Bread Baking Day 3: The Sourdough Experiment

For a while I have already been thinking of trying to make a bread with rye sourdough. But my boyfriend who was a bit nervous about the smell kept me from actually doing it. So I was really happy about the theme of BBD#3, such that I had a reason for trying to bake with real self-made sourdough. Before I had tried dry sourdough from the supermarket. But making it myself from scratch was a very different experience. I sticked to the description and hints on this page and can really recommend them. So here come the story of my first self-made sourdough…

My rye sourdough at the first day: just 50 g of whole rye flour and 50 ml water.

Day 2: I added 50 g of whole rye flour and 50 ml water. You can see first bubbles and notice a light sour smell.

Day 3: It starts to smell sour and you see some more bubbles. Again, I added 50 g of whole rye flour and 50 ml water.

Day 4: I think this sourdough is ready for baking. It looks like a sponge inside.

For baking I took 300g of my sourdough and kept some in the fridge for later. Then, I added 75 ml water, 270 g of rye flour, a tblsp of sugar and a teasp of salt and kneaded it it a bread loaf. Then I put it into the oven at 35 degrees Celsius and left it to rest for 2 1/4 hours until it had doubled its volume.

Then I put it in the oven at 200 degress Celsius for 45 minutes, as it is a small loaf. And this is the result…. a nice and very tasty rye bread! I think it is much better than from the bakery. Furthermore, it is a great feeling to know exactly what is in your bread: nothing but rye meal, water, salt and sugar.

This is the bread in cut: