Nordic Whole Grain Rye Bread Recipes

Steps:

• On Day 1, make the starter: In a medium-size bowl, mix 3/4 cup warm water with the buttermilk or yogurt. Whisk flour and yeast together, add to the buttermilk mixture and use your hands to mix together until sticky and moist; add more warm water as needed. Cover tightly and set aside at cool room temperature overnight, or up to 24 hours.
• Also on Day 1, soak the grains: Mix 4 cups cold water with the rye berries (or meal) and sunflower seeds. Cover and set aside at cool room temperature overnight, or up to 24 hours.
• On Day 2, make the bread: Drain the soaked grains in a colander. Measure 35 ounces/1,000 grams of the grains and place in a deep bowl. Add 14 ounces/400 grams of the starter and mix well. (Any remaining starter can be saved to use with other bread recipes.) Add the flour, salt, malt (or molasses), yeast and 2 cups water. Mix dough firmly by hand to combine. The dough should be grainy, but quite runny and wet, almost like a thick batter. To achieve that texture, add cold water, 1/4 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. To test: When a walnut-size piece of dough smeared on the rim of the bowl slides slowly and smoothly down the inside, like a snail leaving a trail, the dough it is wet enough.
• Thickly butter 3 medium or 2 standard-size loaf pans. Divide the dough evenly among the pans, filling them about half full. Cover and let rise at room temperature until dough almost fills pans, about 2 hours. (Dough will not rise more during baking.)
• Heat oven to 450 degrees. Bake loaves for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 360 and bake until firm and glossy brown, 80 minutes to 2 hours more depending on size and moisture content of loaves. Let cool completely in the pans before turning out. Bread freezes well, and lasts for at least a week at room temperature, wrapped in paper.

Steps:

• combine honey, molasses, salt, butter and caraway, pour boiling water over, and set aside to cool.
• Add yeast to warm water, stir to dissolve, and add to honey molasses mixture when cooled to lukewarm.
• add 2 cups of WW flour to mixture and using dough hook, mix well.
• add the remaining flours until you have a smooth dough that can be kneaded.
• Knead for 8 to 10 minutes and place in lightly oiled bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in size (about 1 1/2 to 2 hours).
• Punch down, turn out onto floured surface and knead for 2 minutes.
• Separate dough into 2 equal parts, shape to fit 2 loaf pans.
• Cover and let rise for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours until almost doubled in size.
• Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes. If tops are browning too much, cover with foil for the lase 15 minutes.
• Cool on wire racks, and enjoy with butter!
• note- I leave the loaf pans in the oven for the second rise, and then just uncover and turn on the oven to bake, I add 5 minutes to the baking time to compensate for the preheating time.