4-Grain Rye Levain
A seeded hearty and tender white bread with 25% Rye flour.
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.