This is the comment thread for the Breadtopia blog post originally published here:
If you do not see the “Reply” button, you will need to log in or register an account. Please click the blue “Log In” button in the upper right of the page. 
Beautiful Tourte de Seigle Melissa. Your recipe sounds much more interesting than the one I posted last year. I like the additional flavours from the beer and yoghurt. The bake is just gorgeous!
Benny
Can this be made with a non dairy yogurt? Thanks!!
Thank you @Benito I also think you would like the flavor profile of this bread.
Rye, water, salt is neat too, but I wanted something that might fly off the cutting board and that’s happened (yay!) rather than me slicing, freezing, and working through a bread by myself.
@julieraugust Yes! You’re good to go with non-dairy yogurts as long as they’re fermented with lactobacillus, and therefore have lactic acid. Here’s Soy yogurt info.
Wow, what a beautiful bread, Melissa! I definitely want to try your recipe! I love German rye breads. I grew up in Germany, and when I moved to the US, I craved German rye breads for years. Then I finally learned to bake my own. After many unsuccessful dead-end attempts, I finally found Gerhard Keller’s book, “Rustikale Brote aus deutschen Landen.” His methods are very easy and without fuss. Mostly it involves preparing the sourdough, soaked seeds, and/or yeast sponge the evening before you bake. Then the next day you mix all the ingredients together, kneed the dough, let the dough rest 30 minutes, form into a loaf, let it rise, and then bake it. The breads are usually dense and moist, just as I remember them from my childhood. And since I use the good Breadtopia grain, freshly ground, they taste heavenly! I know you’re supposed to wait a day before you eat a rye bread, but I can never wait that long. I eat it hot out of the oven with good butter on it, and it is soooo yummy.
This was my question too Melissa, like Julie, I want to use non dairy yoghurt. I used to enjoy “black breads” like this when I was young and travelling through Europe. Russian rye bread was beautiful, but definitely on the moist side although it was never gummy. I was a vegetarian from age 12, after passing a giant paddock full of cows my father told me were about to die (there were many tears). I’ve now become whole foods, plant based (WFPB), or vegan, for the past 4 years. I eat much less bread these days but, as always, it needs to be the best to be enjoyable. As with a lot of vegans, cheese (with bread of course) has been the hardest food to give up. But I make lots of home made hummus and my own vegan cheeses, using either cashews or tofu on the whole. I have to use lab grown lactic acid for cheese making, so I would love to make this recipe if I can. I notice you mentioned lactic acid, so am happy vegan yoghurt can do the job. Susi, from the other hemisphere down south ie: Australia 
Andrea, could you translate the rye recipe you are speaking of? I can’t read german! We lived in Poland for 5 years and I miss their good breads.
I am very enthusiastic about learning to make a good rye bread, which I have never done. I have tried one time, but was unable to get the dough out of the proofing basket. I do not bake my sourdoughs in a baking vessel, but rather on a baking steel, adding steam. What would be done differently for this recipe? How/where would I flip the dough out of the proofing basket? Would the oven temperature and times be the different?
@AnjaSonderling I’m hoping to go to Germany and try breads like that some day and I’ll add that books to my wishlist. hope you enjoy this recipe. I agree that hot-from-the-oven bread is worth a little gumminess, though I did like the flavor shift this one had from 24 to 48 hours. Deeper rye and roasty flavors…
@Susannah I’m glad you’ll be able to try this bread with a vegan yogurt. Maybe topped with a cashew cheese – I’ve made tasty cashew mac’n’cheese once.
@Spring Check this out – it doesn’t solve the translation need, but shows the table of contents, which might help you narrow down what you’re most interested in. My German language skills are well below fluency: long ago classes and some Instagram bread words…joghurtbrot mit wahlnussen 
@JansBreadtopia A lot of whole rye flour during shaping and in your proofing basket will help prevent sticking. Flip the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper after the final proof. Do your usual steam system. If you notice the bread browning too much or if your bread generally is prone to a thick tough crust, then put a steel bowl or pan over the bread as if it were a lid.
