Baking day

A baking day, hour by hour

Rye bread is mostly waiting. The work itself takes perhaps forty minutes spread over a day; the rest is knowing when to come back to the kitchen.

Plan backwards from the oven

Choose when you want the loaf out of the oven and how warm your kitchen is. The plan follows the everyday black bread; times are guides, and the dough has the final word.

  1. The day before · 20:00Mix the spongeStarter, half the flour and most of the water. Ten minutes of stirring, then cover the bowl and leave it for about 14 h.
  2. Baking day · 10:00Mix the doughThe rest of the flour, the salt and the caraway. Save two spoonfuls for the starter jar, then fill the tin.
  3. Baking day · 10:20Let it riseCovered, for about 2 h 30 min. Watch for a domed top and fine cracks rather than the clock.
  4. Baking day · 12:20Oven onHeat it to 230 °C with the shelf just below the middle.
  5. Baking day · 12:50Into the ovenBrush the top with water. Fifteen minutes at full heat.
  6. Baking day · 13:05Turn it down190 °C for about another 55 minutes.
  7. Baking day · 14:00Out of the ovenBrush with hot water, wrap it in a cloth, leave it on a rack.
  8. The day after · 07:00First sliceAt least twelve hours after baking. A full day is better.

Reading the dough

The sponge is ready
Domed, bubbly all over, smelling sharply sour; perhaps just starting to sink in the middle.
The loaf is ready to bake
Risen by about a third, the top domed and broken by fine cracks or pinholes. The side of the dough feels airy when pressed gently.
It has gone too far
A flat or sunken top, wide cracks and a sharp, almost boozy smell. Bake it anyway: it will be denser but perfectly good, and next time you will cut the rise short. With rye, late is worse than early.
It is underbaked
A sticky crumb and a dense line along the bottom. Leave it in longer next time, and always let it cool fully before you judge: rye seems wetter while it is warm.

Old oven, new oven

My grandmother heated the farmhouse oven with a wood fire for a couple of hours, raked out the embers and judged the heat with her hand in the opening, or with a pinch of flour thrown on the floor. The loaves went in on a long wooden peel and baked in the falling heat.

An electric oven does the same job well if you start hot and turn it down after a quarter of an hour. That one step imitates the falling heat of the old oven, and it is the reason every recipe here has two temperatures.