Sourdough rye bread – perfect for soups, salads, charcuterie boards, sandwiches, and especially for having with gravlax.
This sourdough rye bread is one of my favorite breads for several reasons: it’s very tasty, almost addictive, healthy, and quick to make. I mean, ready-in-under-three-hours quick. Say you want a loaf of delicious, freshly baked bread for dinner. Start making it as late as early afternoon and you will have it just in time for dinner. Only my country flaxseed bread can beat this one on speed.
Besides being quick, this rye bread is also very easy to make even for a novice bread baker. It’s as easy as the country flaxseed bread. All you have to do is mix the ingredients, knead a little, let the dough rest, shape, score, let it rest again while preheating the oven, then bake. And voila, you sourdough rye bread is ready. Crusty, golden brown and rustic.
Another cool thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t require any special tools and equipment, like a baking stone, a cloche or a proofing basket. If you’ve never baked bread before, or don’t do it regularly to have all those tools, this recipe is perfect for you.
This isn’t a pure sourdough bread as you may have guessed by now as those take much longer to ferment and proof. It uses a combination of sourdough starter and commercial yeast, which provides the best of both worlds: quick leavening, depth of flavor, light structure, and an airy crumb.
In this recipe, I use liquid malt extract. It gives rye breads a darker color, richer taste, and malty sweetness. I highly recommend it; it will transform your sourdough rye bread into a very special, memorable loaf. If you don’t have malt extract, use molasses or even honey. While they won’t provide the same flavor or color, you will still get some of the benefits.
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cup water at 95F; 300 ml
- 2 tsp instant yeast 9 g
- 2 Tbsp liquid malt extract 50 g; or use honey or molasses
- 2 3/4 cups rye flour using 'scoop and sweep' method; 350 g
- 1 cup all-purpose flour slighly heaping; 150 g
- 2 tsp kosher salt 12 g
- 1 cup sourdough starter 175 g
Instructions
- In a large bowl, dissolve liquid malt extract in warm water. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until combined. The dough will be very sticky (but not wet) and that's to be expected. If too wet, add more flour. Scrape the dough off your hands. Wash your hands, this will make it much easier to knead the sticky dough. Knead for about 7 minutes inside the bowl. You can also use a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. In a stand mixer, knead for 3 minutes on low and 4 minutes on medium speed.
- Cover the bowl and let the dough rest in a warm place for about 30-40 minutes. During this time, give the dough 3 stretch and folds, where each time you would pull each corner of the dough and fold onto itself. If it's easier, just knead the dough briefly, about 5-10 seconds each time. This will help it develop gluten and build strength.
- On a lightly floured work surface, shape the dough into a ball and flatten slightly. Place on a piece of parchment paper. Using a serrated knife, make scores as shown in the picture.
- Cover the dough and let rest for 45-60 minutes. It should rise by at least 30%.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 475F with a heavy-duty baking sheet and a bread pan filled about 1/2" with hot water.
- Once the oven is preheated, slide the dough with the parchment paper onto the hot baking sheet. Spray a little bit of water on the walls of the oven and close it quickly. Bake at 475F for 10 minutes. Remove the water pan, drop the temperature to 425F, and continue baking for another 35 minutes.
- Remove the bread from the oven, transfer to a cooling rack and let cool for at least 1 hour at room temperature before slicing.
Gail T
I made this last night in an oval Dutch Oven with the parchment with no mess to clean up. Put the Dutch Oven in to preheated with the oven. I baked it at 450F for 28 min and removed the lid for an additional 12 min. I also added 1 tsp of cocoa, 1/2 tsp Expresso powder and 2 tsp pickle juice. YUMMY!
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Good to hear it, enjoy! Try my other breads.
Bill J
Victor,
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll try the Dutch Oven later this week and let you know the outcome.
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Good luck.
Bill J
You mentioned that you “don’t have to steam” if using a Dutch Oven (D.O.). Do you heat the D. O. as you indicate heating the baking sheet? Then transfer the dough to the D.O. ? Top on the D.O.? How long? What tip?
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Bill, I’ve actually never tried baking this particular bread in a DO or a cloche but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work well. That out of the way, yes, you always need to preheat the DO or the cloche before baking. How long? Some say an hour, some say 30 minutes. I’ve tried anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. My old cheapo electric oven needed a good hour to preheat with the big stone in it or a couple of cloches so that’s what I did. In my new gas oven which is much more efficient I need only about 30 minutes so do 30 minutes. Once the DO is preheated, carefully remove the lid, transfer the dough to the bottom port and cover with the lid. As far as tips go… well, you can turn the dough over onto a piece of parchment paper, score and slide the dough onto the hot DO. That’s what many home bakers do. This simplifies dough transfer. I used to do that but now I have a different method. Mind you, I bake in clay cloches which may better facilitate my method as opposed to a DO… anyway, I turn the dough straight onto the bottom part of the preheated cloche (it will be on the oven rack which I pull out while doing this), score, cover with the top part of the cloche and bake. This makes things very easy for me and works well. Hope this helps.
Dash
Superb recipe. Got high praise and lots of happy eaters during a dinner party. Scrumptious with French cheese
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Glad to hear it, Dash. Happy baking!
Herman Gersten
Hello Victor,
This bread is delicious.
However, I need some help.
I am not fond of sourdough in a rye bread, so I added about 50 grams each of the flours, and about 80 grams of water without fermentation instead of the sourdough. The dough as you predicted was extremely sticky, so much so I had great difficulty removing it from my hands. I cautiously added more flour until I could stretch and fold more easily. The texture of the finished bread was rather tough and difficult to slice even though it looked like your photo. Very, very chewy. It did taste very good, however, especially the crust!
Can you suggest how to lighten the texture in the absence of sourdough? Less oven time, perhaps? Because I altered your recipe, I didn’t give it a star rating, but it would have been a five-star recipe, without my changes.
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Hello Herman,
Apologies for the late response. My experience tells me that the toughness came from the extra flour. Yes, the dough in this recipe is very sticky but try to resist adding more flour. That should lighten up the crumb. As a thought, you can easily substitute sourdough starter for poolish in this recipe and get almost 100% close to the original recipe. For the poolish, mix 88g of water with 88g of AP flour and 3g of yeast, let sit at room temp for 3 hours or until it doubles/triples in volume. If you put it in the oven with the light on (warm place), it will get there much sooner.
JayBee
Should the sourdough starter be fed and ripe, or can you use discard since this adds yeast?
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Yes, it should be ripe. In this recipe, the purpose of the sourdough is to add flavor and the yeast primarily will do the leavening.
Tom
Profoundly Simple. Delicious. I used Eden barley malt syrup (Amazon).
Log
You forgot to add a starter in your instructions…
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
It’s all there. ‘Rest of the ingredients’ includes the starter.
Virlene
Would baking this in a dutch oven negate the “steam” steps for baking the loaf? TIA
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Correct. You don’t need to steam if using a Dutch oven or a cloche.
Ally
Wow! I made this bread and it turned out amazing! It was extremely easy to make and very delicious. My whole family enjoyed the bread and I really liked the flavours and how soft it was. Although, when I was making the dough, I had to add a bit more flour to the dough because it was a little bit too sticky. But in the end, it was so yummy!
Victor @ Taste of Artisan
Glad to hear that, Ally. Happy baking!