Maintaining a rye starter and preparing for a bake

When breadsong took the lid off her container of rye starter during last month's Baking with Natural Starters Workshop in Victoria, BC, there was a collective gasp of surprise then a few seconds of reverent silence before we all exclaimed about the extraordinary honey-like aroma. Breadsong took a long sniff and said that while she had sometimes detected beautiful fruity aromas in the heat of summer, she had never picked up on such a honey scent before. We speculated about what might have caused it: it could have been a simple mass effect (she doesn't usually mix such a large amount of starter); it could have been the flour (she had been stayting with Diane for a couple of days and using Diane's rye flour instead of the one she uses at home; it could have been the presence of countless wild yeast cells in Diane's kitchen. We may never know. What I do know for sure is that I have never seen or smelled such a rye starter as hers. So of course I asked her if she could explain in details how she cares for her starter and what she does to prepare it for baking. Below is what she wrote back. Thank you, breadsong!

"When I took Jeffrey Hamelman’s rye breads class, he recommended a schedule for maintaining a rye starter at home. I try to follow a similar schedule, feeding my rye starter every other day when I am not baking.  If planning to bake, I’ll increase the feeding to daily, then twice-daily feeding, just before building a rye levain for a bake.
When well-cared for and regularly fed and refreshed, the rye starter contributes lovely aroma and flavor to the baked rye bread, so I try to keep up the feeding schedule. I can’t always maintain this schedule if time is short or if away travelling, but the rye starter seems to bounce back quickly when the feeding schedule is resumed.
The rye starter is maintained at 100% hydration, with feeding being equal parts rye starter, water, and flour (30g rye starter + 30g warm water (un-chlorinated) + 30g whole organic whole rye flour). The top of the starter is dusted with rye flour after feeding, to help make the starter's expansion and ripening more visible. I place an elastic band around the container, at the level the starter is right after feeding, to help me see how much the starter rises while fermenting.
Temperatures in the low 80’s are recommended dough temperatures for sourdough rye breads in Jeffrey Hamelman’s book, so  thought I’d try 80F as a target temperature for fermenting the rye starter when getting closer to bake day, to try to make sure the rye starter has lots of vigor prior to building the rye levain.
I aim for a rye starter temperature of 80F after feeding. If I’m not planning to bake soon, I let the rye starter ferment at room temperature  until the rye starter has peaked or matured (has domed, doubling in height compared to its height in the container when freshly fed; has cracks on the surface ;  with lots of fermentation bubbles visible along the sides of the (clear) container it is fermenting in). After the starter has peaked, I refrigerate it to prevent the starter from over-fermenting before the next feeding (I don't like how the starter's consistency breaks down when it over-ferments).
When getting closer to bake day, I use the Brød and Taylor proofer to keep fermentation temperature of the rye starter at 80F – the rye starter really seems to be happy at this temperature.
As an example of the feeding schedule I use, to prepare for a Sunday bake:

• Monday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until  it peaks, then refrigerate
• Wednesday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until it peaks, then refrigerate
• Friday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until it peaks, then refrigerate
• Saturday morning, feed starter and let ferment at 80F until it peaks, then leave at room temperature
• Saturday evening, feed starter (upping the quantities, if necessary, considering the amount of rye starter needed to build the rye levain); let ferment at 80F until it peaks, then leave at room temperature
• Saturday night or early Sunday morning, when rye starter peaks, build rye levain for Sunday bake (fermenting at 80-83F preferably, sometimes fermenting at a cooler temperature, hoping to time it so the rye levain will be at its peak at a convenient time for mixing)
• After building the rye levain, feed rye starter and let ferment overnight or until it peaks, then refrigerate until Monday morning.  If building a rye levain of 100% hydration or less, will dust the top with rye flour to help make the starter's expansion and ripening more visible."

