Monday, June 23, 2008

Silesian Light Rye (Chleba)

No pictures. The camera is still in the shop. You'll have to rely on my brilliant powers of essay*. The oven, however, works just fine, and turned out a very nice batch of Silesian Light Rye from Local Breads on Saturday. This rye is very light indeed, more of a rye-tinged sandwich bread (it's also fluffy from a mid-process addition of yeast).

I'm starting to warm up to work on the Czech and Polish rye section of the book, but I haven't made a rye sourdough yet, so all my breads are a little less intensely rye than the book suggests they might be. For now, I'm just refreshing my stiff levain with rye according to the instructions in the individual recipes.

This batch was two short fat free-form loaves, kind of like spread batards, topped with caraway. I forgot to score it until they'd been in the oven a little while, so the score marks were more like slice marks, as the top crust had already formed. Still, it spread some. The loaves were golden, pleasant, and unremarkable. I have a batch of the Polish Cottage Rye in the refrigerator now, hopefully it will have a bit more character, although, as noted, it's partly my fault for refusing to get a rye sourdough going.

*I'm thinking of writing some book reviews. Would that interest anyone?

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