#9: Transitional Rye Hearth Seigle

This is the next step with rye. With this loaf, we have gone from 33% rye to 56% rye. And the rye flavor is beginning to come through.

With this loaf, we are shifting over to using a starter. Reinhart calls for a stiff (63% hydration), whole wheat mother starter. Unfortunately, my mother starter is a bread flour starter with 100% hydration. With this in mind, I worked backwards adjusting various levels to mimic what Reinhart calls for. Here's what I did: 71 grams of Reinhart's mother starter would contain 27 grams of water and 44 grams of whole wheat flour. So I used 54 grams of my mother starter (27 grams flour and 27 grams of water) to get the correct hydration and then added an additional 17 grams of flour. Also, I replaced 44 grams of the bread flour with whole wheat flour. Finally, I gave the starter for the loaf a little extra time to catch up.

And, (surprisingly?), this all seems to have worked quite well. This was a very pleasant loaf. I got a nice rise. It wasn't at all heavy. And it tasted great with peanut butter, the ultimate test for any rye bread.