Related posts:

• Baking with natural starters: a bread workshop in Victoria, BC
• Maintening a white starter and preparing for a bake

Of bread and herons

I baked Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread the other day and it seems to have come out fine although it didn't rise as high as it normally does. But it might have been because I had digressed from my baking routine. As usual I had soaked the cracked rye overnight and done all the mise en place (gotten everything scaled and prepped and at room temperature) the night before. I had mixed the dough in the morning around 10 and transfered it to the oiled pan but - and that isn't something we normally do when I start on a bread - we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Ikea on an errand we had been postponing for a while. Ikea isn't exactly next door. What to do? I weighed the pros and cons and projecting that the dough would have risen nicely by the time we came back, I determined that everything should and would be fine.
But just as we were leaving, I got spooked. With my mind's eyes, I saw the neglected dough climb over the edge of the pan, slither under the clear plastic film, crawl down the door of the cabinet to pool on the floor in a puddle that would morph from gooey-sticky to rock-hard by the time we got back. So I put the pan in the garage (where the temperature must have been around 50°F/10°C). That probably scared the dough out of its wits because when we came back five or six hours later (we got stuck in traffic), it hadn't moved at all. Not even a shiver...
It must have been about 5 PM when I brought it inside where the temperature was 65°F/18°C. Five hours or six later it still hadn't moved. At all. It looked petrified. I went to bed with a heavy heart. For a first foray back into baking in more than two months, it didn't look encouraging and I wasn't sure overnight proofing would help since we keep the thermostate on low during the night.
But, lo and behold, in the morning the dough had changed color: no longer grayish, it seemed to glow with the bloom of life and it had started to dome a bit in the middle. This time I watched it like a hawk. And watched. And watched. It took its own sweet time. At about 4 PM, when it looked like it wouldn't rise much further than up to 3/4 inch from the top, I pre-heated the oven and waited some more. Talk about a balancing act between hoping for a higher rise and making sure it didn't overproof.
At the time of this writing, I haven't sliced it open yet (it is best to wait at least 24 hours and preferably 48 to 72 before slicing into a fresh loaf of whole grain bread). Whole grain breads need to settle: they taste better when they dry out a bit. It makes sense, right? Moisture evaporates and flavor concentrates. With a bit of luck, the crumb will be okay... I wish I had taken pictures all along but I wasn't planning to blog this bread and also what's so exciting about a dough that plays dead for hours on end?

Four days after the bake

Not the prettiest crumb ever (see the lower part of the loaf which looks a bit dense and gummy) but not the worst either.
Moral of the story #1: rye dough can and will trick you. This one looked as lifeless as the mummified heron our two-year old golden retriever dragged in from the marshes and dropped proudly at my feet one winter, the very same day she fell through the ice and we thought she was a goner. It was her first visit to our little camp by the St-Lawrence River. We had adopted her a week earlier. She fought her way back onto the ice, shook herself and was as good as new, white teeth flashing in a wide smile and dripping tail wagging. The heron got flung back into the marshes when she wasn't looking.
The dough was so inert that I almost chucked it out too. The only thing that stopped me is the thought that waiting till morning would save me having to wash the pan before going to bed. Also that I really, really craved some naturally leavened whole rye bread. And finally that I knew we would soon be seeing our Danish cousins who live in Vancouver, BC, and that I wanted to bring them a little taste of home, however elusive the similarity of this bread with their native rugbrød.
Moral of the story # 2: any resemblance of unproofed rye dough to a wizened heron is entirely fortuitous and best taken with a grain of salt.

Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread

While I am not yet back in full baking mode, bread is slowly making its way back into my life (of course not baking was and still is made easier by the fact that our freezer was literally bursting at the seams when tragedy struck mid-December: we had been expecting our two teenage grandkids for their winter breaks and I had been baking up a storm).
This time around the first bread on the agenda is likely to be Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread. There is something profoundly honest and straightforward about this bread. It isn't fancy and some may not consider it elegant (although I would argue the point.) But it does deliver in terms of taste, consistency, shelf life and versatility. Besides I find it deeply comforting as it brings back memories of light-filled summers spent in Denmark with beloved family members.
I have made it several times already, sometimes with my own rye starter, sometimes with the rye yogurt starter indicated in the book. I like both versions. For most people the yogurt starter is probably the easier way to go as you don't have to have a pre-existing starter on hand to try the bread (see below for the starter recipe).

