better, thanks to reading Whole Grain Breads recently, I think that I sort of understand why.

As far as taste, there was a slight sourdough tang, but probably not as much as I would have liked (it smelled sourer than it tasted).  In addition, while I'm not usually a big fan of caraway seed, I think that this bread could use more.  The recipe recommended 1/4 teaspoon per loaf, I doubled it, and I probably could have quadrupled it.  That being said, the flavor was definitely more appealing and complex than any other high-percentage rye I've made.  I will definitely be making this one again...but probably not until I've tried some of the high-percentage ryes from Whole Grain Breads.

I found this recipe in one of my grandmother's cookbooks, which is at least 50 years old. The recipe states that it's "an old recipe handed down in the family" (not mine). I tried this recipe once, but found the sourdough taste more pronounced than I care for. The loaves had a lovely, even crumb.

Swedish Limpa

Cook potatoes with peelings. Peel while hot and mash or put through a ricer. To 5 cups mashed potatoes stir in as much rye flour as you can. Set this in a warm place for 2 days. Stir a few times. It will get thinner as it ferments. To this mixture add:

1 quart buttermilk
1 cup water
1 cup molasses
3/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1-1/2 teaspoon crushed fennel seed
3 yeast packages
(More rye flour and white flour, to be added during kneading)

Have all this lukewarm. Let this rise until light. Knead using about 2 cups more rye flour, rest white flour. Do not knead it too hard. Let rise and knead down again. After second rising form in eight small loaves. Let rise until about double in size. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Brush top of loaves with molasses water a couple times during baking. This bread is heavy so it will rise much slower than ordinary bread.

3/9/08 - 9:30 pm

Dumped half, added 1/2 c rye flour and 2/3 c of water, stirred the dickens out of it. Now it's back on top of the fridge with a double layer of cheesecloth over it.

Increased the amount of water because the rye flour really sucks it up and, before dumping half, was more of a gloppy paste than a batter consistency.

EDIT:  About 3 hours later, checked on my little buckaroo and he was all stiff, not batter-y, so I stirred in 3 more ounces of water.  Marked his level on the side of the container.  Probably too early to do that, but oh well.