Roggenmischbrot at seventy percent rye in a small oven

This is the loaf I make when I am not trying to learn anything, which means I make it most weeks of the year. It took roughly forty attempts to become boring, and boring is the entire point of it.

Baked: 6 October 2024
Written up: 2 February 2025
Reading: 8 minutes
Kitchen: Frankfurt am Main

Stage 01Weigh out

Why seventy percent and not ninety

A loaf at ninety percent rye is the bread I admire most and bake least. It wants a long sour, a dough wetter than feels sensible, a tin to hold it up, and a bake that runs well past the hour; it also wants a day of rest before it can be cut without smearing across the knife. At seventy percent there is enough wheat in the dough to give it a spine, which means it will hold a free-standing round, tolerate being shaped by somebody who is thinking about something else, and be edible the same evening.

The trade is depth of flavour against forgiveness, and for a weekly loaf I take forgiveness every time. Seventy percent still tastes unmistakably of rye: dark, a little sweet underneath the sourness, with a crumb that stays moist for four days in a paper bag. The wheat is an ordinary strong bread flour, and the gap between a mediocre wheat and a good one shows up far more at this ratio than it does at ninety, where the rye simply drowns everything else in the bowl.

Stage 02Work it

The sour, in three stages or in one

The classical method builds the sour across three stages over about eighteen hours, each at its own temperature and hydration, each doing a different job: one for acid, one for yeast activity, one for volume. I worked through a whole winter doing it properly, with an alarm for each stage, and the bread was noticeably better than my single-stage version. It also required being awake and in the kitchen at half past eleven at night, and on a Tuesday that is not a method, it is a hobby holding a grudge.

What I do most weeks is a single stage: two hundred grams of starter, four hundred of whole rye, four hundred of water, left on the counter for sixteen to eighteen hours. It is slower, less precise, and gives a flatter and plainer sourness. About once a month, usually on a Saturday when nothing else is happening, I build the three-stage version instead, and the difference is real enough to keep going back. The loaf lifts higher, the crumb is finer, and the acidity rounds out rather than sitting on one flat note.

Stage 03Watch it

Shaping a dough that does not want to be shaped

Rye dough does not behave like wheat dough, and every instinct built on wheat works against you. There is no gluten network to develop, so kneading achieves nothing except warming the bowl; there is no windowpane to test for; and the dough sticks to everything it touches with real commitment. I mix for four minutes on a slow speed, until the flour is hydrated and no longer, then stop. Anything beyond that leaves the dough slack, sticky and impossible to lift off the bench in one piece.

Shaping happens quickly, with wet hands and a plastic scraper, on a bench dusted heavily with rye rather than wheat, because rye dust forms a dry skin while wheat dust turns to paste. I fold the mass in on itself four times, turn it seam down, round it with the scraper instead of my palms, and put it straight into a well-floured banneton. The whole operation takes under a minute. The longer I spend trying to make it look tidy, the more gas comes out and the flatter the finished loaf sits.

Stage 04Write it up

Steam, heat and the hours after the bake

My oven has no steam and the door seal is old, so the first twenty minutes happen under an upturned cast-iron pot on a preheated tray, which traps the moisture coming out of the loaf itself and works better than any tray of water I have tried. The oven goes to two hundred and fifty, the loaf goes in, and the dial comes down to two hundred and ten after fifteen minutes. The pot lifts off at twenty minutes and the loaf finishes uncovered for another thirty-five.

Rye is not done at the point where it looks done. I bake to an internal temperature of ninety-six degrees and then give it five minutes more, because a rye loaf pulled early carries a gummy band above the base that no amount of resting will repair. Afterwards it sits on a rack, untouched, for four hours at the least and overnight if there is any patience left. Cut it warm and the crumb drags on the blade, the moisture escapes, and by morning the loaf you ruined is also stale.