Rye Bread first attempt

I have been wanting to do some other grain breads. I have done some whole wheat with limited success, so I tried a sourdough rye bread. I turned out great. J an loves rye bread so I was really trying to make it work well. I used a recipe from Joy of Cooking which has 6 steps. It starts with a poolish thing, rye flour and yeast and water that sits for 24 hours. Then more Rye flour and water is mixed in and it sits again. The long sit is so the regular yeast can sour up some, but instead of yeast I used a 1/4 cup of my sourdough starter. It worked really well and I let it sit extra long, actually a day too long.

The resulting sponge was really sour and had an alcoholic note. The rest of the recipe is as follows:










Sponge 1

• 1 3/4 cups rye flour
• Package dry active yeast
• 1/4 cup water

I let this sit for about 6 hours, it did not really double as it was supposed to. but it did sour more.

Sponge 2

• 1 3/4 cups rye flour
• 1 3/4 cups bread flour
• 1 cup water

 I let this sponge rise and it did double. I think it was the regular flour that loosened it up and let the yeast work. The dough through all of these steps was very sticky, more sticky than anything else I have made. I took me five minutes just to get it off my hands after mixing it.

Finally after this sponge doubled add;

• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
• 1 3/4 cups bread flour

Again this is a sticky mess. I let it rest for about 1 hour and them turned it onto a floured board and kneaded in 1 1/2 to 2 cups bread flour. The dough was really wet and it took most of 2 cups of flour. It ended up being very stiff and slightly sticky, but not so sticky as to stick to the board.  I cut it into two pieces and formed 2 loaves. These went into the oven with the light turned on to rise. I covered it with a very wet towel so it would not dry out. It rose for 30 to 45 minutes before I baked it. I baked at 425 with a pan of water for 20 minutes, and then took the water out and baked for another 30 minutes. I suppose I could have taken it out after 25 minutes, but it still turned out great. Once I pulled it out of the oven I brushed the loaves with salted butter that sizzled into the crust.

This was a great batch of bread it ended up with a crusty crust and a soft and chewy crumb. I will be making this again.