Sourdough Rye Bread

Sourdough rye bread is one of the absolute favourites in our house and the best seller in my cottage kitchen bakery. Though rye might seem intimidating, making this bread is as easy as making a regular sourdough boule. It’s made with the exact same method and the same ingredients, only that 50% of the flour is substituted for rye.

Choosing your rye

When I bake it I use petkus rye flour from my friend Adam at Jannelunds Gård. It’s an old rye variety that’s been grown in Sweden for over 150 years. Adam only grows organic crops and puts a lot of love and knowledge into growing his grain. After harvest they’re send to an old artisanal mill before making it’s way to my kitchen. And it’s all right here in our small county.

Petkus rye has a great flavour that really adds to the rustic feeling of a rye sourdough bread but if you can’t find it any rye flour will do. Try to use organic and artisanal flour if you can find it as it typically makes for a better match to natural leavening with sourdough. It simply has more food for the sourdough yeast to feast on, giving a fluffier bread.

Preparing your dough

Some of the fluffiness and crumb of the bread also comes from the preparation method itself. Gently stretching and folding incorporates air that get’s trapped and explodes into yummy holes when baked. To be as gentle as possible with the dough I use the stretch and fold method for making bread. It’s takes a little more time than kneading in a machine but it’s not much actual work and the result is worth it.

Sourdough rye bread recipe

To make this sourdough rye bread you’ll need a sourdough starter. Since this is a mixed flour bread you can chose to eaither use a wheat based starter our a rye starter. I chose the first since only keeping one kind of starter simplifies my daily sourdough routine. If you don’t have a starter you can always buy one but it’s really easy to make your own. You can find a recipe and guide on how to make a sourdough starter here.

Other than starter all you need is rye flour, wheat flour, water and salt. With time and love these simple ingredients will be transformed into the most delicious rye bread.

Sourdough Rye Bread

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

• 325 grams of water

• 250 grams of rye flour

• 250 grams of wheat flour

• 100 grams of sourdough starter

• 10 grams of salt

Directions

• Put all ingredients in a large bowl and use your fingers to mix them together.
• Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and rest the dough for 20 minutes.
• Damp your fingers with cold water and use them to stretch and fold your dough. Then cover and let sit for 20 minutes. Repeat four times.
• Cover the dough and let it double.
• Push the dough down to de-gas it before shaping it to your desired shape, I prefer a boule.
• Put your dough in a banneton and let it double again. This will take a few hour or up to twelve hours depending in the temperature in your house and how active your starter is. If you want to, you can also let it rise in your fridge to give it an even longer development time.
• Before baking, put a ducth oven with lid in your oven and set it to 250’C/480’F and let it get warm with the oven.
• Cut a sheet of baking paper to fit your dutch oven and put your dough on it.
• Score your dough and put it in your dutch oven.
• Bake for 20 minutes with your lid on, then remove the lid and bake for 20 minutes or until the core temperature is 98’C/208’C.
• Remove the bread from your dutch oven and let it rest for a minimum of one hour before cutting it, preferably longer.