This recipe should be on everyone’s baking repertoire (providing you like rye that is). A lovely aromatic loaf bursting with flavour. Here is a link to the recipe. Click on it!
Now I’ve baked this quite a few times so I decided to put my own spin on the recipe and have some fun trying out a different technique. The recipe is the same, its the method that’s been tweaked.
In Eric’s video he uses a white low hydration starter straight from the fridge. Not too much info on the starter itself but I estimated it was around 80% hydration and set about building a levain to match.
A lot of traditional rye recipes have a scald in them. While this recipe does not I decided to add one in. In a scald you normally find part of the rye flour (or all of the rye flour if using a mix), molasses and often the spice that goes into the dough. The spices in this recipe are fennel, caraway and anise seed. All added in whole. I decided to toast and grind them before adding to the rye and molasses. Bread spice, also often found in European rye recipes, are similar ingredients ground into powder form. Hence my method.
Here we have the rye flour, spice flour and molasses before the scald.
Used all the water called for in the recipe, boiled and poured over the mix above then stirred till fully incorporated and left to cool for 30 minutes.
When ready I added the salt, levain and orange zest. Well I say orange zest what I mean is I added 8 drops of extract of orange zest. Didn’t have any oranges nor a zester. Don’t judge me! Now here is something interesting. While using all the water in the recipe following the usual method this is a very hydrated dough. However, using all the water in the scald meant I had to add about an extra 50ml water to get somewhat close to the feel of the original recipe. Even then it was still a bit on the dryer side.
About two hours into the bulk ferment. Forgot to take a photo of first mixed.
Eight hours in and its done. The original recipe has a longer bulk ferment but I always found for my starter its too much and while I normally do have to cut short the bulk ferment this one fermented even faster. Hot day today and even warmer in my kitchen. Plus, the scald might have sled things up. Its basically a type of tangzhong making sugars more available I think.
Shaped in the Pullman ready for the final proof.
After an hour, the recommended time, it looked ready and I thought it had signs of beginning to over proof. So with no photo I threw it in the oven (not literally, but not far off either).
And here we have it…
Lovely aroma while baking and such a nice golden crust. Dare I say in the end it could have done with 20 more minutes for the final proof. Rye can proof quickly and it has a tendency to look OK on the outside but sink on the inside while baking if over proofed. So often jump the gun. No problem here as clearly there’s oven spring and you can see through the cracks its bloomed well. But I was aiming for a perfectly domed top with no cracking.
Cooling now and will post more photos when I cut into it.