Aromi Golosi

This bread was a little misleading. If you want the bread to be totally all rye, then your barm has to be made from all rye. I use "Adam" (my wild yeast sourdough starter), and it is made of 100% whole wheat. At any rate, to say that this bread is dense, is an understatement. I have so little experience using rye flour and as per Reinhart's instructions, I tried to knead the dough as little as possible without kneading too much. It was definitely harder than I thought. However, to be quite honest, the flavor really surprised me. The rye had an almost "sweet" and creamy taste and texture and I have to say, it was less offensive than I thought it would be. So, if you are like me, and have a dislike for rye, this might be a good recipe to try. You can follow along in the book(The Breadbaker's Apprentice) on page 239, or if not, try to see it here.

Here is my starter, Adam bubbling away once again. Adam is actually a whole wheat starter culture, but I refreshed him using rye flour. The initial "barm" as Peter calls it only a half cup, and that's the only non-rye ingredient involved otherwise. If you are a purist, he tells you how to make a barm using only rye flour here.

Here is the final dough after mixing the starter with the soaker(half cup rye flour and half cup water left overnight) and the remaining ingredients. In the book, Peter explains that you can actually knead the dough too much because the rye has far less gluten than wheat. You will find that the actual kneading will be stickier than most of the breads that you are used to making.

So in the end, the shaped loaf has not risen much-- only about 1.5 times larger. I found also that there was not much oven spring in the final baking of the bread as well. However, the taste was way better than expected.

For those of you who know of my keen dislike of rye bread, this particular bread might make me change my attitude just a little. The savory additions of onions really stole the show for me in this particular loaf. If you are still with me from the beginning, you should know that I am baking my way through the book: The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, and joining the many others who have embarked on this challenge. My personal twist is that I am attempting to do all of his recipes using only wild yeast. This rye bread is actually not half bad as rye bread goes, but, again, I am not a rye bread fan, and this IS a challenge after all, right? If you are following along in the book, we are now on page 236, or you can find the recipe here.

So, this again calls for a starter, or as Peter calls it "barm", but mine's called "Adam". Here is Adam mixed with rye flour and allowed to double in size.

I added the onions and the rest of the ingredients to let it bulk rise.

After the bulk rise, the dough was shaped and turned out onto a nonstick surface to rise again before baking.

The finished bread-- not so rye tasting and plenty savory.