For a couple of years now, I’ve been looking for the perfect rye bread recipe. I know, “perfect” is a dangerous term to use, but I think I found a recipe that makes beautiful and tasty bread.

This recipe started out as Daniel Leader’s Czech Country Bread from his book Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers. I like whole grains in my bread, so I experimented with adding different kinds of whole grains – starting with replacing the white rye with whole grain rye, but eventually I ended up with replacing half of the bread flour with white whole wheat flour.

150g refreshed whole grain rye sourdough starter
300g water
100g white rye flour
200g white whole wheat flour
200g unbleached bread flour
1 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp wheat gluten
1 tbsp diastatic malt powder

Use a stand mixer to knead all the ingredients into dough (about 8-10 minutes on slow).
Cover the dough and let it rest for about two hours (or until doubled in size).
Give the dough a quick knead and form a loaf.
Cover the dough again and let rise for about 1 1/2 hours.
About one hour into the second rise place a pizza stone in oven on middle rack and a cast iron pan at the bottom of the oven and preheat to 475F.
Sprinkle whole wheat flour on a peel and place the loaf on it.
Score loaf with a very sharp knife.
Place loaf on pizza stone.
Add a cup of ice cubes into the cast iron pan close the door.
Reduce temperature to 425F.
Bake for 45 minutes.
Let the bread cool completely before cutting into it. Yes, I understand that’s hard to do, but it’s important. If you want to eat freshly baked (still hot) bread, make baguettes. There is noting better than a fresh piece of bread with some good butter.

Here is my first attempt to bake one of the breads in Daniel Leader’s
Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers. As usual, I had a problem with following instructions, and I had to modify the recipe a bit: Instead of 500g of all purpose flour, I used 400g of AP and 100g of whole wheat graham flour. I did not want to replace too much flour with whole wheat to not change the character of the bread and the consistency of the dough too much.

And, because of time constraints, I had to “rush” the whole process a bit by shaving off a few minutes of every step. The temperature on that day (it was very hot) may have worked to my advantage because the dough did rise a lot faster.

French bread is best fresh, and I did not want to eat three loafs within an hour of baking them, so I also cut short the baking time a bit – hence the somehow pale look of the finished bread.

That allows me to freeze the loafs and then just pop them into my convection toaster oven for 8 to 10 minutes and have delicious fresh french bread.

I like bread. There is nothing better than bread fresh out of the oven – yes, I know you are not supposed to cut right into a freshly baked loaf, but still, there is nothing better…

Good bread recipes are hard to find, but I think I just hit the jackpot: Daniel Leader’s
Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe’s Best Artisan Bakers.

 

How to I judge a baking book? Of course, I look for the pretzel recipe. Most recipes I find online result in a dough that is too dry – Leader’s recipe gets it right (it took me quite a bit of experimenting to come up with my recipe). I’m not yet convinced that his baking soda/water ratio is correct, and I don’t want to know what boiling the dough for 1 minute will do to the pretzels… Actually, I think I do know: It will turn them into bagels, and that is not quite the texture that I’m looking for in a pretzel.

I looked at a bunch of recipes, and they all look good. In addition to the actual recipes there are enough illustrations in the general section of the book that show the finer points of processing and shaping the different breads.

This is a great book, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be busy over the next few months baking all sorts of artesian breads.