Fancy a delicious rye bread with sourdough? You only need 4 ingredients and a little patience. You will love this recipe!
A simple rye bread with sourdough is the classic among all breads. However, very few people dare to prepare their own sourdough.
But it's not as complicated as it sounds.
Today we show you how you can bake a rye bread with sourdough. Step by step and very simply explained, it works guaranteed even for baking beginners!
Why I love rye bread with sourdough so much? It has a really pleasant mildly sour taste and a nutty note. Thus, it goes wonderfully with savory spreads, cheese, vegetables and Co.
And what is particularly practical: a rye bread made from sourdough stays fresh for a particularly long time and does not dry out.
Table of contents
You will love the smell of freshly baked bread in the apartment! It fascinates me every time :)
What you should know about baking rye bread with sourdough
It is more laborious to make bread with sourdough than with yeast or Baking powder*. But it's totally worth it. The slightly sour taste is simply unique.
Sourdough needs time
Take your time with the dough and give it enough time to work. All in all, you need about 24 hours.
For the bread to be really good, it must rest. Only then can it develop its delicious taste.
If you have baked your bread with sourdough, you can enjoy it for a long time. The lactic acid bacteria in rye bread inhibit the formation of mold cultures.
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You can refine rye bread with sourdough
You should keep your first sourdough bread very simple. If you have already tried baking a few times, you can be more experimental.
Nuts like hazelnuts or walnuts fit perfectly into bread. Especially if you roast them in a pan beforehand. Important: Do not use oil for roasting and do not let nuts get too dark.
But also ready-made bread spice mixtures fit wonderfully into the dough. Try herb salt, caraway, anise, coriander seeds or fennel seeds. Super tasty!
Choose the right flour
Flours can be quite different. Each absorbs different amounts of water. So you may need more water with some brands than others. Normally, however, these variations are minimal.
If you want to be sure that the rye bread with sourdough succeeds every time, make a note if you had to add more water than indicated in the recipe.
Always hold back a small sip of water. If necessary, you can add more water.
Shape the bread
Round or elongated? It doesn't really matter and is up to you. Perhaps you have already seen many beautiful breads. Especially the round breads often have a beautiful groove pattern.
They get this pattern through proofing baskets. If you let the dough rest in them, it will take the shape.
Personally I find the proofing baskets from Fablcrew at Amazon beautiful. You can choose between different sized grooves here. A normal bowl does it but also. The pattern is missing, but the taste remains the same.
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How to make a sourdough starter
Have you baked with sourdough before? Then you can skip the next lines. Here comes the most important information for beginners.
You can make sourdough from rye, wheat or spelt flour. The easiest and in my opinion the best tasting is rye bread with sourdough.
Once you have started sourdough and the right location, you can use it forever. Provided you feed it regularly :)
If you don't feel like it or don't have time for it, you can also buy a sourdough starter. This is faster and easier.
At Starter set of passion bread you will find, in addition to the sourdough culture, a recipe book with lots of sourdough ideas.
Alternatively I can "Wild Nature Sourdough" from Fairment recommend. The liquid starter is enough for 40 loaves.
1. mix water and flour
Use a large coffee cup or a medium sized bowl. Important: Not made of glass, the dough likes it dark. Or take a glass and put it in a cupboard so that no light gets to the dough.
Mix 3 tablespoons of organic whole wheat flour with 3 tablespoons of 27° warm water in the cup. Use a thermometer for this. You should get a smooth dough that drips well from the spoon.
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If it is too firm, add a little more water. But again, it's important that it's at the right temperature.
Why organic flour? Well, organic whole wheat flour contains more yeast cultures and bacteria, which our sourdough urgently needs.
2. the right location
That's it with the first ingredients. You are now much closer to your rye bread with sourdough. Now it's time to store the starter properly and let the bacteria and yeasts do their work.
It should not be too cold and preferably dark. Room temperature fits perfectly.
Put a lid on the cup. However, not airtight. The sourdough needs oxygen to breathe.
3. wait
Now you have done everything that was possible. The rest now depends on the time. It will take one to three days before your sourdough starter needs to be fed again.
Add 3 tablespoons of flour and lukewarm water. Mix well and let stand for another day.
Can you see that small bubbles are rising? Then the sourdough is ready.
It now smells slightly sour and is ready to be processed.
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4. feed your sourdough starter
And on it goes. Your dough needs something to eat again. Add 100 g of flour and 100 ml of warm water. Mix and let rest for 24 hours.
Do you see how the dough rises and that more and more bubbles form? The smell already reminds a little of a sourdough bread. Lightly of yeast and a little vinegar.
If it smells very sour or even fermented, then you need to dispose of it and start over. It may be that the location was not right. Try it somewhere else.