You will find the real rye bread recipe on page 133 of Hanne Risgaard's gorgeous book, Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry. You will also find it a beautiful rendition of it online (with a list of ingredients and detailed instructions) at My Italian Smörgåsbord.
The ingredients listed make for a huge loaf (or two smaller ones). I don't find it to be a problem: it is a lovely bread to share, it freezes beautifully and, thinly sliced and dried out, either in a dehydrator or in an oven set at a low temperature, it makes lovely crisps which keep for months in an airtight container. Those crisps are the perfect foil for sardines, smoked salmon, pungent cheeses, etc. They are also handy and healthful in case of a snack attack!
Once I knew we both liked the bread and I was going to make it over and over, I started looking for a gallon-size pan (that's where the elegance comes in: I just love the sleek look of the loaf Hanne chose to illustrate her recipe). Thanks to my friend Larry Lowary who is an invaluable source of tips and advice, I found here a pan almost identical to the ones used in Denmark (except that the sides are not straight but slightly slanted). The price was right (I didn't get the lid which I didn't need) and I bought it. I have had no reason to regret it (my only advice would be to slightly grease the pan before placing the dough in it. The first couple of times the bread slid out like a breeze but with each later use the pan became a little bit more reluctant to let go).
Hanne says to leave the dough to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours before baking. I don't know how cold it is in Denmark where she bakes but here in the Pacific Northwest where the temperature inside our house usually hovers around 65°F/18°C, I have found six to ten hours to be enough. I tried letting it go twenty-four hours once just to see what happened and it was not a success. Which reminded me of the golden rule: rye doesn't like to wait!

So instead of following Hanne's proofing time suggestions, I heed her practical advice: bake the loaf when the dough almost reaches the top of the pan.

As I said, I love the book as a whole: I have already made the Pear and Sourdough Bread (p. 142) (I skipped the yeast though)...

...and the Pumpkin Seed Bread with Buttermilk (p. 136) (so tasty and fragrant, especially with the suggested addition of fennel seeds that it is close rival to the Real Rye one in our affections)...

...and there are plenty of other appealing breads that I plan to try and make. My only reservations would be that several of the non-rye levain-based recipes call for yeast (I don't see the point of adding yeast to levain except in a production environment with a tight schedule) and that it would be useful to see more crumb shots.
The photography is gorgeous however and guaranteed to make you want to start baking on the spot (which is maybe the reason why Hanne's real rye bread may be the one to finally pull me out of my baking funk).

The rye yogurt starter is fairly simple to make.

Ingredients (for 400 g mature starter, total)
Starter

• 150 g water
• 150 g organic plain yogurt
• 200 g whole rye flour

Feeding

• 150 g water
• 200 g whole rye flour

Method

• To start: mix all starter ingredients thoroughly and keep, tightly covered, in a warm place for 24 hours (Hanne recommends 86°F/30°C)
• Feeding: After 24 hours, add water and flour, mix thoroughly and keep, tightly covered, in a warm place for another 24 hours 

Hanne's recipe uses all of the starter (and replaces it with 400 g of dough which she keeps in a fridge, slightly salted, for her next batch). She says that, when it has been refrigerated, it will need to spend 24 hours at room temperature to be ready for use again.

Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread is going to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Hutzelbrot with dried cherries and cranberries

Besides the delightful taste of this bread, what I love about this Peter Reinhard recipe (from his book Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor) is that it uses a mash and that the mash can be made in part with "old bread". To me there is already something deeply satisfying about pre-soaking whole grain flour and having the enzymes start working hours and hours before you even begin to mix your dough but when you can feed them your stale bread too, wow, it's just too good to pass up!
Reinhart uses (or suggests using, it's hard to figure out which) a mix of dried fruit for this bread, such as citron, apricots, figs, plums, cherries, cranberries, golden raisins). Even though I had pretty much everything on hand but the citron, I decided to focus the flavors a little more and go for the sweet dried cherries my friend Kim had brought from Wisconsin (each one like a burst of summer in the mouth, thank you, Kim!), paired with slightly tarter dried cranberries from Washington State. I also decided to soak the old bread in apple juice since I had some I needed to use up and it would nicely boost the fruit taste. The bread turned out crusty and surprisingly light.
It takes two days to make which is perfectly fine with me since most of the time the ingredients toil away all by themselves....

Ingredients (slightly adapted): makes 2 batards


For the soaked bread (altus)

• 1/2 inch-bread cubes with crust left on soaked in hot organic apple juice or water and left at room temperature for at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. Use just enough liquid to saturate and soften the bread. Reinhart advises using rye bread but he says whole wheat is fine too. Squeeze out excess liquid before adding to the mash (I didn't weigh anything to start with, just used up all my stale bread and made a big bowl of actus. When required by the recipe, I took out the 170 g needed for the mash, weighed the rest, put it in a ziploc bag, labeled it and stored it in the freezer for next time)

For the mash

• 300 g water
• 64 g coarse whole wheat (I used flour from Cedar Isle Farm in Agassiz, British Columbia, which my friend Meeghen kindly brought me)
• 64 g 75% sifted rye flour (I used flour from True Grain Bread on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, which Meeghen also brought me. Thank you, Meeghen, for giving me the opportunity to bake with these gorgeous flours!)
• 1 g diastactic malt powder
• 170 g altus

For the starter

• 71 g whole wheat or rye starter
• 213 g whole rye flour
• 170 g water at room temperature (70°F/21°C)

For the dough

• all of the starter (454 g)
• all of the mash (397 g)
• 99 g white whole wheat flour + 200 g (which I had to add because my dough was way too wet, possibly because I had pre-soaked the fruit which Reinhart doesn't say to do)
• 99 g whole rye flour
• 100 g sweet dried cherries (briefly pre-soaked, then drained)
• 70 g dried cranberries (briefly pre-soaked, then drained)
• 14 g salt (I didn't add to that amount even though I added more flour: I just tasted the dough and it seemed fine)
• 7 g instant dry yeast

Method:

On Day 1

1. Mix the mash ingredients (save for the altus) (using water heated to 165°F/74°C) making sure the flour is fully  hydrated and the end product resembles a thin pudding or gravy. Cover and keep warm (150°F/66°C) if possible for 3 hours or at least for 60 minutes. Reinhart suggests using the oven for that step (turning it repeatedly on and off if it doesn't have such a low setting) 
2. After 3 hours, stir in the soaked bread and refrigerate until ready to use (you can also leave it overnight at room temperature) if you are planning to use it within the next 24 hours
3. Mix all of the starter ingredients and knead with wet hands to form a ball of dough. Let it rest 5 minutes and knead again. The dough will be tacky. Allow it to double at room temperature (which can take up to 8 hours depending on the temperature). When fully developed, knead for a few seconds, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight if necessary to coordinate timing with the mash. Remove from the refrigerator about 2 hours before mixing the final dough

