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Sour Dough for Rye Breads

A sourdough starter made from old rye dough, water, rye flour, and compressed yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Dough for Rye Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Dissolve the old dough in 1 quart of water.

  2. Add enough rye flour to make a lukewarm sponge.

  3. Let the mixture stand until the next day.

Use and keep it going

  1. Use this sponge for the first batch of bread with some compressed yeast.

  2. Each day, reserve a piece of the rye dough to use as a starter for the next day's batch.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Old dough
Contains live microbes and acids that leaven and flavour the new rye starter.
Rye flour
Feeds the microbes and thickens the mixture into a sponge that ferments.
Compressed yeast
Adds extra leavening to the first batch so it rises before the starter is established.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge stand until the next day. Fermentation needs time for microbes to multiply and produce acids and gas. Cutting the standing time short leaves a weak starter that gives little rise and less sour flavour.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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