The starter is ready to be transformed into a delicious bread. And it's not even that difficult. Once you have grown the sourdough starter, you already have the most difficult part behind you.
Don't worry, you only need to prepare the starter once. You can then store it in the refrigerator or freezer. You can read how it works after the recipe.
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How to get the taste in rye bread with sourdough
You may have noticed that there are different tasting breads. Some are very mild, others are strong. How your rye bread tastes depends on how much rye flour is acidified.
It is always between 25% and 50%. In this recipe 1/3 of the flour is acidified. The bread tastes pleasantly mild. The more sourdough you use, the faster the dough rises.
So: You have two options. Either you use your own starter or a purchased rye sourdough culture.
Rye bread with sourdough
Ingredients
- 300 ml lukewarm water
- 100 g Sourdough starter (homemade)
- ½ kg Wholemeal rye flour
- 10 g Salt
- 1 EL Bread spice
Anleitung
- Dust the work surface with flour.
- Pour the water into a bowl and gently stir in the sourdough starter.
- Now add the flour very slowly. Mix the mixture and knead the dough with your hands. By the way, you hardly need to knead a sourdough bread with rye flour, but a little bit doesn't hurt.
- Take the dough out of the bowl and knead it on the work surface. Finally, add salt and bread seasoning.
- Your dough must now rest for 3 hours. Fill it into a floured proofing basket. Cover it and put the proofing basket in a warm place.
- Preheat the oven to 250° top-bottom heat.
- Turn the bread from the proofing basket onto a baking sheet that you have previously lined with baking paper.
- Put it in the oven. Bake the bread for 20 minutes at 250°. Place an ovenproof bowl with water in the oven. Now turn the oven down to 200° and bake the rye bread for another 30 minutes.
Let the bread cool on a rack. By the way, it tastes best a few hours after baking. That's when the aroma really develops.
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How to keep the sourdough alive
If you have the right location and diligently care for the sourdough, then it is virtually immortal and can be bred forever. Just do not forget to feed the bacteria and yeasts.
Leave about 2 tablespoons of sourdough and continue feeding it. So you can bake a loaf of bread at any time.
Your sourdough will be happy with 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of lukewarm water every day. You don't always have to use whole wheat flour. Even very finely ground flour does its job.
In between you reward the dough with 2 tablespoons of whole wheat flour.
Eventually you'll have masses of it. Even though rye bread with sourdough tastes mega delicious, but you can never eat that much. Give away some of the sourdough starter to friends and neighbors.
It is this first step that is the most complicated and the one that most people shy away from.
Otherwise, the only thing that helps: bake a lot of sourdough bread and give it away. Or dispose of some, which almost hurts your heart when you have built a bond :)
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Store sourdough in the refrigerator
You go on vacation or can no longer eat sourdough bread? Then put the dough in a forced break.
In the short term, it can be stored in the refrigerator. This is perfect if you only want to bake rye bread with sourdough every 7-14 days. Close the jar and put it in the refrigerator.
The yeasts and bacteria continue to work, but much slower. You now need to supply the dough with water and flour only 1x per week.
If you want to bake a sourdough bread, take it out of the refrigerator one day before and feed it with flour and warm water. Within 24 hours it will be awakened from hibernation and ready for baking.
Then you can put it back in the refrigerator. Do not forget the lid!
Store sourdough in the freezer
If you want to be completely flexible when baking bread, then off with the sourdough starter in the freezer.
Feed the dough, let it stand for 12 hours until it has risen really nice. Put the lid on and put it in the freezer.
The subzero temperatures stop the fermentation. You do not have to feed the dough and survives up to half a year.
If you want to bake a rye bread with sourdough, take the dough starter out of the freezer and let it thaw slowly in the refrigerator.
Feed it flour and water after thawing and let it sit overnight and it's ready to go again.
What sourdough actually is
For those who not only want to bake a rye bread with sourdough, but also have a little background knowledge, the next lines.
Sourdough is a natural leavening agent like yeast or Baking powder*. It allows the bread dough to rise, making it light and fluffy.
It lifts the volume of the bread evenly and provides a crispy crust with extra flavor.
It is a mixture of yeast fungi and lactic acid bacteria. During fermentation - i.e. resting - over 300 aromatic substances are produced. And it is precisely these that later make our rye bread so aromatic.
During sourdoughing, phytic acids are broken down in the grain. They would normally inhibit the absorption of minerals. But because they are now broken down, the grain is even healthier for us.
Our conclusion
It is not so difficult to bake a rye bread with sourdough. However, you need to bring time with you. Once you get a taste for homemade sourdough bread, you'll love it! Attention: danger of addiction :)
Good luck!
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