The Half Rye

Coming from the Czech Republic, I especially love the combination of rye and cumin. This type of bread is the standard and what you will find in every supermarket and local store- and for good reason!

This bake has more of a denser crumb, dissimilar to standard sourdough bakes where everyone strives for that open texture but it’s not chewy or gummy but fluffy- making it great to spread butter and jam on!

It has a great crust and a fantastic dark colour from the dark rye flour used. Rye flour requires a higher level of hydration than standard wheat bread flour, even when using a greater amount of water, you might find that the dough appears to be more ‘dry’- this is normal and it’s why I prefer to wet my hands rather than dust with flour during the stretch and folds. The bread sits at around 83% hydration.

As for any sourdough bake, you will need a starter, if you don’t have one it’s super easy to do and you can find out here how I make and maintain mine.

I don’t keep multiple starters (to reduce waste) but will feed my starter whatever flour I plan to primarily bake with in the few feeds leading up. This just helps me to keep on top of hydration amounts, and so for 2 feeds prior to this bake, I fed my starter a 50/50 mix of dark rye flour and strong white bread flour. This is by no means necessary and so stick to what you’re used to!

A rye starter is often more powerful and you will notice a more pronounced and faster rise than compared with using a wheat starter. This means that compared to my plain white sourdough recipe the fermentation times are slightly lowered.

I hope you enjoy this great recipe that is a small taste of my home!

Ingredients

• 200g starter
• 450g dark rye flour
• 450g strong white flour
• 20g salt
• 5g ground cumin
• 750g water

Method

Mix the all the ingredients until a rough dough forms. No need to knead the dough, just ensure that all ingredients are well incorporated.

Allow to sit for 30 minutes covered with a tea towel.

Tip the dough onto a dampened surface (use water instead of flour to stop the dough from sticking to not reduce hydration level) and perform the first stretch and fold, making your way around the dough 10-15 times.

Allow to sit for 45 minutes covered with a tea towel.

Again, tip dough onto dampened surface, this time stretch and fold 6 times.

Repeat the last 2 steps and perform the third and final stretch and fold.

Allow dough to sit covered for an hour.

This time flour your work surface and tip dough out. Split into two using a floured bench scraper and preshape your loaves. Depending on what shape you’re going for will determine how you fold your dough at this point. If aiming for a boule, just repeat another round of stretch and fold, flip the dough and push sides into the bottom to make a boule shape.

Allow to rest on the floured surface for an hour before final shaping. Flour and place dough in 2 bannetons.

Place in fridge for no more than 15 hours and bake from cold.

You can use a Dutch oven or 2 levelled trays, the bottom being filled with boiling water.

Preheat the oven for at least an hour at 250C, then bake covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 20 if using a Dutch oven. If using the steam method, bake for 55 minutes at 230C.

Carefully remove bread and allow to fully cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Enjoy!