How To Make Sourdough Rye

In my continued hiatus from the chaos that passes as news nowadays, on Sunday I performed an experimental bake.  Before bedtime on Saturday I mixed my flours, salt and a slurry of starter/water into a sticky dough. Stretched (not kneaded) and formed a ball. 

By sunrise I had a nicely-proofed dough.  Turned it out stretched it 8X and formed a ball to raise 4-5 hours while doggo and I did chores. 

 

Baked it an hour.

My first sourdough rye. 

If you like sourdough bread in a rye variation this turned-out amazing - and scary to get it right on the first try.  Needs Nueske's liver pate or Usinger's braunschweiger.  Naturally, raw beef and onions or pastrami works too.  

Sourdough Bread 

 

Starting the bread:

Start to finish about 12-16 hours - mostly overnight. Hands-on time is less than 1 hour.

385g water

90g starter

520g flour  (100g whole wheat or rye flour and 420g high protein bread flour = 520g total) 

                    I prefer King Arthur flours

12g table salt

For rye loaf - caraway seed to taste (optional) 

 

Mix water with starter to make a slurry. Whisk the two flours together with the salt and add the slurry. Mix everything by hand or a plastic dough spatula. Cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.

 

Stretching the bread:

Stretch and fold eight times. Rest 15 minute intervals. Perform this three times over 45 minutes. Form a ball with your dough, place in a bowl, cover and let it rest overnight (8-10 hours) at room temperature until doubled in size. If it is warmer this may take only 6-8 hours. Wet hands are non-stick. Resist any impulse to fold and knead on the countertop. I like to finish this step before bedtime.

 

Forming the loaf:

I like to start this step after rising first thing in the morning. Dump the dough out onto a floured counter. Cover with a bowl and let it rest ½ hour. With wet hands stretch and fold the dough forming a round loaf. Place on a floured towel in a bowl seam side up. Cover and allow to rest for 1-4 hours.

 

Baking the loaf:

30 minutes before baking allow a cast iron pot and lid to preheat in a 450F oven. Tip the towel-lined loaf from the bowl into parchment paper-lined cast iron. Slash and bake covered for 40 minutes at a reduced 425F. At the 40 minute interval remove the lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes at 375F (uncovered). 

 

at 40 minute mark remove the cast iron pot

 

Total bake time is 60 minutes. Remove loaf to a wire rack and allow to rest at room temperature.

 

DO NOT give in to any urge to cut the loaf before it has cooled.

 

After it has cooled you can place the loaf cut side down on a cutting board for up to a day before bagging in plastic. Sourdough bread is naturally resistant to turning stale; if it lasts that long anyway.

 

Pro Tips: This sourdough bread is a very forgiving bake; don’t feel like you’re a slave to pinpoint timing. Nevertheless, weights and measures must be precise. Pull and fold your dough like taffy. Do not knead it on a countertop.

 

More photos and instructions here. Or type: sourdough in the search tool in the upper left corner of the home page.

Gentlemen - Start Your Ovens

Good Monday morning friends. 

My Friday ritual is to feed my sourdough starters.

With freezing temperatures across the land it is opportunities like this that call for baking. You know, if you can’t stand the cold; stay in the kitchen. 

 
At Friday bedtime I set this handmade dough ball of future sourdough breadness on the counter (covered) to proof overnight.  Arising on Saturday....

At the time of another pipe freezing sunrise there was this. 

This recipe is from a sourdough baking class and is a reasonably fool-proof bake. Step-by-step illustrated instructions as follows:

Sourdough Bread

Making Pat’s Sourdough Bread at Home: 

Pat is from the neighboring town of Algoma. The starter I received as a gift to the class participants can be traced over the years through Pat’s sister in Michigan, to her daughter in NYC, to her friend Laurent Gras*, a Michelin starred chef from France. I received a gift of a 40-year-old starter that began its life in France.  Here’s how to keep it going.

