4-Grain Rye Levain

DIFFICULTY LEVEL: MODERATE

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4-Grain Rye Levain

A seeded hearty and tender white bread with 25% Rye flour.

Prep Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Fermentation 3 hours hours

Total Time 5 hours hours

Servings 5 Loaves

Ingredients

Rye Levain

• 380 g Whole rye flour (Ideal is fresh milled whole rye)
• 316 g Water
• 35 g Sourdough starter

Seed Soaker

• 125 g Flax Seed
• 125 g Chia Seed
• 125 g Millet
• 125 g Amaranth
• 34 g Salt
• 400 g Water

Final Dough

• 1,080 g Bread flour ABC+ (11.5% Protein)
• 55 g Vital Wheat Gluten
• 10 g Yeast
• 22 g Honey
• 691 g Rye Levain (Note: this is a little less than you made)
• 723 g Water
• 934 g Seed Soaker (Everything you made)

Instructions

Prepare the overnight levain and seed soaker

• Start by making your rye levain. Mix all your ingredients together the night before. Allow to ferment at room temperature 14-16 hours. The levain should dome in the middle but not collapse.
• Prepare your seed soaker the night before. Mix all the dry seeds together with the salt. Pour in the water and mix thoroughly. Cover in plastic and allow to sit at room temperature until ready to use. It can be made at the same time as the rye levain or as little as 1 hour before you need it for your dough.

Make the final dough

• Mix all the final dough ingredients together EXCEPT for the seed soaker. Mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes and scrape the bowl as needed to make sure everything is incorporated. The dough should be quite sticky and have minimal gluten development. I recommend rotating the dough in the mixer bowl at this point to get a more even mix. Mix about 3 more minutes for a total of about 8 minutes. The dough will still be really sticky and difficult to handle but you should see some reasonable gluten development (eg the dough is sticky but you can open a gluten window indicating a short to improved mix).
• Add the seed soaker to the dough and continue mixing until all the seeds are fully incorporated – about another 4-5 minutes. At this point, the dough will remain sticky but is firming up and getting easier to handle. I do NOT recommend using the batch size called for in this recipe if your mixer bowl is less than 6Qt. If it is, please reduce the batch size by at least 25%.
• Your desired dough temperature is 78-80F. Allow to bulk ferment for 90 minutes or a little longer if your temperatures are lower.
• Scale out your dough pieces. For this recipe I make 1 boule 750g (round free formed ball), 3 large batard loaves (3 x 730g in 1.5lb pans) and 1 smaller batard loaf (1 x 550g in 1 lb pan). Allow your dough pieces to rest for 15 minutes covered with a damp towel to prevent drying them out.
• Prepare your final shapes and load into proofing basket or loaf pans that are pre-oiled and dusted with flour. Proof for 90 minutes at 80F or a little longer if cooler. Loaves are proofed when you can gently poke the bread with your floured finger and the indentation springs back slowly. Preheat your oven to 500F.
• Score the loaves, incorporate steam promoting options and load into the hot oven. After 3-4 minutes, turn the oven down to 450F.
• After 20 minutes, remove steam promoting options (eg. remove dutch oven cover, aluminum foil on loaf pans or turn off steam generator). Rotate loaves in the oven and continue baking another 12-14 minutes for a total of 32-34 min. The loaves should brown and perhaps burn very subtly on the edges. Properly baked loaves should sound hollow when tapped.
• Place on cooling racks and enjoy once completely cool.

This is definitely one of my favorite breads. You’ll never find anything like it at the supermarket or even a local bakery, because they’d have to charge you $20 for a loaf (considering how much seed is packed into this dough). Not only that, but the vast majority of seeded breads sold retail have sunflower seeds or grains I am not fond of. This bread is 25% rye, which means it has a lot of flavor while still having all the advantages of a white bread.

Although the recipe uses a levain, it also relies on commercial yeast. This means it will pack a lot of aroma and flavor but without being overly sour. In fact, most would be hard pressed to detect this is a sourdough at all. That is not the point of the levain. As with all my recipes, when I make bread….I make a lot of bread! This is why I always use grams and kg to weigh out my ingredients. It becomes extremely simple to cut things into half or a third. The default recipe does make 5 pretty large loaves. I do not recommend using this amount if your mixer bowl is anything less than 6Qt. A 7Qt or 8Qt bowl would be even safer. I have made this recipe many times using a 5Qt bowl and it works, but seeds tend to get pushed out and it can get a little messy.

