April 25, 2010

Mellow Bakers: Light Rye Bread

Labels: , ,

Light Rye Bread
Light Rye Bread

For someone like me who didn't like sourdough rye breads that much, Jeffrey Hamelman's Light Rye bread is a welcome surprise because I love its slightly sour and slightly sweet flavor. As the name says, it's light on rye, that is, the recipe has very little medium rye flour so I heeded his suggestion of using whole rye flour for a more pronounced rye flavor, and I also used rye sourdough starter instead of the white flour sourdough starter. Ground, not whole, caraway seeds were used sparingly at a quarter teaspoon, which to me is just about right, maybe less of it or none at all would be better. I love the flavor of caraway seeds but I think it masks the true flavor of rye flour which only recently I'm starting to appreciate.

Light Rye Bread

The bread is another simple dough to make. The sourdough is built the night before and left on the kitchen counter to ripen for 14 hours. The next day high gluten flour, water, salt, yeast, and caraway seeds are mixed together with the sourdough. I did not have any problems with the mixing of this rather stiff but not dry dough which was made to ferment for 1 hour. I decided to shape the dough into a boule and baked it in a cast iron pot. It rose well, although the crumb is tight which is okay because its smokey flavor is more important to me. I also love its thin-ish chewy crust and soft but chewy crumb, perfect for ham or pastrami sandwiches.

Light Rye Bread
ham sandwich on rye lunch


MellowBakers
join us and discover great tasting breads


5 comments:

Abby said...

Still loving your slashes on this bread! And I'm so interested in baking it in a cast iron pot . . . however did you think of it?!

Rosemary & Garlic said...

I would like to take that to work. I need to wake up my starter for this one.

Oggi said...

Abby, I didn't want to steam the oven for a change.:)

Ann Marie, it has been a routine for me feeding my starters every weekend when I don't use them during the week.

Anonymous said...

Lovely bread and great photos - I think we'll all be copying your slashes soon :) joanna

Oggi said...

Joana, thanks.:)

Post a Comment

 
Design by New WP Themes | Bloggerized by Lasantha - Premiumbloggertemplates.com