Feeding the starter:

120g water

100g old starter

100g flour (10g rye flour and 90g high protein bread flour)

 

(Any discarded starter is used for baking) 

 

double in volume

Whisk the water and starter to make a slurry. Add flour and whisk until lumps have dissolved. Pour into a quart mason jar and set on the counter at room temperature. The starter should double in volume. Then settle down to its original level. After 24 hours, refrigerate.  I use a Mason “Pickle Pipe” (fermentation airlock) to seal my jars. 

Starter can live in the fridge for approximately 7 days. Feed once a week. For more sour flavor use starter that has been refrigerated 4-6 days.  If you keep your starter in the garage beer fridge like I do I’ve learned it will keep for up to three weeks without feeding while we’re away traveling.   Lastly, I keep frozen batches of both my starters in a basement chest freezer as a backup against loss.  

Starting the bread:

Start to finish about 12-16 hours - mostly overnight.  Hands-on time is less than 1 hour.

385g water

90g starter

520g flour (100g whole wheat and 420g high protein bread flour)

12g table salt (to be added later)

Mix water with starter to make a slurry.  Whisk the two flours together and add to the slurry.  Mix everything by hand or a plastic bowl scraper.  Cover and allow to rest for 15 minutes.

Stretching the bread:

Stretch and fold eight times. Rest another 15 minutes. Sprinkle half the salt on the dough then stretch and fold 8 times. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Sprinkle the dough with the remaining salt and stretch and fold 8 times. Cover the dough and let it rest overnight (8-10 hours) at room temperature (68-70 F) until doubled in size. If it is warmer this may take 6-8 hours. Wet hands are non-stick.  

 

Note:  The stretch, fold and rest process is three times.  Resist any impulse to fold and knead on the countertop. I like to finish this step before bedtime. (top photo)

Forming the loaf:

First thing in the morning after the dough and I have risen is this step.  Start the coffee and dump the dough out onto a floured counter. Cover with a bowl and let it rest ½ hour. With wet hands stretch and fold the dough forming a round loaf. Place on a floured towel and place in a bowl seam side up. Cover and allow to rest in the fridge for 1-4 hours. (It is cold enough this time of year to leave it on the kitchen countertop)

 

Drink coffee 

Baking the loaf:

45 minutes before baking allow the cast iron pot and lid to preheat in a 450 oven. Tip the towel-lined loaf from the bowl into parchment paper-lined cast iron. Slash and bake covered for 40 minutes at a reduced 425.  At the 40 minute interval remove the lid and bake for an additional 20 minutes at 375 (uncovered).  Total bake time is 60 minutes.  Remove loaf to a wire rack and allow to rest at room temperature.

  

slash

cover

40 minutes at 425F covered - uncover and 20 additional minutes at 375F

cool on wire rack

DO NOT give in to any urge to cut the loaf before it has cooled!  After it has cooled you can place the loaf cut side down on a cutting board for up to a day before bagging in plastic.  Sourdough bread is naturally resistant to turning stale; if it lasts that long anyway.

Pro Tip: This sourdough bread is a very forgiving bake; don’t feel like you’re a slave to pinpoint timing.  Nevertheless, weights and measures must be precise.  Pull and fold your dough like taffy.  Do not knead it on a countertop.

Once upon a time my whole wheat flour had turned so I tossed it out.  Substituting 100g of all-purpose flour resulted in a fine result.

If you care to introduce all the salt to the dry flours before mixing I could not detect any detrimental effect to the loaf.  This saves a step in the stretching and folding process.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Gras_(chef).  As of 01.24.26 the starter is now 44 years of age.

What's For Dinner?

As a general rule I do the cooking around this joint.  And it's usually just the two of us. So it's not like I'm up to my elbows in pots and pans.  

I was chatting with someone on a private FB page last week about how our dietary choice fit (or didn't fit) with HHS's new inverted food pyramid.  We eat red meat with venison at the top of the list followed by chicken, pork and fish (typically salmon) as proteins.  Beef is at the very bottom and is usually a ground chuck burger sourced from our butcher.  We eat a  pile of veggies and this time of year I eat Irish porridge (with blueberries) nearly daily.  I also can and freeze produce from our garden, fresh-caught fish, venison in all forms and plenty of homemade soups. 

