I’ve been refining my bread for the last decade, making all the bread my family consumes. Over the last couple of years I’ve arrived at something we are all really happy with. I’ll try my best to transmit what I’ve learned via this recipe. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.
100% bread flour
60% rye starter (1:1 course ground rye:water)
66% water
3% salt
Final hydration 74%
Example for one oval banneton:
500g bread flour
300g starter (150g water 150g course ground rye)
333g water
15g salt (preferably grey sea salt like Celtic)
Mix water, flour, and starter until fully hydrated. Sprinkle salt on top.
Wait 1-2 hours for autolyse and hydration.
Stretch and fold once every 30 min - 1 hour, at least 3 times and up to 5.
Bulk ferment 2 more hours.
Sprinkle liberally with rice flour, liberate from bowl with a plastic scraper, place rice flour side down in banneton, pinch top to stretch surface touching banneton, sprinkle rice flour on top.
Cover. Proof two hours or until banneton is filled.
Refrigerate 12 hours to 3 days, longer if more sour flavor is desired.
Preheat baking stone to 500°f / 260°c with a pan for water on a rack below the stone.
Liberate the bread onto a peel and score as desired. Place on stone and put a couple handfuls of ice cubes on the heated pan. Reduce temperature to 444° / 230°c and bake for 36 minutes.
Thanks for sharing! A very intriguing recipe will definitely try that out. Currently, I lean more towards using a cast iron pot for a reliable crust since I am fairly new to the backing business.
Baking in a preheated cast iron pot works great and removes the need for a pizza stone and creating steam in the oven. My pizza steel lives in my oven and I put the ice cubs on the bottom of the oven so this ends up being easier for me than using a pot.
Would you use a similar oven setup to bake pizza as well? I am still struggling with the pizza crust. It usually is too hard or too soft. The dough seems fine but I just can't get a good crust.
Interesting that you are using a rye starter. I wonder what effect that would have over using a wheat starter but with the same amount of rye in for the bulk ferment. Also seems like you use a higher percentage of starter than most, how'd you settle on that?
I use rye for the starter because I enjoy the flavor, it seems to rise faster, and it seems to harbor more diverse microorganisms (this is just my unscientific subjective sense).
The higher percentage starter is just for ease of use, ending up with the percentage of rye I like and fully filling my starter jar. Basically all the amounts, times and temperatures are a bit idiosyncratic to my own process and not necessarily objective optimizations.