Happy Bloomsday, everyone! Do you celebrate it?  We do by reading a chapter from Ulysses or Dubliners and by eating fresh bread…which is my substitute for the grilled mutton kidneys that Leopold Bloom, one of the main characters in Ulysses, eats for breakfast. Maybe this strange beginning of a food blog post is an example for the writing of James Joyce, maybe it is just a bad introduction, anyway go celebrate! And now back to food:

One of my favourite food blogs is Tofu for Two, where Anni and Heikki share their amazing and creative recipes, which always come with the most beautiful pictures.
A couple of days ago Anni posted a recipe for Finnish Rye Bread. Of course I had to make it. Finnish and German Rye breads have many similarieties.  Anni’s bread is a 100 % rye bread leavened with sourdough. For a long time rye was the standard grain for bread making in many Northern, East, and Central European countries and in Germany it is still used quite often. Because German sourdough starters are traditionally made with rye flour or rye chops, 100 % rye breads are not too hard to find. And they are really something special. It is a miracle that something made only from flour, water, and salt can develop such a complex flavour and such a pleasant smell. And this miracle makes bread baking not only fantastic, but also very addictive.

To make Anni’s bread, I halved the recipe and made small loaves. The recipe calls for stale Finnish rye bread to prepare the starter. I didn’t have any and so I used my own sourdough starter. Therefore I had to adjust the amounts of water and flour in the recipe. Apart from that I followed Anni’s excellent instructions to a tee. If you want to make this bread, which I would highly recommend, hop over to Anni’s blog to find out how to.

Anni’s Finnish Rye Bread

For the starter:
50 g sourdough starter made from medium rye flour
375 ml water
250 g medium rye flour

For the bread dough:
the starter
500 g medium rye flour
50-75 ml warm water
1/2 T salt

This bread has a fantastic smell and flavour. It is a strong bread, aromatic and chewy and has a tough crust and a very dense crumb. In my opinion it is exactly how the perfect rye bread should be. After I baked it, we waited another day to cut it. As Anni already explains on her blog, rye breads are best one or two days after baking. Clearly one of my new favourites! And my contribution to Susan’s YeastSpotting.

© seitanismymotor 2009