Reading, Writing, and Sourdough

10-grain breads. Every year, Sue's brother Marty flies in from California for a holiday season of serious cooking. We collaborate on some baked things, but mostly I try to keep loaves of bread around to handle leftovers. This year Marty made prime rib, sous vide salmon, elk roast, Danish smorrebrod, and affiliated dishes too numerous to list.  I've begun experimenting with recycled breads and have had great success using old ryes. I break a stale bread into chunks and add water to soften. In the two loaves (above) I reused a Danish rye that was insufficiently cooked the first time round so it wasn't a great eat. The original loaf contained flax seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, wheat and rye berries. To the mash I also added chopped walnuts, oats, and corn meal. If you count the spelt flour in the dough, the final loaf had 10 grains, a moist interior, crisp crust, and enough deliciousness that the first loaf was gone by afternoon and the second disappeared th...

Rye breads are tricky because they have almost no gluten. To compensate many rye bread recipes contain only a small amount of rye flour, the bulk being given over to wheat flour whose gluten allows for an ample rise and light crumb. When the rye content of a recipe increases a baker can knead for an exceptionally long time to encourage what little gluten there is to bind together so the bread will rise, or the recipe calls upon yeast to supplement a sourdough culture. Commercial yeast can lift nearly anything. Danes, like citizens of other northern European countries too cold to grow much wheat, consume a lot of rye bread, much of it made with 100% rye flour. This Danish rye made with soaked flax seeds and a tablespoon of barley malt syrup was leavened using only a rye sourdough starter. The dough was not kneaded, but simply allowed to ferment for eight hours at 67 degrees. It doubled in volume and the result was a richly flavored, slightly sour, malted, full-bodied rye bread....