Prepare the levain and seed soaker

As with any bread recipe that uses a preferment, this one requires you to make a rye levain 14-16 hours in advance. Mix your whole rye flour, water and sourdough starter together and cover in plastic. The rye levain is ready when it domes in the middle but does not collapse.

Next, get your seeds soaking in water. Most all bread recipes using seeds recommend pouring boiling water over the seeds and then covering them overnight. I have done my own experimentation with this and have found no difference whatsoever if I used room temperature or boiling water to soak my seeds. Nutritionally they will also be no different because they technically reach boiling temperature inside the dough when you bake it. I do include all of the bread’s salt in the seed soaker to inhibit enzymes that can potentially create issues with your final dough. The reason the seeds are soaked in the first place is so that when they are added to your final dough, they do not absorb water that would normally be used to hydrate your flour. Leave your soaking seeds covered overnight along with your rye levain.

Make your final dough

When everything is ready the following day, mix everything together in your mixing bowl except for the seed soaker. Seeds are pretty rough and sharp and they can cut up the delicate gluten network forming in your dough as you mix it. This is why we always add rough items last and after your dough is mostly fully developed. This would be true if you were adding raisins or nuts or even chocolate chips. Inclusions should always be added last.

Start mixing for about 5 minutes and pause to scrape your bowl as needed so that everything is incorporated properly. The first thing you will notice is that the dough is quite sticky and that’s almost entirely due to the rye. Rye has very little gluten and instead has a lot of complex sugars (pentosans) which give it a sticky/gummy feel. Don’t despair! Just ignore that stickiness and keep at it. After 5 minutes, I like to scoop out the dough, turn it over in the mixing bowl and then continue mixing. This assures a more even mix, especially when you use a KitchenAid-style mixer. Mix 3 more minutes or until some of the stickiness goes away and you feel the dough firming up. You can try opening a gluten window, but the stickiness makes it hard to do. If you can pull it off, you’ll be looking for something between a short and improved mix.

Now add in all of your seeds. Keep mixing another 4-5 minutes. Half way through, you might need to flip the dough over again in your mix bowl to get a really nice homogeneous mix. The dough will be getting more firm and less sticky now thanks to the additional mixing and the addition of the salt in the soaker. Your final dough should be close to 80F and you will let it bulk ferment for 90 minutes and do one fold after about 45 minutes to pick up a little more strength.

Final shaping

Now go ahead and divide your dough into pieces according to your needs. This recipe is on the big size – 3.5kg. I like to make a variety of loaves, so I make one boule (round loaf) that is 750g, I make 3 larger loafs placed in a 1.5lb loaf pan at 730g each and I make one smaller loaf for a loaf pan at 550g. Once these pieces are divided up, I roll them into a loose ball and cover in a damp towel to prevent drying. Let these balls rest for at least 15 minutes so the dough relaxes. This will make it much easier to fold into the final shape.

Now fold all your pieces into their respective shapes. If you need a refresher on how to properly fold a boule or batard shape, please refer to the blog post on that here.

Allow your shaped dough to go through a final proofing at around 75F for 90 minutes. You can go longer if your room is colder or less if it’s hot. You’ll know your dough is proofed and ready when a floured finger pressed into the dough leaves an indentation that springs back slowly. Don’t forget to preheat your oven to 500F.

Baking

When fully proofed, score your bread as desired and then prepare your chosen method for generating steam. For these breads I utilize aluminum foil for the loaf pans and a dutch oven for the boule. If you need more information on the importance of steam or how these methods are implemented, please read this post here. When everything is ready, place in the 500F oven. After about 3-4 minutes, turn the oven down to 450F.

After 20 minutes of baking, discontinue your steam generation by removing the foil from the loaf pans, the lid off the dutch oven or turn off your steam generator. Bake another 12-14 minutes for a grand total of 32-34 minutes. When properly baked, bread should sound and feel hollow when tapped (true when it first comes out of the oven not after it cools). If it appears to be under-baked, put it back in a few more minutes.

Turn the loaves out onto cooling racks. Although always true for bread out of the oven, it is especially important to let these loaves cool 100% before cutting them open due to the rye. Cutting them open too soon will reveal a slightly gummy crumb which will be less palatable.

Did you try this recipe? Do you have questions, comments or suggestions? I would love to hear from you below.