Bavarian Village Rye Bread – Breadtopia


Sourdough bread bakers seem to have increased in waves in the U.S over the past quarter century. In the 2000s, the flourishing of the internet and the advent of YouTube resulted in new access to DIY knowledge, including sourdough bread baking recipes and methods (e.g. Eric’s 2008 whole grain sourdough how-to video). Then in 2016 Michael Pollan’s Netflix mini-series Cooked seemed to inspire another wave of sourdough bakers with the episode Air which focused on bread and fermentation. The COVID pandemic in 2020 produced a tsunami of sourdough bakers driven by the combination of supply chain disruptions, lockdowns, and perhaps social media engagement (#crumbshot). So many of us nowadays are participating in this delicious craft of sourdough bread baking that is both simple and tantelizingly complex.

That’s just a smidge of recent history though, and recently I learned a little more about the sourdough “breaducation” happening in the occasional cooking show like this episode of Cooking with Julia from 1997 with Joe Ortiz and in books like his The Village Baker, published in 1993. In this book Ortiz gives instructions for making and using various kinds of sourdough starters, all of which begin with a stiff dough ball of flour and water (some variations also have cumin, milk, or honey). It’s left under a damp towel for several days and then the center is harvested and refreshed several times before it is ready to use. This is a French method that has some similarities with Belgian desem. (Ortiz also includes instructions for interesting yeast methods like the Austrian Flourless Sponge, where the active yeast is bloomed overnight in water only, supposedly yielding a more airy and aromatic bread.)

In The Village Baker Ortiz shares bread recipes from bakeries in France, Germany, Italy, and the U.S. and one of these recipes immediately caught my eye because it had a totally unexpected ingredient: soy sauce. The bread was being made in a Bavarian bakery that dates back to 1650 by a baker named Kurt König, a self described “organic grain madman.” He used a multi-stage dough and combined rye flour, sesame seeds soaked in soy sauce, and pumpkin seeds. I had to try it. My verdict? It’s fantastic. Rye grain and soy sauce may not be related culturally, but the fermented umami of soy sauce really enhances the earthiness of rye. And Ortiz and his wife Gayle must have agreed because they include in the book a sourdough version of the recipe which they baked and sold at Gayle’s Bakery and Rosticceria, in Capitola, CA. This bread isn’t on the menu these days but maybe it will make a comeback!

I’ve created a variation of König’s and Ortiz’s recipes, taking some ingredient amounts from each, putting it all into grams, and baking hotter in an enclosed vessel instead of an open oven. The main differences are that my sourdough starter build is with rye flour and it’s low-ish hydration–to get more rye flour into the bread and to make the ripening take all night. Also I used bread flour instead of all purpose flour because I love the chew it adds.

Note: This recipe makes a large dough, weighing 1.5 kg where most bread recipes are oval rattan proofing basket and batard clay baker (3.5 qts). If you have a smaller basket or baker, you may want to reduce the recipe ingredients e.g. multiply each ingredient by 0.67 to get a 1 kg dough.


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