07/04/07

Light Rye Bread

My wife wanted some bread to make sandwiches for my daughter's party. My daughter is not a fan of my breads as she finds the crust too tough for her liking. Like most Singaporeans brought up on sweet dough breads and worst, supermarket breads, she has yet to acquire a taste for real bread which is crusty and chewy. I hope her friends will like the bread better as I was really reluctant to buy a loaf of supermarket sandwich bread.

The sweet dough breads sold here are tender and most have sweet or savory fillings. They are enjoyable if properly made but sadly, the bulk of the breads sold in neighborhood bakeries are flavorless and trans-fat laden junk. I guess nobody will use real butter for a bun costing S$0.60.

Anyway, I did not want to miss my experiments on rye starters and I decided to use a sourdough rye starter to make a light rye bread. The starter is 30% of the final dough flour and that's all the rye in the bread. As I was using a convection oven, I thought of using Laurel Robertson's technique of switching off the oven for the first 15 minutes. However, I chickened out and continued with my usual method. I couldn't afford a failure in this batch of bread since it is needed for the party.