Deep Rye

This bread is a riff on Josey Baker's "Dark Mountain Rye" - I omit some of the seeds he uses (sesame), and incorporated lots of sprouted rye in its place. It is incredibly popular at the Cafe I bake for. Shoutout to JB for the inspiration and letting me hang out and get my hands on the dough while I was in San Francisco.

Keep in mind that that formula below is for 2 9x4.5" loaves.

As you can see, this is a very well hydrated loaf, with total water coming in at 114%. The process goes like this: make leaven with regular sourdough starter, rye flour, and water. I use 25/280/265 or so. Scale up or down as needed. The leaven ferments for 12 hours, and the final dough is retarded in the refrigerator for about 16. The "soaker" is just the mix of the sprouted rye, seeds, cornmeal, and water. This sits along with the leaven to allow all the water to be soaked in, particularly by the flax. 

Loaves are divided at about 1.1kg each, dusted with cornmeal, proofed until slightly risen and cracks can be seen in the cornmeal coating (1-4 hours). To score, I push into the loaf quickly with a plastic dough scraper at 5 places to give a diagonal pattern and prevent flying roof. The loaves are then baked at 450 for a half hour, rotated, and finished at 400 for about another hour. The loaves are done when they pull slightly from the pans and are colored to your preference. I like mine quite dark. The flavor of these is deep rye with a good amount of sweetness from the sprouted grain. After fighting through the dark, crisp crust, your reward is an intensely moist crumb with bursts of sweet, crunch, seed, and malt.

Here is a picture of a bunch of loaves baked for the lunch service. 

Happy baking,

Bradley