Daring Bakers, December: Russian Rye Bread

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough bread in from Tonia George’s Things on Toast and Canteen’s Great British Food! I have experience with regular sourdough, but I love rye and have been wanting to try it out, especially because it's a whole grain food.


 I went for the humble sourdough rye loaf.

 
It had pretty nice innards! 

 
We ate most of the loaf with butter and honey!

 
And of course, the best way to eat rye: with corned beef!

 
Here's the starter at the end of day 1, just after the first feeding. I was a little skeptical because of our cold house.


Despite the cold house, the starter did grow after nightly feedings and occasional stints on a warm burner throughout the day. Basically, I'd heat one of the burners on our flattop stove, turned it off, then set the starter's bowl on it. It would remain foamy and yeasty-fruity smelling during the 5-day feeding process.


I added a little extra flour to give the dough some body, but it was still pretty liquid.


For the most part, it was a pourable batter as opposed to a kneadable dough, but I knew the dough would
be wet, so I just let it go.


Even though it was cold in the house, left in a sunny window for about 8 hours, it did poof up in its proofing bag.



It proofed to fill the loaf pan to the top.

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