Your bread looks fantastic and the crack is completely normal! I’m a new bread baker too and my third EVER no knead bread is currently in the oven! My latest attempt is the NK sourdough rye here on the Breadtopia website. My husband adores rye bread. So do I! Salt and pepper tiger bread? It sounds totally intriguing. When you slice into that beauty, I hope you’ll post some pictures of how the bread looks. Enjoy!
Gingerbaker, you can score your bread with a knife or razor if you want the opening on the top to be a particular shape but the rustic look is great too.
Leah1, You hit on why I started baking 2 loaves at a time early on…I want to give bread away AND taste it / see the inside
Soooo…I chose to keep, slice and taste my first NK sourdough rye bread instead of deciding to gift it. After all, great cooks and bakers must know what their creations taste like before sharing, right? So tonight my husband and I sampled the bread. This is some SERIOUS rye bread that is very flavorful and in my opinion is definitely what I would consider a pumpernickel versus the lighter rye bread I knew as a child. I’m thrilled because I love pumpernickel and just the other day my mother asked me if I knew how to bake one. Now I can wholeheartedly tell her, “Yes!”
Thanks, @amprincess! It does taste awesome! The funniest thing is just a day or so before I baked that bread my mom asked me if I knew how to make a pumpernickel because that had always been her favorite and she wanted some. I honestly had no idea before I baked it that the NK sourdough rye recipe would indeed end up being a pumpernickel. So yesterday I was going to my mom’s and I called her first to tell her that my rye bread indeed turned out to be pumpernickel and I asked her if she wanted me to bring her some. “Yes!” she declared. So I did and my 88 year-old Mom said it was “the best pumpernickel, ever!” Now whenever I bake one for my husband and I, I’m going to bring Mom some. Of course, the individual who wanted me to bake him this bread now has to wait until I bake another one in a few days. Hopefully he’ll think it was worth the wait. LOL!