Baked: 8/7/2025
I started this bake with a 100% rye flour levain.
After that, everything was a bit haphazard. I baked it from an alternate location (i.e. not my kitchen). I thought I had more flour on site than I did, but luckily with the total combination of rye flour and low protein AP flour I had just enough flour. I failed to measure the parts, but I think the rye % is somewhere in the ballpark of 30%.
After the mixing and the rising, when it was time for the dividing and shaping and proofing, I realized I only had a tiny bit of rye flour remaining. Usually I use flour to mitigate stickiness when handling the dough, oops! However, I just happened to be reading Richard Hart Bread, in which he talks about using water when handling the dough, so I decided to try that. Additionally, I did not have my silpat mat and instead only had one large and one small cutting board at my disposal. It was a bit of a disaster. The water on my hands made already slack dough even more slack, and it was difficult to get any tension in the dough for the preshape with water on the cutting boards. Also one of the boards was too small, and I had to move the dough around a bunch of times to find places that they would fit to rest.;
In the end, though, I somehow ended up with two nice loaves! The boule was a little flat, but the scores opened nicely and the crumb was moist and reasonably airy for a rye.
The pan loaf achieved a nice height and a decent-looking crust.
What would I do differently next time?
- plan better at my alternate location!
- using water to mitigate dough stickiness is probably not for me
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