Every once in a while I focus on making/baking something for months until I find it "just right". This time the project is rye bread and things with rye flour.
I already have a base recipe that I think it works well. Going forward I am just adjusting/adding few things and playing with rye flour ratios, it's fun.
Here is the basic recipe.
Ingredients for basic recipe #1
2 cups bread flour - King Arthur if you can find
1 cup rye flour - whole grain organic if you can find
1/2 cups rolled oats
3 tablespoons freshly ground caraway seeds - or the powder if you don't have a grinder/mortar. I don't like the seeds as much as i like the freshly ground seeds
2 tablespoons sifted unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon instant yeast
1.5 tablespoons dark brown sugar or demerara sugar
1.5 teaspoons turmeric
1.5 teaspoons kosher/sea salt
1/2 teaspoon mahlab - you possibly can't find this everywhere so it's optional
4 tablespoons dry potato flakes/dry mashed potato
1 cup warm water - 20 seconds in microwave
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup sour pickle juice - I use homemade fermented guajillo pepper juice - will add the recipe here one day :)
Instructions
Place all dry ingredients to kitchen mixer bowl and mix well using a whisk/fork etc
Using a dough hook add all the wet ingredients mix in low (#2) for 3-4 minutes
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes
Knead the dough for 8 minutes in low and later medium speed pushing all the dough to the bottom every 2 minutes for even mix
Use a scraper form the dough into a ball, oil the dough and the bowl, cover it with the plastic wrap and let it rise until doubles in a warm place (like oven - turn the oven for just 20 seconds and turn it off) for about 60 to 90 minutes
Place parchment paper inside a 5x9 inch loaf pan. Shape the dough into a log and place onto the loaf pan. Loosely cover and let it rest another 90 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350
Place the rack in middle oven and bake for 35 minutes. Since every batch of flour is different, quick check after 30ish minutes to see if the internal temp is around 190, if not leave for another 5 min. I usually don't use thermometer when baking bread but since this is a dense and also already colored with cocoa bread, you can't really tell by just looking at it.
The first pic of the basic recipe above is with 2 tablespoons of millet seeds added -. It was crunchy but I think it's not necessary, you can also add pumpkin seeds etc but that also is not very noticeable/significant, so let's not add more calories. The bread above is about 3.5 inches high.
Now the denser bread that"I" really like; moist with lots of caraway seeds. I like it with a very good quality of room temp Irish butter(maybe dill butter?) and smoked sea salt on it ,nothing else. And unlike the bread above, this one is about 2.5 inches high
Ingredients
Same as basic recipe except;
increase rye flour to 1.5 cups
reduce bread flour to 1.5 cups
increase caraway to 4 tablespoons
Instructions
Follow the same recipe, but for the second rise, since the rye/bread flour ratio is 50/50 here it takes almost overnight to rise a bit - if that. So be patient, leave it overnight and bake it next day.
And these are my ingredients from Amazon fyi
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