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Bread

Rye Bread with Sour Dough

A loaf of rye bread made using a sourdough starter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Bread with Sour Dough

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 650°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. In a large bowl, combine the water and sour dough to set a sponge.

  2. Use good rye flour and let the mixture sit at a temperature of 65°F to 70°F until it drops.

Mix and shape

  1. Add 6 gallons of water and 12 ounces of coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix in ¾ rye flour and ¼ wheat flour to form a medium firm dough.

  3. Let the dough rest until it shows signs of life.

  4. Scale and mold the dough into loaves.

Proof and bake

  1. Allow the loaves to proof until they are half risen.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F to 450°F, ensuring the loaves are not too close together until they are well baked.

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour dough
Leavens the bread and adds sour flavor through wild yeast and acids.
Rye flour
Gives a dense, moist crumb and earthy flavor, since rye has less gluten than wheat.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten, giving the dough enough structure to hold its shape and rise.

The step that matters

Proof the loaves until half risen. Underproofed loaves stay dense and tight, while overproofed loaves can collapse in the oven. Stopping at half risen leaves enough gas-trapping structure to expand during baking.

“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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