Lepard v Whitley revisited - Rye Bakeoff

 It's deja vu all over again!

You should always wait 24 hours before cutting a rye loaf.  But tonight I'm breaking all the rules. As part of the Mellow Bakers Challenge I baked Dan Lepard's Light Rye: This includes White flour and yeast .

Lepards's Light Rye

 I also did my version of Andrew Whitley's Brodinsky Rye which is 100% Rye and 100% Sourdough.  I was really pleased because it didn't stick to the pan!

Whitley's Brodinsky 100% Rye 

Side by side it's easy to be seduced by Lepard's big rise

Comparisons are odious - aren't they just!

And the web is less gummy (inevitably) even though it was still just a little bit warm.

World Wide Web

Brodinsky bread has coriander as a flavouring and Light Rye uses caraway.

Both excellent it's hard to avoid the appeal of that extra bit of oomph. so maybe I'll be adding extra yeast and white flour as a matter of course in future.

It's been great to prove that you can bake decent bread with just sourdough rye - but then to submit to the inevitable - as many bakers have done before.

Wheelie Quite Good

Cut a few corners with this one due to bad timing but the result was good. 

Cant understand why Dan recommends spraying with water despite dressing with flour. Also found the slash around the circumference to be a bit of a waste of time. The oven temperature and timing is too high and too long in the book. I lowered the gas mark by one  chopped ten minutes off the timing and even then my raisins were in danger of charring.  One other thing - why rye starter in this recipe?These foibles aside - not bad at all.

Alsace loaf with rye

Mellow Bakers are baking Dan Lepard's  "The Handmade Loaf" and June has got three great loaves:

This was one of the first I tried so I was happy to revisit this one.

It makes 5 batons but I've only got a double baguette tray so there was a bit of a log jam!

Obsevations.
 DL uses more sweetener than I would.
 The whole grains are wheat not rye, because my storecupboard is already overflowing with ingredients (and no one stocks rye grains locally).

(and that's just the flour bin)

I am beginning to suspect that my dried yeast packet has been open so long that the yeast is no longer very active.
Why does Dan use some rye starter in two of the three recipes this month but not in the third one: Light Caraway Rye (where he uses a 2hr old milk sour). In  this one it seems justified but is used in the same proportion (along with yeast) in the Raisin Ring.

My experimentation with 100% Sourdough Levain, 100% Rye Flour continues to be thwarted at the point where I try to remove it from the pan:

Here's the lid of the Pullman to prove it rose to the top - and stuck hard!

I've not given up yet!

Oh Baguette - there goes the bread machine

I decided to go back to basics and do a white baguette today. It went very well:

The tools of the trade - baguette tray and improvised lame - coffee shop stirrer and razor:

Sadly my bread maker  - which I only ever use on the dough setting - died in me. The spindle just fell through the base.  I do hope there's not a retaining nut in the bread! With the seal gone the liquid will escape from the mixing bowl.  So it's a new bowl.