Danish Rye Bread - Easier Than Ever
I was in Denmark on vacation this summer and was reminded about just how good freshly baked Danish rye bread (rugbrød) can taste - nutty, satisfyingly chewy, with a distinctively sour finish that lingers in your mouth. Great as the foundation of a myriad of open-sandwiches (smørrebrød), but also lovely for breakfast with just with a bit of butter and strawberry jam.
In Copenhagen, I was especially impressed by the wonderful offerings from Meyers Bageri - not only for their fine breads and pastries, but more so for the philosophical approach to bread, and the break-making ingredients they sold on-premises: malt syrup, fresh-milled wheat and rye flours, live sour dough - pure and simple ingredients of high quality that anybody could buy for making their own fantastic breads at home.
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| Meyers bageri in Copenhagen, items for purchase, "fresh flour" brochure |
This got me inspired to revisit my own approach to rye bread making - could I make it easier and well adapted to ingredients available in North America? I wanted to find out. So, I spent a couple of months after my vacation back in Canada working things out - testing variations - and I am very happy to say that I have a new and improved technique for making Danish rye bread - one that I find is really easy to make and tastes super good - just like rugbrød in Denmark.
So what is the secret? A healthy and active rye sourdough leaven that you use to make a sourdough starter. This is what imparts the sour character that is so typical of Danish rye bread. Although not hard to make, it takes some time to get going. But once its ready, you have the vital main ingredient to wonderfully complex breads. If you have access to fresh rye sourdough leaven, great! If not, you can find an excellent recipe with very detailed steps and photos here (from the Tartine Bread Experiment blog).
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| My personal rye bread sourdough leaven |
Once you have the leaven, you need to make your sourdough starter. Here's what you do the night before you plan on baking your bread:
- In a medium sized bowl, add 1 tablespoon of fresh leaven to 100ml lukewarm water, then stir in 100g rye flour.
- Mix thoroughly, scrape the sides of the bowl clean, and cover.
- Let rise undisturbed overnight.
- The next morning, you have a bowl of sour dough starter and you are ready to go...
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| Danish rye bread ingredients, including sourdough starter (front) |
The rest is a snap. In terms of the qualities of ingredients, check this out...
And here are the steps for making your own Danish rye bread:
- Mix together all the dry ingredients in a big bowl
- Add the starter to the warm water and stir it up a bit
- Pour the water over the dry ingredients and mix it all together thoroughly with a spatula or wooden spoon
- Transfer to a greased 9" x 5" loaf pan like this one (which I bought at Canadian Tire for ten bucks)
- Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sesame seeds over top of the loaf
(See image below)
Danish rye bread steps continued:
- Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 3-4 hours in a warm place (until the dough rises a bit above the top of the bread pan)
- Put pan in oven, turn heat to 350F and let bake for 1 hour and 40 minutes, spritzing water into the oven periodically.
Note: After about 1 hour, I cover the loaf with aluminum foil to keep the top from burning
- Turn off heat, remove loaf from the pan and let cool in the warm oven for about an hour
- Remove from over, let cool completely, slice thinly with a good bread knife and enjoy!
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| Before and after baking - yummy golden delicious! |
Regarding the ingredients: You can pretty much find all the ingredients in local grocery or specialty food stores, the one exception being the cracked rye (which can be trickier to find). If you can't find it, you can either buy whole rye and crack it yourself with a grain mill (which is what I do), or order it online, for instance from the Bob's Red Mill site here.
For the mixed seeds, I use 30-30-10-10 % mix of sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame. But try different things as you please.
Good luck with your bread! If you make it, I really look forward to hearing about how it goes. Here's how my most recent batch turned out...so delicious!
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| A slice of delicious Danish rye bread |
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