Recipe
Danish Rye Bread
We can all thank my uncle Guy for this Danish rye bread recipe. This bread is full of flavour, easy to tweak, and stays fresh for about a week (unlike your bog-standard stale bloomer). I bake this weekly because it's delicious and easy to fit in around my science degree schedule.
The first stage of preparation describes how to reactivate the sourdough starter, ready for raising the dough (find your starter recipe here). The second stage just involves adding a little more flour, and the all-important black treacle (or molasses) that counterbalances the bitterness of rye flour, and gives the bread its signature dark colour.
The key to this recipe is giving the starter enough time for the yeast to produce carbon dioxide - essential to creating airy, well-risen bread. This process takes longer in sourdough than in generic fast-action yeast (the key is in the name), but also benefits the loaf - making it more interesting in texture and flavour. So please, DON'T RUSH!
Even if you leave the dough for too long in the second stage, and it collapses in a little (I have been guilty of this), you'll still get a great tasting loaf.
Danish Rye Bread
- Prep Time: 1 day
- Cook Time: 1 hr 15 mins
- Total Time: 1 day 1 hr 15 mins
- Servings: 10
Ingredients
- 350 ml tepid water
- 2 heaped tbsp rye starter
- 1 tsp salt
- 275g brown rye flour
- 1 tbsp black treacle molasses in the US
- 75g wholemeal flour
- optional seeds your choosing
- a handful oats to top