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Black Russian rye bread

Time1 hour 30 minutes
YieldsMakes 2 loaves (about 16 servings)
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Unless you’re reading this story in your grandmother’s Brooklyn or Minnesota kitchen, a loaf of dark bread just out of the oven, you may be part of the vast majority of people for whom dense rye breads are a bit out of the comfort zone. You may run across old-world loaves like these, on your table if you’re lucky or maybe at a Vermont bakery, the loaves stacked in a dark mosaic, but in this country it’s mostly the more familiar baguettes and country whites that we buy and bake at home.

But if your experience of rye bread has been limited to grocery store loaves, then you’re missing out on something extraordinary. And if you’ve never baked breads like these -- chewy ryes, dark breads studded with nuts and seeds, black pumpernickels layered with as many intricate flavors as a great ale or stout -- then it’s not just a good loaf you’ve been missing, but a whole new world of baking. Or, more exactly, an old one rediscovered.

Loaded with flavor from whole grains, often from nuts or seeds, and sometimes from long hours on the oven floor, loaves of rye bread built the bakeries of northern and eastern Europe and migrated to this country with the bakers that created them. And although they can sometimes require a bit more technique than a loaf of white, and often a few more ingredients, they’re surprisingly easy to make at home.

The payoff? Loaves with stunning flavor, texture and depth. Breads that have complexity and staying power and the ability to pair with strong ingredients instead of fading into the background of a meal. Breads that can form the centerpiece of meals, almost the meal itself.

“When you get hooked” on rye breads, says master baker Peter Reinhart, “you really get hooked, just like when somebody falls for a strong IPA beer. Then all of a sudden nothing else satisfies you.”

The cornerstone of old-world breads like these is, of course, the flour. Instead of wheat, these are breads built with rye flour, as that grain could grow in the less hospitable climate. Rye is a hardier grain, and the flour is also more mercurial than wheat flour, with less gluten and more bran and fiber, which means the doughs absorb more water and have a tendency to become dense and gummy. For this reason, most rye breads are not made with 100% rye, but with a combination of wheat and rye.

The exception to this loose rule is sourdough rye bread, which is what most bakers who fall in love with rye bread usually end up baking, and which, of course, is a whole other story. By using sourdough, the acidity of which creates a small chemistry experiment in your bread bowl and oven, you can make loaves using all rye flour -- beautiful, complex loaves that bear as much similarity to store-bought ryes as artisan-made baguettes do to Wonder Bread.

Sourdough starter controls the enzymatic activity of the rye flour with its natural acidity, preventing the crumb from getting gummy while adding a beautiful complex flavor to the bread. And since baking with sourdough isn’t any more difficult than baking without it -- the hard part is making and achieving a strong starter -- it’s worth considering as the logical next step in old-world baking.

“The real thing,” says certified master baker Jeffrey Hamelman, who started baking German breads 34 years ago and has represented the U.S. at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, “puts you on your knees.”

Sourcing good flour, always important in baking, becomes even more so, as rye flour -- not as popular in this country as wheat -- can quickly grow rancid if left too long on a store (or a home) shelf. Buy flour from a reliable source and store it in the freezer.

A good loaf of rye, like Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “real Jewish rye,” requires very little more than a percentage of rye flour, a bit of malt syrup (you can use honey or even table sugar), yeast, flour, salt and water.

Indeed, this simplicity is part of the reason home-baked rye is so good. Traditionally, black breads and pumpernickels were baked overnight, using the residual heat of the oven, and get their distinctive color from a long, slow caramelization of the bread itself in the oven. Short-cut commercial ryes get their hue from caramel colorings and are laden with fillers that mask the true flavor of the breads.

These badly made breads can put you off the real thing for good. “My relatives in Russia used to tell me that black bread was used to plug door holes,” said Beranbaum.

But done well, with balance and proportion, baking a simple rye bread at home, even without a sourdough starter or a massive Teutonic oven, can be revelatory.

“For me the key was the seeds,” Reinhart says of baking old-world breads at home. “Seeds have so much flavor and they give you an excuse for having a dense bread.” Nuts and seeds can be toasted for added flavor, but don’t toast them if you’ll be sprinkling them over the bread, as they’ll burn during baking.

But although seeds help compensate for not having sourdough in a bread, they also suck up a lot of the moisture in a dough, as does the rye flour itself. Many traditional rye or multigrain bread recipes call for a soaker, which is pretty much what you’d think it would be: an additional step in which seeds, bran, whole grains or whole-grain flours are first soaked before being added to the dough. This step is needed because these ingredients often require more time to fully hydrate than they’d get during ordinary mixing and rising time.

