Rye bread

It's Saturday in Kansas City.  It looks like it's going to be a mild day with temps in the 80s.  We are having a pleasantly warm and rainy summer so far, the complete opposite of what is happening in so many other parts of the country where it is hot and dry.  

In recent blog post, I mentioned that my oldest daughter sent me some really great flours to try.  Pictured above is one of those:  a beautifully ground whole grain rye flour.  Although I am quite experienced in many other breads, I have never made rye bread before so here was the catalyst for making my first attempt.

First we have to make a starter.  This is comprised of bread flour, rye flour, rapid-rise yeast, and warm water, about 110 F.  This is mixed together and left to sit overnight at room temperature.

Here's what it looks like at first.  But after sitting several hours, it smooths out, and increases in volume to become a spongy mass that fills about half this bowl.  I meant to get a picture of that, but it slipped my mind as I was excited to get going on making that actual bread once the starter had finished it's sitting period.

Now we take more bread flour, more rye flour, vegetable oil, honey, more rapid-rise yeast, more water and salt, and add the starter.  All of this comes out into a pretty large amount of bread dough that is then put aside to rise for a while after it is kneaded.  Here it is before rising.

And here it is after rising.  It is a monster rise!

Very satisfying, don't you think?

Now we remove the dough from the bowl and punch it down a little, flatten it, and form it into a rough rectangle.  We fold the top and the bottom into the center, pinch the seams together and compress the loaf a bit.  Then we flip it over and form it into a rough torpedo shape.

I put a dinner spoon by the dough for a size comparison.  You can see we have a pretty large mass of dough.  This sits for a while and grows even larger.

Well, this has become quite a mass of dough. It can be seen that it is tearing just a little as the rising happens.  The gluten should be developed a bit more from the kneading to allow it to stretch and hold together during the rising process.  Next time, more kneading.

After preheating the oven at 500 F for an hour with pizza stones in it, I scored the dough down the center with a knife, placed the dough on parchment on the pizza stones, and turned down the temperature to 425 F.  And you can see what comes out:  a nice crusty rye loaf.

And here's the loaf cut diagonally.  The bread is dense, a tiny bit crusty on the outside, soft on the inside,  and very tasty.  Warm or cooled, it is a wonderful eating experience.

So there we go.  A beautiful rye bread.  Thanks to "oldest daughter" for sending me the flours.  She sent me a total of three, so I imagine I'll do more posts soon on making breads from the flours.

Have a great weekend everyone and don't forget to take the time to enjoy good food.