We drink milk, use butter and cheese and have incorporated duck fat in frying potatoes for as long as I can remember.  Having gotten air popper for making popcorn I picked-up some coconut oil to flavor the product with a little fat along with salt.  I'm told it's a movie theater hack.  I'll report on results later.  

This time of year the weather conditions can be so unpredictable or inhumane that grilling outdoors or firing-up the brick oven isn't worth the trouble.  Consequently, the new GE range with an expansive cook top, traditional oven/broiler and a second oven/broiler with convection and air frying settings allows for quite a bit of versatility. 

In any event here's a few dinners from the last month in case you're nosy.  And because we keep our own schedules for outside interests and activities we're not averse to leftovers in case someone needs to pack a meal or is eating alone.

It all works out in terms of variety and division of labor.

And for a couple of old farts our metabolic labs are in good working order.

You are what you eat.

Pork chop plate

Pan-seared salmon

Cheese and mushroom omelet - breakfast for dinner

Winner, winner, chicken dinner   

Gentlemen - Start Your Ovens

When the going gets tough;

The tough bake stuff.

During the recent cold snap we had the wood stove operating most of the day every day.  It actually does a reasonably good job of heating the west half of the house and sending heat up the stairwell to take the chill out of the second floor.  Nevertheless, as a consequence of thermostat placement the east side of the house (laundry, powder room and kitchen) remains moderately cooler.

When that happens more often than not we wear fleece and ignore it.  Otherwise, a partial solution is either to do laundry on that day and/or come-up with an excuse to use the kitchen gas range as the operation of the appliances serve to impart some additional heat to the space they occupy.

It's not a huge deal and even though in its 22nd year the house is becoming slightly more "leaky" in keeping the cold out and the heat in; the natural passive solar advantages of old-school farmhouse architecture including lots of tall windows to capture sunny winter daylight when Old Sol is low on the horizon really does work.  Don't let anybody tell you that settlers hundreds of years ago were witless about maximizing solar power in the winter and shade in the summer.  But I digress.

About the baking, I located the last of the Irish soda bread mix (imported from the land of my forebears) in the pantry and decided to bake a loaf.  Mainly for breakfast with a steaming cuppa joe on a cold winter morning.  I amped-it-up with some added cane sugar and a double fistful of dried cranberries (reconstituted).  This was the last of the Irish bread mixes and the last of the cranberries from the pantry imparting a satisfying feeling of inventory turnover.

Anyway,  a good use of a cold and sunny winter day.  And the results were pretty tasty.

Didn't last to the end of the week....

 

   

Got Rhubarb?

Rhubarb is currently in season and if you don't already have a plant of your own you can find it at the local farm market, roadside stand and sometimes in a grocery store.  The recipe that follows is an all-purpose coffee cake; meaning that it is not restricted to rhubarb.  You could substitute apples, fresh cherries, blueberries or just about any other favorite fruit.  Between you and me the tartness of the rhubarb is a nice compliment to the crunchy streusel topping.

I made this today.....

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

Prep: 30 mins Cook: 45 mins Total: 1 hr. 15 mins Servings: 12 Yield: 1 - 9x13 inch cake

Ingredients - Cake

1 ¼ cups white sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup sour cream

3 cups diced rhubarb

 Ingredients- Streusel Topping

1 cup white sugar

¼ cup butter, softened

¼ cup all-purpose flour

Ground cinnamon for dusting

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.

In a large bowl, stir together 1 1/4 cups sugar, baking soda, salt and 2 cups flour. Stir together the eggs and sour cream until will mixed.  Add to the dry ingredients and stir until smooth then fold in the rhubarb. Pour into the prepared dish and spread evenly. 

In a smaller bowl, stir together the remaining 1 cup sugar and butter until smooth. Stir in 1/4 cup flour until the mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle the mixture on top of the cake then dust lightly with cinnamon.

Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 to 60 minutes depending on your oven.

Pro Tip –  I threw a double fistful of chopped walnuts in the cake batter along with the rhubarb because that was what was left languishing on the pantry shelf.  Good pick.  

Got Blueberries?

