Deli Rye CB

Ilya's deli rye bake #1

Well, I finally found some time to try a deli rye bread for the CB this weekend. I like the rye flavour, so I went for dmsnyder's recipe, but without any CY: https://fgbc.dk/12se

Everyone is producing such perfect loaves, time for a bake with at least one issue :)

Mixed the preferment in the evening, and let it ferment for a long time, until next day afternoon. It didn't rise very much (but I was using a rather wide bowl, so hard to tell), but it had a lot of air in it. During the day I as keeping it really warm in the oven with a tray of hot water below.

I then decided to do what has been suggested earlier: developing gluten in the bread flour before combining with the rye sour. So I just autolysed the bread flour (Dove's farm 13% protein, 50% hydration for autolyse) and kneaded just a little bit - and it was producing a nice windowpane super quickly. I then mixed the salt and caraway seeds into the preferment, and incorporated it into the dough using "lamination". Then mixed to more or less homogeneity by hand, and continued using slap&folds - and indeed, to my surprise the dough  was strong enough for that! After it appeared as if the dough slackened a bit and then gained the strength again, I left it to ferment in the warm oven like before for 1 hr (due to life), then did stretch&folds, then repeated in 30 min. At that point I thought the dough was actually ready, but I was kind of surprised it would be so quick without any added yeast, so I left it for another 30 min just in case. The dough was a bit jiggly and definitely full of air, looking through the sides of the bowl.

I then shaped it with degassing into batards, and it was surprisingly pleasant to work with. I needed some dusting flour of course, but not too much. It wasn't a very strong dough comparing to wheat ones, but it was unexpectedly strong.

I then proofed it seam side down in parchment paper with support fro the sides. Calling the end of proof was tricky, but after just 1 hr it clearly significantly grew and I thought the poke test was good. When moving them on the paper it was clear the dough has changed a lot since shaping for sure. So I scored it in the traditional way across the long axis, brushed with a little water and baked on steel for 15 min with steam, and ~23 min without steam. Left in the oven after switching off for another 10 min with a door ajar. Then coated with a corn starch glaze.

I got a nice oven spring and a beautiful shiny crust with a red hue. The only issue is that both of them split along the long axis... I feel like if I scored them at least diagonally, or even along the length, that wouldn't have happened, I could have had like a proper ear on it probably, and a bigger oven spring. Why are these normally scored this way? Does this mean I underproofed it, and shouldn't have had a big oven spring with most rise happening before?

The crumb looks good to me, and taste is great, nice combo of some acidity, rye and caraway seeds.

Rye discard bread

I've neglected my rye starter in the fridge for a while, since I have been using the white stiff starter recently. But I decided to revive it, and it took a little longer than I expected, so I accumulated a lot of fresh, but not very active discard. And I remembered that I recently saw Bread Code post a video about bread mainly made using discard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V3FyVzzVUI

So in case others have rye discard, I thought this would be interesting to share here.

So I adapted it a little bit, for example using seeds instead of wheat berries, but the process is so simple that there is not much to discuss. Here is my formula:

400 g discard/not very active starter

255 g water

255 g whole rye flour

15 g soaked and roughly chopped crystal rye malt

100 g linseeds

100 g sunflower seeds

8 g salt

Of note, soaking malted rye makes it much softer, and even just my food processor could roughly chop it with some water. I think I could crush it very finely with a pestle and mortar, for the next time I am making a scalded rye bread (like Borodinsky).

Fermented for 5 hours. Seeds must have absorbed a lot of water, so in the end the dough was much stiffer than in the beginning, and than in the video. So I shaped it into short logs to fit into my small bread pans, and proofed for around 2 hours. I also added some oats to the oiled pan, and on top of the bread. It only rose a little. I baked it with steam for 40 minutes, and then finished without steam for a short time. Then left to cool, and cut just now after a day for it to mature.

I was worried it might be too sour, but it isn't, very pleasant taste in my opinion, and seeds add a lot of flavour.