40% Rye Bread with Caraway Seed
Aug 9th, 2008 by SteveB
As a young boy growing up in Brooklyn, NY, it was always a rare treat to enjoy a meal at one of the many area restaurants. I remember particularly looking forward to eating at the local pizzeria (hence my attempt at recreating New York-style pizza), the not-so-local Chinese restaurant (my foray into Chinese cuisine can be the topic of a whole separate blog!) and the kosher delicatessen. As far as deli was concerned, for me, sandwiches of corned beef or beef tongue piled high on Jewish rye bread with mustard and a kosher dill pickle on the side just couldn’t be beat.
I’ve always wanted to recreate the Jewish rye bread of my youth but with some minor “upgrades”. Firstly, I’ve always thought that the rye taste was terribly overpowered by the flavor of the added caraway seeds. So instead of baking a light rye, which is typically 10-15% rye flour (baker’s percentage), I decided to go with a heartier 40% rye and cut back on the caraway seeds. Secondly, the crust on a typical Jewish rye can tend to be rubbery with little flavor. The deeply flavored, crackly-crisp crust (how’s that for alliteration?) of a hearth-baked loaf is what is needed here.
The formula below is a modification of the 40% Caraway Rye described in Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes. The amount of caraway has been cut in half and the rye sour has been made up at 100% hydration.
Rye Sour
- 360 g Medium Rye Flour
- 360 g Water
- 20 g Sourdough Starter
Final Dough
- 545 g King Arthur All Purpose Flour
- 260 g Water
- 740 g (all of the above) Rye Sour
- 1 Tsp. Instant Yeast
- 15 g Salt
- 15 g Caraway Seeds
The evening before the bake, prepare the rye sour by mixing together the rye flour, water and mature sourdough starter until homogeneous. Let sit overnight for 12-14 hours at 78-80°F.
The next morning, combine the all purpose flour, water, instant yeast and sourdough starter with a dough whisk, adding additional water if necessary to obtain a dough of medium consistency (20 g of additional water was needed in this case). Turn the dough out of the mixing bowl onto your work surface and begin hand kneading (Musings on Mixing…) the somewhat sticky dough until it just starts to come together. Add the salt and continue hand mixing until the dough reaches medium development, about 10-15 minutes. Add the caraway seeds and hand mix just until evenly distributed within the dough. Place the dough in a lightly oiled container, cover, and let ferment at 78-80°F for 1 hour. Divide the dough into 1 1/2 lb. pieces, lightly round and let rest under a plastic sheet for 10 minutes. Shape the pieces into batards (Alternate Batard Shaping), place the batards seam side down on a couche and let proof for an additional hour.
After the hour, turn the batards onto a peel, score the batards, load into the oven and bake at 450°F with steam for the first 15 minutes of baking. After 15 minutes, remove the steaming cover, turn the oven down to 425°F and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool before you slather slices with mustard and build overstuffed sandwiches filled with your favorite deli meat.
My decision is made! I’m going to attack Hamelman’s 80% rye. Your 40% looks very nice, indeed. The Americans are so in to their rye that I’d like to find out why. I love light rye with caraway but the last time I made it for my family they refused to eat it because of the seeds. It’s a cultural thing maybe because they don’t usual frown on my bread. But a dense one with no seeds, that will be a challenge for me to make but i’ll think they’ll like it better.
Jane
Jane, here in the U.S., light rye with caraway seeds is often the first introduction many people have to rye bread. For those who do not like the taste of caraway seeds, that first taste is often their last. Have fun with the 80% rye. I look forward to hearing all about it.
Hi Steve – you inspired me and I just finished my second batch of 40% rye. The 1st batch last week was excellent. I used my regular stiff levain to build the starter and ground whole rye berries because I didn’t have any rye flour. Do you maintain a separate rye starter?
I wanted to ask you why you used King Arthur All Purpose Flour instead of the high-gluten flour Hamelman calls for. Instead I baked the 2nd batch with high-gluten flour to compare for myself. The flavor was great but I didn’t get the loft I did with the first batch. Was that your experience?
I watched your oven steaming technique – do you bake 1 loaf at a time? I have a 40 year old Tappan oven 22″ wide so that set up would be difficult for me but it looks simple and effective.
Just curious, how many times did you bake this bread before you settled on your formula. I think I’m getting better at trouble shooting after the fact!!
Our daily bread is the Pain au Levain from Hamelman’s Bread and now we have a rye we love.
Thanks for the inspiration,
Judy
Judy, I feel honored having inspired you! 🙂
Congratualtions on your success with the 40% Rye Bread! This bread is my “go to” rye bread, as well. The first time I baked it, I felt the caraway was a bit overpowering and the crumb had a bit too much chewiness for my taste. For my second bake, I cut back on the caraway and went from a high-gluten to an all-purpose flour for a slightly more tender crumb. I also create the rye sour from my white sourdough starter. I keep only a white sourdough starter; it makes maintenance just that much easier.
With the size baking stone and steam cover I have, I typically bake 2 loaves at a time; the video shows only one for clarity’s sake.
