| Prep Time: 35-40 Min | Bake Time: 25-40 Min | Yield: 3 Loaves |
There's really nothing quite like the smell of fresh baked bread. One of my fondest memories growing up is when my Dad would make bread. My favorite was when he would make dinner rolls. I would sit waiting in the kitchen for the bread to get done so I could have a fresh dinner roll, with butter of course! Needless to say, between my brother and I, those dinner rolls didn't last very long!
My dad has created several bread recipes over the years and I thought I would share one of them with you today: Sourdough Rye/white Bread. I make this recipe often, since it's a fairly large recipe, and we go through a lot of bread at our house!
You will want to begin this recipe the night before by making the sponge. The sponge is necessary to get the full fermentation needed for your sourdough bread to achieve the appropriate tangy flavor that is associated with sourdough bread.
You will need the following ingredients for your sponge:
Rye Sponge
- 1 cup Sourdough starter
- 2 cups Fine ground organic rye flour
- 2 cups water
Step 1: Mix the sponge ingredients at least eight hours before you intend to mix the bread. I find it easiest to mix the sponge before I go to bed at night. I have left my sponge up to around 12 hours, though if you find your bread to be too tangy, you may want to reduce the fermentation time.
The rest of the recipe is as follows:
Ingredients Needed:
- 2 cups wheat berries (grind)
- 2 cups bread flour (appx)
- 1 cup non-fat dry milk
- ¼ cup sugar
- ¼ cup molasses
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 Tablespoon yeast
- 3 Tablespoons oil
- 2 eggs
Step 2:The next morning, mix together 1/4 cup warm water (approx. 110 degrees) 1 Tbsp sugar and 1 Tbsp yeast. Let sit on the counter and bloom.
Step 3: Once the yeast has bloomed, pour into your sponge, and add in the oil and eggs. Stir together until incorporated.
Step 4: In a separate large mixing bowl, stir together 4 cups of the bread flour, sugar, powdered milk and salt.
Step 5: Once your flour mixture is stirred together, add to your wet ingredients/sponge. Stir together until thick, adding more bread flour if need be to make dough more workable.
Step 6: Turn out onto a floured surface. The sourdough tends to make the dough stickier than you may be used to. Try not to use an excess of white flour. Kneed the mix at least 20 minutes or longer as necessary. Rye has very little gluten and the gluten in the wheat needs to be well worked. This will help to reduce the stickiness. Dough should be smooth and elastic.
Step 7: Allow dough to sit, covered, until doubled in size. Punch it down. I like to kneed it for a few minutes after I punch it down, both to get rid of excess bubbles, and it will reduce the top splitting.
Step 8: Shape into loaves and/or buns and place on well greased and floured loaf pans or cookie sheet. This will make 3 large loaves or 4 slightly smaller loaves. I like to make mine into 2 large loaves and a sheet of of hamburger buns (just press down on them slightly with your palm to flatten into hamburger sized buns).
Step 9: Allow to double in size again. Bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes for buns, and 35-40 minutes for loaves.
In the photo above, the loaves rose a little larger than I would have liked, which resulted in the bread being a little more airy, but no one complained! Always be sure to keep an eye on your loaves during rise time since sometimes it'll rise quickly, depending on the temperature of your home. Usually rise time is 45 minutes to an hour.
When bread is fully baked, turn out of pans onto a cooling rack.
Clearly one of my loaves ended up slightly misshapen, but it got eaten anyway!
If you have any questions about sourdough or would like to purchase some starter, please send me a message! We will soon be selling sourdough starter in my store. Look for it in the coming weeks!