We had a potluck at work today and I wanted to make a bread that was special. So I made some Pierre Nury's Light Rye. This formula comes from the book "Local Breads' by Daniel Leader. Pierry Nurry, recipient of the prestigious Meilleur Ourier de France award, present this bread to Daniel Leader as his signature loaf. I had made it before but wasn't very happy with how it turned out. That was before I had made Ciabatta.
The formula uses a stiff starter so I made a 55% hydration starter with a pinch of home ground rye in it. The preferment that went into the dough was 50% hydration and had 3 grams of rye in it. The flour for the preferment is home ground whole wheat.
1st Preferment Build grams percent
Starter 8.7 50.00%
Flour 17.39 100.00%
Water 9.57 55.00%
Total 1st Build 35.65 205.00%
2nd Preferment Build
Starter 1st build 35.65 48.94%
Flour 72.85 100.00%
Water 36.43 50.00%
Total 2nd Build 144.93 198.94%
The preferment does have a stronger smell of acetic acid than I normally notice. The directions next have you put the flours in a mixer with the water and mix it up until the flour is all wet. Then let it stand for 20 mins. Next add the preferment and the salt.
Dough Formula grams percent
Flour* 579.71 100.00%
Water 463.77 80.00%
Salt 11.59 2.00%
Preferment 2nd Build 144.93 25.00%
Total 1200.00 207.00%
*Flours
Bread Flour 521.74 90.00%
Rye 57.97 10.00%
The rye is home ground then I sifted out the course particles.
I let the dough ferment a few hours and did some stretches along the way. I could feel lumps in the dough as I couldn't get some of the preferment to breakdown. Next time I'm putting the preferment into the water first. The dough did show signs of starting to raise so I put it into the fridge overnight. The next day when I got home from work I took it out and warmed it up. 
I did this by putting the bowl on top of a rack that we have on top of our wood burning stove. The rack is warm to the hand but not hot. The above picture is after three hours. The charcoal cooker was fired up to 460°F. I turned the dough out onto a bed of flour and cut a piece off of it and put it on a piece of parchment paper. Leader says to let the dough fall into whatever shape it may so I did. Then placed the dough on my cooking stone with a half a cup of crushed ice for steam in the pan below my cooking stone. I pulled the bread after being in the cooker for 20 mins. I had to do this 3 times because my stone is only big enough for one piece at a time.
The aroma of the bread filled the whole house and I had to wait an hour for it to cool enough to cut it.
Maybe I could have taken a better crumb shot but the bread was full of irregular big airy holes. My co-workers ate it all up. Many of them said how good it was. The best compliment was from one co-worker who refuses to eat my bread because it is sourdough. His mind can't handle eating something made with a starter that is over a year and half old. Anyway I caught him eating a piece of it and he says its really good. Then I tell him its sourdough and he picks up another piece and pops it into his mouth and says "its really good". I finally found a bread that he likes, mission accomplished.
Replies
Thank you, LD, for those pictures...what gigantic bubbles and holes!! Thanks, also, for the clear recipe and instructions. Gee...you've got me all excited and itching to make it. No time till next year, though.
But today I was looking through posts - I am in the need of a good light rye. I have been making these sandwiches on ciabatta and remembered how much this rustic bread is like a ciabatta.
Sourdough bread, turkey pastrami, German apple onion sauerkraut and swiss cheese with German sweet mustard and mayo. Then you grill them like panini. This bread would be perfect for the rolls to take the the sandwich up a notch. We are calling them Rupert sandwiches since they aren't really Reubens..
Terri
The granite stone is from the piece that is cut out for the sink in a granite counter top. Some places will just give it to you. I had to pay for the piece and then paid to have it trimmed to fit my cooker.
Rupert or Reuben both sound good to me.So did you find an installation company or a stone company? Who or what should I be looking for? Any ideas about how thick so it wont crack.
Terri
Great Idea... I will give it a try!!
Hi LeadDog,
Your Pierre Nury's Light Rye looked really flavourful. Did you knead this dough at all, apart from the initial mixing and the stretch-and-folds you mentioned in your post? I am guessing none at all or very little. It appers to me that that's the main reason why your bread had such open crumb. Leader did say in his [i]Local Breads[/i] not to under-knead this dough in order to get the maximum volume (page 153); however, he also said the sticky dough will not clear the sides of the mixing bowl (page 152).
A while ago I did a James McGuire bread at 80% hydration (500 g of flour with 400 g of water) with hourly stretch-and-folds over 4 hours of fermentation to build up gluten strength The bread had really good volume even though the hydration was high. The resulting bread had none of the Ciabatta shape as in Pierre Nury's Rustic Light Rye.
Shiao-Ping
I have a Bosch mixer so my mixing times are different than what formulas in books call for. Seems to me the Bosch mixer is faster at developing the dough. I might have gotten the formula from Leader but he takes the opposite approach to dough development when you read "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman. Hamelman makes it a point to not over mix the dough. I read "Bread" first so I guess I'm in the short mixing time camp. I mix the dough up until it gets the flour all wet and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes, then I add the salt and finish mixing. I do streches in the bowl so I don't get any extra flour added to the dough.
Every time I make this bread I get really good compliments.