“Jane, here in the U.S., light rye with caraway seeds is often the first introduction many people have to rye bread. ”
I have often wondered why. In Germany for example (a rye bread country, if you will) very few breads are flavored with caraway. If so, it usually is called a “Caraway Bread”. In the South of Germany, a light rye bread is preferred, made from a very soft dough and baked into huge oblong loaves, then often brushed with a starch-water-mixture. If the baker added caraway to it, he would go broke very soon, I think. Regards, Nils
Nils, I’m not sure how caraway seeds have become so inextricably linked to rye bread here in the U.S. I do think it unfortunate, though, because many people here will never come to appreciate the wonderful flavor and texture that rye flour can impart to a bread.
Steve,
I agree with you there. I love rye in bread, sometimes just a touch. But rye bread with caraway is a very particular tasting bread. I like it, but it is no longer an every day bread and I don’t eat sandwiches, so I don’t really have an opportunity to eat it. I wouldn’t like it with cheese and I wouldn’t like it with butter and honey (the only thing I eat bread with, except soup or stew sometimes). Yet a bread with a rye addition is a whole other ball game and my personal preference for my breakfast toast.
Jane
Hi Steve,
I noticed you often add salt only after you have the dough mixed to some point. The same for caraway in this recipe. What is the reason for not mixing the salt and seeds in the flour right away? I read Andrew Whitley’s Bread matters and he doesn’t seem to care that much.
bBrandy, there are occasions where I add the salt to the dough after an initial mixing period. Salt has a tendency of “tightening up” the dough and it is much easier to hand mix the dough before salt addition, while the dough is still fairly extensible. Seeds, like caraway, should be added towards the end of the mix because they can interfere with proper gluten development. Other add-ins, like raisins, olives, etc., are also added towards the end of the mix in order to prevent their being mashed into small pieces during the full mixing period.
Well, I’ll try and I wonder if I’m able to spot the difference.
well, there definitely is a big difference. What is funny though, is the influence of having the salt added to somewhat developed 100% whole wheat flour. Unlike white dough it didn’t get tightened rather then got nearly fallen apart and never recovered fully. Since then I put the salt into the mixture right after autolyse when treating whole wheat. Any insights anybody?
I’ve done both – adding salt afterwards and adding salt with the flours when mixing the dough. I haven’t really noticed all that much difference between the two – if any difference at all – except that it adding the salt after the autolyse requires a leap of faith. Initially, it seems like the salt WILL NOT be absorbed.
As far as I’m concerned, rye bread has to have caraway seeds. When I first made rye bread, there were rumblings of dissent about my insistence to add caraway seeds. But after tasting the results, the dissenter started specifically asking for caraway seeds in rye bread.
(I’ve GOT to find a decent source of dark rye flour. We neeeeed some caraway rye bread. How else will we get our Reuben sandwich fix?)
Yea, it really looks like the salt won’t be absorbed though it is eventually:-) The difference I noticed was between kneading the dough after the autolyse without any salt in it and after adding the salt. I don’t bother myself anymore and mix the salt in the mixture right away as I usually use fairly wet dough and anytime I can I use the little kneading method described by Dan Lepard e.g. here http://danlepard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1187&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=walnut+loaf
or make the strech&folds during the bulk fermentation or I just knead the dough as it is.
Another thing that can be put in rye bread is coriander .
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/3570/dan-lepards-walnut-bread
and the technique is described there too.
b.
From my own experience with rye doughs, 20% rye flour is the maximum that can be handled without excessive stickyness. But I always add 20% whole grain spelt flour, which enhances flavor and eases handling. The remaining flour content is 60% bread flour, although clear flour would be preferable. I formerly used a high-gluten, bromated flour (Kyrol), and got spectacular volume.
For those people that are offended by the strong flavor of whole caraway seeds, try using ground caraway. Adjust the amount according to taste.
Hi Steve,
I don’t have any Sourdough Starter, and I’d like to make the recipe. Can I do anything else in lieu of the Sourdough?
Chris
Chris, this bread really benefits from the flavor and structure the rye sour brings to the loaf. Creating a sourdough starter from scratch is easy and takes only a few days. Why not give it a try?
hi Steve,
i want to ask what if i don’t have steam oven? will the bread be successful? can i brush bread with water instead?
thx
Ola
Ola,
If you don’t have a steam oven (I don’t know many home bakers who do!), I would suggest using the steaming technique shown here. As a simpler alternative, you can just cover your bread with an inverted, heat-proof bowl for the first few minutes of baking so that the steam released by the bread will keep the crust soft and allow for maximum oven spring.
Well thank you Steve.
When I was growing up there was a little neighborhood bakery that made the most amazing Rye bread. My father would pick up a loaf every Friday after work as a treat for the family. After going off to college I missed that rye bread and would be sure to get a loaf every visit back to the family home. Now living in a different country I am not able to get it at all. And here in New Zealand it is not able to get anything that remotely resembles that lovely Rye bread … until today.