I wouldn’t change the oven temps except maybe to do everything at 415F, skipping the initial 425F period (that’s just a guess-suggestion because steel tends to burn bread bases a little more than clay).
Hi Melissa thank you for this recipe! I followed instructions, but I wasn’t sure what the consistency of the dough had to be, it was sort of falling apart even after fermentation. Should I have added more flour. Baked it today and it’s a bit in the flat side.
A low profile is to be expected with rye bread that’s baked free-standing, so I think your tourte looks pretty good.
More doming might come from fermentating/proofing less or shaping tighter. And a dryer dough may have been necessary for tighter shaping. So many if/thens.
I just made a video of an alternate shaping technique that I learned when making Broa de Milho
I had edited out the beginning of the video, which is me scraping the tourte de seigle dough out of my fermentation bucket for a tediously long amount of time…BUT that does show the dough texture 
Here it is – just the scraping. Broa shaping video in the next comment.
An alternate way to shape the tourte de seigle dough/batter is with the technique I learned when researching broa de milho, a Portuguese bread made with corn and rye flours.
Here’s my attempt at this technique.
Great looking crumb on that bread for a whole grain rye. I usually follow Ginsberg when I decide to venture out making a rye I don’t always make but this is too tempting not to try. Nice post!
Dennis
Thanks! I hope you like it.
Melissa, thanks so much for this recipe! I’ve baked quite a few 100% rye loaves over the years, but this one has, by far, the most beautiful crumb and texture ever, and it was also so easy.
I made a couple of substitutions based on what I had on hand (Guinness and blackstrap molasses), and the dough was so fragrant, both before and after baking. When I finally cut it this morning, though (after waiting over 36 hours since baking), I was surprised to find that the flavor wasn’t as robust as expected. There’s almost no sourness to speak of and little of the rich fruitiness expressed during bulk fermentation. Don’t get me wrong: it’s absolutely delicious, just milder than I thought it would be. I followed the timing outlined in the recipe, but a friend who was baking along with me retarded his shaped loaf overnight and reports a nice, full sourness, which would, of course, be expected relative to an unretarded loaf. I’m just wondering if your loaves have also had a less-sour flavor profile or if it’s just me?
I’m frankly blown away that I could get this degree of open crumb in 100% rye. Thanks so much for your work on this; I’ll definitely be baking this again and again!
Best,
Jane
I just made your Tourte de Seigle and the taste is sensational. Because the dough was incredibly sticky, I took no chance and put them in loaf pans. I never expected such a tasty result! Melissa, you are in my hall of fame of bakers.
@misaacka Thank you for trying the tourte de seigle recipe. Your bread/crumb look great, and guinness and molasses sound tasty. It could be that some sourness was masked by those stronger flavors, but more likely is what you suggest: that the bread is simply on the milder side of sour and an overnight retard of the dough will get you the increased sour you’re looking for.
I think the bread flavor shifts as it ages, but my impression was that it got less sour over time. Have you or any others reading this noticed changes in flavor on days 3, 4 etc. ?
This is when I wish we had bread club meetings where we could all taste each other’s bakes!
@Lambert Thank you I am very honored to be in your baker hall of fame. Your loaves look fantastic, and actually I planned for the recipe to bake in a loaf pan at first. I made it so that if you double the tourte de seigle recipe, it will fit in a 13x4 Pullman pan – but I haven’t yet actually tested that.
Actually made it and used your method for rolling the dough in a bowl worked out great!
So I’ve made this rye recipe twice now and both were fabulous! Thanks to Melissa’s encouragement, I doubled the recipe and made it in my large Pullman pan. My new favorite rye!
@DennisM That looks great and I’m glad the bowl rolling shaping method worked so well.
@1Christie1 Thank you so much for reporting back with the results of doubling the recipe and using a large Pullman pan. The loaf looks lovely and I’m excited to have this as an option.