On Day 2

1. Using a metal scraper, chop the starter into 12 smaller pieces, sprinkling some extra flour over them to prevent them from sticking to each other
2. If mixing by hand (which I did), combine starter and mash in a large bowl with the whole wheat and rye flour, cherries, cranberries, salt and yeast. Mix for about 2 minutes until all the ingredients are evenly integrated and distributed into the dough. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky. If not, add water or flour if needed (that's where I had to add the extra 200 g of white whole wheat flour as the dough was definitely not going to take shape otherwise)
3. When dough feels soft and only slightly sticky, form it into a ball and let it rest for 5 minutes while you oil a container
4. Knead it briefly again for one minute and make any final adjustments to water or flour. It should be malleable and tacky but no longer sticky
5. Form into a ball again and place in prepared container, rolling to coat with oil
6. Cover loosely and let rise at room temperature for about one hour or until it is at least 1 1/2 times its original size
7. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and shape into two batards. Place the batards on a sheet pan lined with semolina-dusted parchment paper. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a cloth towel and let rise at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes, until 1 1/2 times their original size
8. While the batards are proofing, preheat the oven to 425°F/218°C. When ready to bake, dust them with flour and score the loaves as desired using a sharp knife or blade
9. Place them in the oven (with steam), lower the oven temperature to 375°F/191°C and bake for 25 minutes
10. Rotate the loaves 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 35 minutes or until the loaves are well-browned and make a hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
11. Cool on a rack and wait at leasts 12 hours before slicing open.

Enjoy!

The Hutzelbrot with dried cherries and cranberries go to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Jeff Hamelman on maintaining a rye starter

Jeff Hamelman, author of Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes as well as Bakery Director and Certified Master Baker at the King Arthur Flour Company, to whom I had forwarded a reader's question about maintaining a rye starter, was kind enough to send the following information in reply: "We do feed our cultures twice daily at the King Arthur Bakery, seven times per week. Aren’t those cultures lucky to be in a bakery that requires them to be healthy every day? For maintaining cultures when they are not going to be used daily, each person has to decide for him/herself what approach to take. I know people who bake just on weekends who feed their cultures twice daily every day—that’s a level of commitment I don’t think I could take on! On the other extreme, there are people who proudly make bread with a culture that has been refrigerated and utterly neglected for weeks, and claim that their bread is just fine. This is mentally indigestible to me (the bread is probably pretty indigestible too). We must first and fundamentally acknowledge that our culture is a living environment, and like us, will be in best health with regular meals. That said, it’s just not practical to feed a culture 14 times per week if it is only going to be used once or twice a week. In that case, I would give at least four feeds per week, more if possible, and spread them out to fit one’s schedule. For example, one might feed the culture Monday morning before going to work and then refrigerate it in the evening. Then do the same Wednesday and Friday, and then Friday evening make levain for Saturday baking. I’m kind of making this up as I write, but some sort of regimen like that may be suitable. There are, of course, other considerations, such as time of year, ambient temperature and humidity, and so on, so some adjustments may be necessary along the way. What kinds of adjustments? Well, let’s assume we want the culture to ripen in 12 hours. In winter perhaps our build here in Vermont might be: Mature culture 100 g Flour 150 g Water 90 g After 12 hours, all looks good, the culture has domed nicely and is fully fragrant and ripe. Come summer, the kitchen is so much warmer and more humid that the culture would ripen in eight hours if we continue to use those proportions. We might therefore reduce the amount of mature culture in the build to 50 or 75 grams, or whatever is required so that the culture is mature in 12 hours. As bakers, we have to be very attentive. My good friend James MacGuire always brought his culture with him on vacation, and as he delightfully recounts, he could never stay in the same hotel twice because he had left such a floury mess, not to mention that weird smelling paste that was in the bin. He now has another method—one that I’ve not tried, but James is not just a great master, he is also completely committed to quality, and he wouldn’t do this if it didn’t work: he feeds his culture, maybe a bit stiffer than usual, and then after an hour refrigerates it. It is, of course, unripe at this stage, which means there is a nutrient supply available during the refrigeration phase. I’m sure there are other strategies for long term storage, but there is one important consideration regardless of the method used: once you’ve returned home, give the culture a couple of days at room temperature with two feedings daily to reinvigorate it." Jeff will monitor the comments to this post, so if you have any questions, please feel free to add your grain of salt as we say in French. Thank you, Jeff!