Rye-Wheat Bread

Flour, water, yeast and salt. That's all that goes into this one. To make it more interesting, however, there are actually 4 different types of flour used; two kinds of wheat flour and two kinds of rye flour. After making a rye sourdough that has meanly wheat flour in the main dough last week, this time it's a wheat sourdough (and there is quite a bit of sourdough in there) with only rye flour in the main dough. As often with wheat sourdoughs you have to bring a little bit of time because of longer resting periods.

Sourdough

• 190g (6 3/4oz) all purpose wheat flour
• 160ml (2/3 cup) water
• 20g wheat sourdough starter

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir well. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and let rest for 16 hours at room temperature. Like many times when I make wheat sourdough breads I had enough sourdough for the whole batch so I just took 370g (13oz) of sourdough and left it outside the fridge for a couple of hours to adjust to room temperature.

Autolyse

• 90g (3 1/8 oz) whole grain wheat flour
• 60ml (2 oz) water

Mix flour and water well, cover and let rest for 30 minutes. This mix is very dry so I started mixing it with a spatula and ended up kneading it a little by hand since it's a little difficult to get all the flour mixed in otherwise.

Main Dough

• Sourdough
• Autolysed dough
• 200g (7oz) whole grain rye flour
• 200g (7oz) light rye flour
• 260ml (8 3/4 oz) water
• 5g (1/4oz) fresh yeast or 1 tsp Active Dry Yeast, 1/2 tsp of sugar and 26ml (7/8oz) of water, mixed and let stand for about 10 minutes
• 2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients with a stirdy wooden spoon or by hand for about 5 minutes. I used a spoon because the dough is pretty sticky, that's pretty hard work though. Cover bowl air-tight and let rest for 2 hours. During that time fold the dough every 30 minutes (3 times in total). Since the dough is very sticky I used a big spatula to do this. Stick spatula under the dough from the side and fold it into the middle. Go around the bowl multiple times and repeat the folding.

Put the dough onto a well floured surface and quickly knead it into round shape. Place in a round banneton with seam up, cover with plastic wrap and transfer into the oven with just the light turned on (which creates a temperature around 90°F/32°C) and let proof for 35 minutes. At room temperature it takes probably 10-15 minutes longer.

Meanwhile preheat oven to 485°F (250°C).

Place parchement paper on a baking sheet and turn dough over onto it (seam is now down). Cut 5-8 curved lines about half a centimeter (1/5 inch or so) deep into the top - I did about 10 which was a little to much. Let the lines come together on one side and create a feather-like look but leaving the opposite side open.

Place baking sheet on middle rack, spray a lot of water into the oven using a spray bottle and bake for 10 minutes. Then open the oven door shortly to let the steam out and reduce the temperature to 395°F (200°C) and back with falling temperature for another 40 minutes. To get a nice crust open the oven door a little bit for the last 5 minutes.

Let cool on a cooling rack.

Original recipe (German language) in "Das Brotbackbuch" by Lutz Geißler, published by Ulmer Eugen Verlag.