Brian Mac

January 16, 2023 at 8:13am

In reply to by Brian Mac (not verified)

I baked the original and sourdough version side-by-side today. I did the original recipe first which helped get a feel for the consistency and moisture content to strive for with the dough.

For the sourdough version I used:
I used 100g active starter,
50g stone ground rye flour,
400g bread flour,
and 375g water (plus extra to get the right hydration)

On the original recipe I tried to use less flour while cutting the loafs. I missed the suggestion to use some oil here. (I find the recipe here to be a bit rambling and hard to pick out the details.) With less flour on the bench the loaves were just too hard to handle and I lost some of the shape and rise. When I cut the loaves for the sourdough I resorted to plenty of flour and the loaves held their shape. I also did not care for an abundance of four on the loaves so, after setting the 2 hours, I lightly brushed the tops with a fine pastry brush to remove the excess flour. I also found that the loaves came out too dark the first time (almost burnt in my opinion), so I shortened the initial cooking time on the stone to 13 minutes and moved the loaves to mid-oven, instead of upper third, to finish. I started watching the loaves after about 5 minutes and pulled them when they looked good to me. In a side-by-side taste test the family preferred the sourdough rye version. The loafs still retained the characteristics of the original recipe but had a bit of nuttiness and tang.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.