I can make these from memory.  Our go-to household muffin.  The revenge of the ginormous blueberry muffins.....

 

Tom’s Blueberry Muffins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

In a large mixing bowl mix together the following:

2 C of flour

1 C chopped walnuts (Feeling bold?  Double-up)

3 t of baking powder

1/3 C of sugar

1 t of salt

In a second bowl mix together the following:

1 egg

1 4oz container of all-natural apple sauce (they come in a 6-pak)

½ C of canola oil

¾ C of milk

2 C of fresh (not frozen) blueberries (throw caution to the wind and use an entire pint)

Pour the bowl of mixed wet ingredients into the bowl of mixed dry ingredients. Gently blend together. Don’t mash the blueberries!

Anoint muffin tin with vegetable oil cooking spray.

Bake for 20-30 minutes. Check towards the end as ovens vary.

Yields one dozen muffins. These don’t last but a couple of days in our house. Enjoy!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Optional: Using a mixer or food processor blend an 8 oz. pkg of cream cheese with ¼ C of sugar. Fill the 12 places in your muffin tin with ½ of the batter. Spoon a dollop of the blended cream cheese on top. Cover the cream cheese with the remaining ½ of the dough. Bake per instructions. The result is a blueberry/cheesecake muffin.

Got Butter?

Saw this in the New York Times last week and decided to make it.  If you do the math this works out to an entire tablespoon of butter in every biscuit!

Buttermilk Biscuits

By Melissa Clark Updated Sept. 26, 2024

Total Time 30 minutes
These soft and tender biscuits are made with cultured butter, which is made with cream that is cultured, or fermented, before it is churned. Cultured butter can be made at home, but it is becoming easier to find in supermarkets. It’s worth seeking out. Any true butter fanatic should try it at least once.  (I used regular unsalted sweet cream butter because that's what I had)

Ingredients
Yield:12 to 15 biscuits
● 335 grams all-purpose flour (2⅔ cups)
● 75 grams cake flour (¾ cup)
● 10 grams baking soda (2 teaspoons)
● 4 grams baking powder (1 teaspoon)
● 6 grams fine sea salt (2 teaspoons)
● 15 grams granulated sugar (1½ tablespoons)
● 2 sticks salted, cultured butter, chilled and cubed (1 cup)
● 1½ cups buttermilk, chilled

Preparation
1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.
3. Using a pastry cutter or fork, quickly cut butter into flour mixture until it forms pea-size crumbs and is uniformly mixed. (For flaky biscuits, you want the butter to remain cold.) Make a well in the center of mixture and pour in buttermilk. Stir together until it just forms a moist, slightly tacky dough.
4. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead 2 or 3 times, then pat out into a ¾-inch-thick round. Using a 2-inch round cutter, cut the biscuits. Do not twist the cutter; doing so prevents proper rising. To prevent sticking, dip the cutter lightly in flour between biscuits. Also, do not reroll scraps, but pat them together and cut into rounds. Transfer biscuits to a baking sheet.

Bake until brown, 15 minutes. Serve hot.
 

Pro Tips
● Measurements for dry ingredients are given by weight for greater accuracy. The equivalent measurements by volume are approximate. Pulse very cold or frozen butter into dry ingredients with a food processor to a crumb-like consistency.

Recipe Of The Day

One of the things about sourdough baking is that maintaining your starter is akin to having another dependent.  Only you don't have to change its diaper and send it to college.  Nevertheless, once a week you have to feed it - a process of discarding half and replenishing it with equal amounts of high-protein flour and water.  Back in the fridge it goes.

On Saturday morning I divided and fed my starter.  

I reserved the half I would have discarded or redirected to baking bread and used it to ferment and overnight sponge for pancakes on Sunday morning.

It is an easy recipe resulting a very good pancake.  

If you follow the recipe below cut everything in half which is plenty for a hearty breakfast for two adults.  I used-up the last of some blueberries and buttermilk we had and served it up with Irish butter and local maple syrup.

If I was making this for guests I'd make a full recipe, amp-up the blueberries and fry-up some breakfast sausages from the local butcher.

This Lactobacillus fermentation is working rather well.  