Wow this bread has the crumb and crust and most importantly the flavor of the bread of my youth. It is a just bit light on caraway seeds, no worries I will ‘fix’ that very soon. 🙂
Thank you!
I continually enjoy your blog since i stumbled upon it, finding it helpful and informative for a novice bread maker such as myself. I just got a 20 quart hobart so i look forward to putting it to work. I am particularly excited to try the double flour addition technique to aerate my dough. I’ve tried to use a hand mixer with a thick pancake batter consistency but i usually end up having to clean off my laptop screen since i usually read ingredients off of it. But anyways, this looks like a tasty bread. I’m fairly new to rye, though i tried a 60% rye with flax seed from thefreshloaf.com’s handbook with a few alterations. One of the alterations was adding equal parts caraway and coriander, and a touch of fennel, and toasting the seeds in a constantly moving skillet before grinding all of them up except for the caraway. The smell was amazing; the toasting really does allow those flavors and aromas to represent their unique individual qualities. Just out of curiosity, why do you prefer a rye sour with the addition of instant yeast in the final dough as opposed to just using a larger amount of sourdough culture? I look forward to reading your future posts and thanks again for your contributions to bread hobbyists. Keep up the good work
Chris J.
Hi Chris,
I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying the blog.
On those rare occasions where I add a small amount of baker’s yeast to a naturally leavened bread, it serves to slightly shorten the second fermentation period (proofing) and ensures a more consistent product.
Hello, SteveB! Your blog is really wonderful! It’s very inspiring to see commercial-quality breads obtained in the humble home-it gives me hope that I might produce bread of a similar calibre one of these days. Now, this might sound odd, but can you possibly describe the flavor of caraway seeds? I think that what I have is caraway seed (the appearance is identical to pictures of caraway that I’ve seen), but I’ve never tasted caraway before, so I’m not sure. Is it sweet? smoky? licorice-y? astringent? bitter? warm?
Hi Victoria,
Thanks for your kind words.
While yours is not necessarily an odd request, it certainly is a challenging one! 🙂
Caraway seeds have a very distinctive flavor. They are definitely not sweet, smokey or licorice-like. To my taste, they have a difficult-to-describe spiciness and perhaps just a touch of bitterness.
[…] from the blog Bread Cetera, the following adjustments were made to the original […]
Is the Tsp in your recipe a teaspoon or a tablespoon? In just about every other formula on your site you write tsp, and we’ve been trained to write teaspoon as either t or tsp and tablespoon as either T or tbsp. just want to ensure I’m understanding your intent as I troubleshoot my attempts at this delicious bread! (Great crust and crumb, but sticky, unstructured dough with little oven spring.)
Thanks for putting this site up.
Hi Pat,
The abbreviation ‘Tsp’ is meant to indicate ‘teaspoon’.
Thanks. Was the capital ‘t’ in ‘Tsp’ combined with my last attempt that was throwing me off. First time I made your recipe, I had good, but not great, oven spring. Second time, due to getting nailed by the flu on the planned day of my bake, I left the rye sour over 24 hours. The sour showed great activity; however, the loaves had absolutely no spring in the oven, and were pretty dense. Of course, it toasted well, and I ate them each day for breakfast anyway :o) Baking again today. Hopefully with results more like the first attempt!
Hello from Denmark.
Here we call it saour bread and it’s used for smoked salmon.
Great recipe! At the time I made it, I did not have access to medium rye, only stoneground whole grain rye. The rye sour was very dry; no surprise there because I expect the whole grain to absorb more water. I added about 1/2 water to the sour. It looked great after fermentation. I used bread flour in the final dough, anticipating a need for more lift, and adjusted hydration to get a medium dough. I popped the two loaves into brotforms. The resulting loaves looked great and tasted great.
@Nils
There is lot of caraway on rye bread in Southern Germany, I think it might be a regional thing. In Munich every bakery offers at least 3 options; whole caraway(sometimes with whole coriander too) on light/medium Rye, ground caraway is used in Vinchgauer and darker sourdough Ryes and there are several rolls just covered in caraway. Keep in mind that caraway is confusingly called KÁ¼mmel in German
Hi Nils,
Thank you for the information.
Way to go Steave,my first caraway loaf of rye bread show up excellent ,made second one,even better.Great ,excellent working formula,plus a lot space for your personal creativity…i cut a little on caraway seeds but did add coriander seeds to it as russians do ,also i used whole wheat flour instead of semolina or corn meal ,it will give more flavor and test to crust.originally i was born in siberia ,Ru and my memory’s full of any kind rustic russian rye/whole wheat bread.BTW,russians folke/country name for rye loaf is “Caraway”. means big loaf.Thanks again,Arthur
Arty Z,
I’m glad you enjoyed the recipe. It’s nice to hear that you were able to modify the recipe to more closely resemble the Russian breads that you used to eat and enjoy.
[…] last time I did bake I put a couple of loaves in the freezer for later use. That’s a loaf of 40 Percent Caraway Rye in the below photo, my current favorite rye bread. After baking, I wrapped the thoroughly cooled […]