Servings:
serves me just fine
Preparation Time:
6 hours
Ingredients

* See below

Cooking Instructions

One of my favorites. Baking this bread is a two-day event.

On the first day, start early to prepare the sour. Since it requires a sour starter, you either have to make one, find somebody who’ll share some, or order some from Sourdoughs International.

The sour is prepared in three stages. Preparation of each stage is but a few minutes work each, but the three stages take about 12 hours to complete. I prefer to start early in the morning.

First stage: In a large bowl, mix

1/2 cup of starter
1/3 cup of water
1/2 cup of rye flour (preferred: Hodgeson Mills Medium Ground)
1-2 Tbsp of crushed or ground caraway

and cover with rye sprinkle (2 Tbsp and 2 tsp of rye flour). Let rise covered with saran wrap until doubled (4 hours should do).

Second stage: Mix into the first stage:

1/3 cup of water
1/2 cup of rye flour

and cover with rye sprinkle (2 Tbsp and 2 tsp of rye flour). Let rise with saran wrap until doubled (4 hours should do).

Third stage: Save 1/2 cup of second stage sour as new starter. Into the remaining sour, mix

1/3 cup of water
1/2 cup and 2 Tbsp and 2 tsp rye flour. Let rise with saran wrap until doubled (4 hours).

Unless you can make it a very long day, refridgerate the sour overnight.

To complete baking:

Remove the sour from the fridge and let warm at room temperature for an hour. Into the sour, add

7 oz of water
3 1/3 cups of bread flour (pref: King Arthur)
2 Tbsp Vital Wheat Gluten
2 1/2 tsp sea salt
1-2 Tbsp of caraway seeds (can be omitted)
1 package (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry yeast

I knead this dough in a Zojirushi bread maker at custom settings:

preheat: off
knead: 23 min
rise 1: 45 min
rise 2: 22 min
rise 3: off
bake: off
keep warm: off

Check the dough during the kneading phase for consistency; add water to bread flour as necessary.

It’s quite okay to knead by hand and let rise until doubled (70 minutes or so).

The bread machine runs for 1 1/2 hours. After it finished, put the dough onto a floured surface, punch down, shape into a loaf and put into a (PAM’d non-stick) bread pan.

Put the pan under a plastic cover along with 1/2 cup of boiling water in a cup for moisture. Let rise for until doubled (for the right size of bread pan, the dough should rise well above the edges).

Pre-heat the oven (with a pizza stone inside) to 375F at least half an hour before the rise completes.

Before putting the bread into the oven, paint the loaf with a corn-starch glaze (use 1 tsp corn starch, 3 Tbsp water) and slash the top a few times.

Bake with steam (add 1 1/2 cups of water and ice cubes into a bottom pan) for 28 minutes, then remove the bread from the pan and continue baking for another 18 minutes on the pizza stone.

When the loaf is finished, paint with a corn starch glaze again (this time, use 2 tsp corn starch and 6 Tbsp of water).

Let cool on a rack for a couple of hours before slicing.

Source:
Ed Nather