Recipe here.

Raising a toast to Mad Scientist cooking....

Recipe of the Day

 

Lumberjack Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 - cup sugar

1 - cup shortening

1 - cup dark molasses

2 - eggs

4 - cups all-purpose flour

1 - teaspoon baking soda

1 - teaspoon salt

2 - teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 - teaspoon ground ginger

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a food processor cream together the sugar and shortening.

Add molasses and eggs.

In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients and stir-in the contents of the food processor.

Work the stiff dough with a wooden spoon.

Put ½ cup sugar in a small bowl.

Pinch-off a piece of dough and roll into a 1-1/2-inch ball. Roll dough ball in sugar until covered.

Place dough balls on parchment paper-covered cookie sheet spaced 3 inches apart.

Bake for 30 minutes – give or take. Yield is about 4-dozen cookies. The dough will keep for a week or more in the refrigerator.

Gentlemen: Start Your Starter

Friday is generally Feed The Sourdough Starter Day. 

This is maintenance so that there is leavening agent in the garage fridge. 

For each jar: 

120g water in a bowl

100g old starter

  10g Bob’s Old Mill Rye flour

 90g King Arthur high protein bread flour

Whisk and return to clean jar with airlock lid. 

First picture was noonish. Second just now- 7 hours later. 

 

Discard starter makes the best buttermilk sourdough pancakes on the planet. Great bread and pizza dough too. 

The jar on the right is three year old San Francisco starter from Amazon. 

The jar on the left is from a friend in Algoma, via a sister in Michigan, who got it from a New York City 3 Star Michelin Chef, who brought it from France 42 years ago. 

Raising a toast to Lactobacillus fermentation…

Pro Tips - you can go away for 2-3 weeks and your starter will respond well to a feeding.   I keep a batch of each in the freezer as backup. Just in case.

Use bottled water if you are on treated city water.

Cookn' With Propane

I'm back to baking on a regular basis with about seven or eight successful bakes in the last several weeks.  

Heretofore, I thought I had lost my mojo.  'Twas instant dry yeast  that had lost its vigor a year before its x-date printed on the jar.  Believe the results - not the Best By Date.

With the lengthening days and warming weather it's getting close to firing-up the backyard brick oven.  Nevertheless, that doesn't mean you cannot make pizza in you kitchen range.

If you have a stone and get preheat it to 550F you can turn-out a darn good pie with an excellent homemade crust in under ten minutes.  Pro Tip:  Rao's Pizza Sauce.  (Three kinds)

I'm cooking with propane so your mileage may vary.....

 

From The Kitchen

Among other things the weekend agenda included hard rolls......

Fresh-Baked Breakfast Treat

Made these today for a cold, snowy morning breakfast treat.

 

Sourdough Breakfast Rolls

 

Starting the day with these sourdough breakfast rolls is a real treat. No kneading required. Just mix the dough before you go to bed, and you will have freshly baked bread for breakfast in 45minutes the next morning.

 

Prep Time 10 mins

Cook Time 15 mins

Total Time 25 mins

Servings 8 rolls

 

Ingredients

● 420 g high protein unbleached bread flour

● 6 g yeast

● 250 g water

● 50 g milk

● 80 g sourdough starter

● 9 g salt

 

Before you go to bed

1. Mix all ingredients before you go to bed. You don't have to overdo it, just make sure that all flour is hydrated. Cover the dough with cling film and let it ferment overnight at room temperature.

 

Next morning

1. The first thing to do the next morning is to preheat the oven to 480ºF / 250ºC.

2. Pour out the dough on a floured working surface and fold and stretch it into an elongated package. Let the dough rise for 30-45 minutes. Divide the dough into 6-8 pieces and put them on parchment paper on a pizza stone or cookie sheet.

3. Bake them for 15 to 20 minutes. They should have a nice golden brown color. Let them cool on a wire rack or eat them immediately.

 

Pro Tip

These would make for a hearty hoagie roll for lunch sandwiches. Cutting and baking these in smaller rolls would yield an awesome dinner roll.

 

VERY easy recipe that yields big dividends from your domestic tranquility account....