Hearty Breads

Oh beautiful grainy, hearty breads I seriously like you. I think it's something that I have learned the more I make breads, the more I like some substance to them. For me, this means grains. Some serious grains at that. Lately I've been 'oohing' and 'ahhing' over rye. Not rye the flour so much as cracked rye. It has this lovely nutty flavor and a beautiful soft/chewy texture that I adore.

I've made a ton of bread at school: rye baguettes (the photo on the bottom of this post), dreikornbrot (the first photo. It has flax, rye chops, sesame and oats), a rosemary levain bread (which looked more like a roasted potato than a loaf of bread but was amazingly tasty and moist) miche, sunflower and rye bread, plenty of baguettes (ranging from straight dough to many preferment's), pumpernickel bread (takes 24 hours in the oven in order to get the color and taste that pumper has! AND it's basically all rye chops [cracked rye soaked with water]) and many more fabulously grainy breads.

Light Rye 60%

I adore rye bread. Something about the flavor adds a heartiness and depth that you simply can't achieve using white flour alone. This rye has caraway, a little dark rye flour and has a sourdough starter using some of the levain I've been faithfully keeping alive for the past few weeks. So it has a little added sourness to it, and the flavor gets better as the bread ages.

I like to call the style of cut I used on the bread "the comb over". From Hamelman.