What's the time? It's FOODZEIT

Farmers loaf cut open and a fresh loaf next to it

How is the author of this artisan bread recipe saying it? An easy to bake bread that combines the best of wheat and rye. 80% wheat and 20% rye. It's a good and healthy self made bread, an everyday kind of bread. As we have been eating a lot of seed breads recently, i made this sourdough bread for a change. It is very tasty and the crumb is nice and light. The only disadvantage is that this organic bread is not good for a long period of storage. It will get dry after 4 - 5 days, especially if you have no bread storage casing. But that is normally much longer then I will be able to keep a bread before it gets eaten up. Thanks again to Marla, the creator of this artisan bread, I can put the recipe here today for you to discover and enjoy baking this artisanal bread, should you like it.

Fresh cut slice of bread with cream cheese topping

Sourdough:

100 g rye flour
100 g water
10 g rye sourdough starter

Sponge

100 g whole wheat flour
80 g water
1 g yeast

both rest for about 16 hours at room temperature

Main dough:

Sourdough
Sponge
35 g rye flour
430 g whole wheat flour
245 g water
13 g salt
optional 6 g yeast

Mix everything well together; knead the dough for five minutes. Now let the dough rest for 30 minutes. We now form the bread. If you are not sure how to form / shape bread, please follow my link on "bread baking basics + know how". This is another one of my free formed bread and so, it has to rest in a form in order to not run flat on you. So normally you would put in a bread fermentation basket it you have one. This is a basket that bakers will let their breads ferment in for a while to get in form while fermenting. As I don't have a special basket for this, I am just taking a normal high bowl (I am still using the same on that I used when I made this bread) with a round bottom that gives my bread more or less the form that I desire for the bread. I flour the bowl well before I add the dough, this way later it won't stick to it. Now I add the formed dough bottom side up into the bowl. Let the bread ferment another 60 minutes.

Once the breads have been fermented, I drop them upside down from their bread baskets on my permanent Teflon baking foil on which I already sprinkled a bed of flour. Also sprinkle a layer of flour on top of the bread before putting in the oven. I also use my very sharp Japanese knife to cut a cross on the surface of my bread to have this kind of bread typical pattern. Normally there is a special knife that bakers take to do this, using a razor blade. But I don't have this knife, so my Santoku knife will have to do for now. Anyhow, back to the baking. The oven should be pre heated on 250°C. Pop the bread in the oven for about two minutes to solidify the shape. Now pour a cup of hot water in the oven (if you do not have this inbuilt steaming program in your oven at home) and also place a cup of water on the floor of the oven to give some additional steam later on. Quickly close the door so the hot steam will be caught within the oven. Having all that steam in the oven is, like mentioned many times before, extremely important for a scrumptious crust and a great consistency of the bread.
Bake the breads for 10 minutes like this until it reached the right brown color that you are looking for in a bread crust, then open up the door, let the steam out, lower the heat on 210°C and continue to bake the bread for another 40 - 50 minutes. Now switch off the heat, keep the door open and let the bread cool down slowly. I always spray a bit of water on top of the fresh loaf when it's still hot. It gives a nice and shiny surface the fresh baked crust. Voila, finished is your own artisan, self made, fresh bread.

AGAIN - a wonderful bread of mine on the yeastspotting webpage - happy and honoured like every time that happens...