Losing My Marbles for Marbled Rye

September 29, 2009 at 8:34 pm (BBA Challenge, Bread Baker's Apprentice, Bread Baking, Peter Reinhart, Rye bread, Techniques)
Tags: BBA Challenge, Bread Baker's Apprentice, fermenting, marbled rye, Peter Reinhart, proofing dough, rye, whole grain

For the first time since the beginning of the BBA Challenge, I am not ahead on my bread baking. I attribute this to two things:  first, my recent jam and jelly obsession, which has occupied most of the last few weeks; and second, the fact that I was a little unsure about making marbled rye. It’s not that I don’t like it, because I do. It’s just that I was only slightly less nervous about marbling the rye than I had been about braiding challah.

But the Challenge is all about breaking our bread barriers, so I finally decided to try my hand at marbled rye. Besides, I needed something to go under my citrus marmalade.

The first thing that concerned me was making sure the two doughs would work together. That is, that they would rise, ferment, proof and bake on roughly the same schedule. In order to ensure this, I made the doughs one after the other. I began by doing my mise en place for both recipes, so I could move right from one to the next.  

I started with the light rye. While it was kneading in the Kitchen Aid, I began mixing the dark rye. It was ready to go into the mixer as soon as the light rye came out, so the doughs were only about 5 minutes apart by the time they began bulk fermenting.

The recipes are exactly the same, except that the dark rye has caramel coloring in it. The recipe calls for liquid caramel coloring, but what I had was powdered (from King Arthur). I used 5 teaspoons of coloring, and it seemed to work out just right. I also added about a teaspoon and a half of rye sour (also from KAF) to each dough.

At the end of the bulk ferment, I divided each dough into 4 pieces of equal size (yes, I am OCD enough to weigh them). Starting with the light rye and alternating, I rolled 2 pieces of each dough into an oval roughly 8 by 5 inches, stacking them as I went.

I rolled each stack into a batard and put them into loaf pans. Shaping the loaves was easier than I thought. It was really just a matter of rolling the dough and sealing it as I went along; kind of like rolling up a really thick dough into a loaf.

The loaf on the left is upside down to show how it looked when I sealed it.

After 90 minutes of proofing in the pans, the bread went into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. I took it out of the pans and let it cool for an hour or so before slicing it.

Oh, yeah. And eating it with citrus marmalade.