About this bread
This is a delicious, fragrant, dark rye bread from Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads cookbook. The bread is a lot of work to make, but worth it in the end.
Dark rye bread isn’t very popular in Southern California. Many of my friends have never, even tried this loaf. It looks a bit like pumpernickel, but it’s made with a difference grain. But my Austrian mother loved a good rye loaf and was always trying to find something similar to the bread found on her family table. Paul Hollywood’s dark rye bread was not it. Not even close. But it was delicious, and despite taking all day to make, I’ll probably bake it again. If you stumbled on this site and are looking for something much easier to begin with try #8 Irish Soda bread or if #6 Crusty Cottage Loaf. This dark rye bread is complicated.
The downside of baking this bread
- it is time consuming (5 hour first rise, and 3 hour final), however you can start the dough and run errands
- the ingredients are hard to find in Southern California (I had to order the rye flour and malt syrup off Amazon)
- the dough is a sticky and difficult to work with–like mixing huge wad of gum
- the loaves were fairly flat and would make a strange sandwich. (I’m going to try and fix that next time by adding less water.)
#7 Paul Hollywood's dark rye bread
Ingredients
- 3 cups dark rye flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- 2¼ teaspoons instant yeast
- 1/4 cup malt syrup
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1¾ cups warm water (110°-120°F)
- 2 teaspoons caraway seeds
Instructions
First rise
- Combine 1½ cups rye flour, ½ cup whole wheat flour, salt, yeast, malt syrup, molasses, and 2/3 cup of water.
- Mix well for 5 minutes, then cover and let rest for 5 hours.
Second rise
- Add the remaining flours and water, the caraway seeds, and mix well. The dough is almost impossible to knead, but give it a try if you feel like it. It'll feel like you are kneading a huge wad of chewing gum. If it is too sticky and wet, the loaves will be flatter, so try and add enough flour that the dough can retain a bit of its shape.
- Form into two loaves. Let rise for another 2-3 hours. This is Paul Hollywood's instruction. After baking the bread, I'd go for 3 hours to get a lighter loaf.
Bake
- Preheat oven to 425°F. Bake 35 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool. You can be sure this bread is done by using a digital thermometer to test that the internal dough has reached 190°F. If you've let it rise sufficiently, 35 minutes at 425°F. should do it.