Because of issues of hydration, it’s important not to overcompensate by adding too much flour while kneading these doughs, which can be very dense but should not be stiff. This is one reason why making dark breads is often easier with a Kitchen-Aid or other mixer.

“In the beginning I did everything by hand,” says baker Beth Hensperger, author of “The Bread Bible.” “ ‘Oh no,’ I thought, ‘you need to connect with the ingredients.’ But when you have these whole-grain sticky doughs, the electrical appliances really come in handy.”

Mixing doughs by machine may not give you the same 19th century feel as kneading by hand, but it will ensure that you don’t add too much flour as the dough comes together.

And if you’re not already in the habit of weighing your ingredients, now is the time to invest in an inexpensive kitchen scale, as the different flours, as well as the brans, whole grains, seeds and nuts, can easily throw off a recipe unless they’re pretty accurately measured.

Another tip if you’ve just discovering these breads, points out Reinhart, is to divide up the dough into rolls instead of making a few large loaves. Rolls are easier to make and to control, and the dark, flavorful breads make fantastic sandwich rolls.

Dense, chewy rye and seeded breads also toast up extraordinarily well: Pair them with nubs of butter and good jams or marmalades, maybe a generous spoonful of Nutella. Beranbaum suggests topping her rye bread with unsalted butter, sliced radishes and big flakes of salt. Or turn slices of black bread into open-face or smorgasbord sandwiches, loaded with smoked fish or salumi. Even break off pieces and dip them into a pot of Swiss fondue, as they’ll hold up better than flimsy bits of French bread.

You’ll soon see that you don’t have to hop on a plane to Germany or live next to a New England artisan baker to discover the joys of freshly baked old-world bread: All you really need is a good recipe, a little patience and a pocketful of rye.

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1

In a small bowl, sprinkle the yeast and sugar over one-half cup of warm water. Stir to dissolve and let stand at room temperature until foamy, about 10 minutes.

2

In a small saucepan, gently heat the remaining 2 cups water, molasses, vinegar, butter and chocolate until the butter and chocolate are melted, stirring frequently. Set aside to cool to lukewarm.

3

In a large bowl, whisk together the whole-wheat, rye and all-purpose flours (except the 1 remaining tablespoon of all-purpose). Set aside.

4

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine 2 cups of the mixed flours, the bran, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, salt, espresso powder and shallots. Over low speed, add in the yeast and chocolate mixtures. Mix until smooth and beat at medium speed for 3 minutes. (If you don’t like whole seeds in your bread, grinding them in a spice grinder, coffee grinder or mortar and pestle allows their flavor to come through without the texture.)

5

Alternatively, this or any bread can also be made by hand, simply mixing the ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon and kneading the dough on a counter until springy and smooth. But for doughs heavy with whole grain flours, the stand mixer works the best.

6

At low speed, add one-half cup of the remaining mixed flours at a time, just until the dough clears the sides of the bowl and begins to work its way up the paddle. It will be very sticky but firm. Be careful not to add too much flour. The dough will spring back when pressed.

7

Scrape the dough off the paddle and place on a well-floured counter or large surface. Continue to knead by hand to make a smooth and springy yet dense dough. If you prefer, you can switch to the dough hook and knead again over low speed for 2 to 3 minutes, then finish off a few kneads by hand. You might not use all of the flour mixture.

8

Form into a ball and place in a greased deep container, such as a plastic bucket. Turn once to grease the top. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to rise in a warm area until doubled, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Meanwhile, combine the cornmeal, remaining tablespoon of flour and remaining teaspoon of caraway seeds, if using, and set aside. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

9

On a parchment-lined baking sheet, sprinkle the cornmeal mixture. Gently deflate the dough. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two portions. Stretch each portion into a ball, pulling the edges and pinching to form a seam. Place the formed rounds, seam side down, on the baking sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap (you can spray the plastic with nonstick cooking spray). Set aside to rise until puffy and almost doubled in bulk, 45 minutes to 1 hour. With a serrated knife, gently slash an X into the top of a round no more than one-fourth inch deep.

10

Bake the loaves until they are crusty and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom, 45 to 50 minutes. It is difficult to see the loaves browning because they are so dark-colored. If you are checking with a thermometer, they should read 200 to 210 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Remove the loaves from the baking sheet to cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Adapted from “The Bread Bible” by Beth Hensperger. Specialty flours are available at select well-stocked markets, health food, cooking and baking supply stores, as well as online.