Sourdough Rye

In honor of the new year, I've been looking for some new healthy recipes to try.  One problem I regularly run into is finding a 100% whole grain bread that doesn't ruin every sandwich or meal it comes into contact with, or require some kind of butter to make it palatable and un-dry.  I found this recipe from Mark Bittman, whom I trust, on how to make a really time-consuming, no-knead, whole-grain sourdough.  I just finished assembling the sourdough starter and look forward to making it into bread sometime next week.  (It seems the trick to omitting sugar and honey from your bread is giving your yeast the better part of a week to feed off the flour and do its rising.)  I love both rye and sourdough, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Ingredients

For the sourdough starter:

• 2 2/3 cups rye flour, Pinch instant yeast

For the dough:

• Sourdough starter
• 2 cups rye flour
• 2 cups whole-wheat or white flour
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups cracked rye or rye flour

Directions

1. To make the starter: In a tall, narrow, nonmetal container (a tall, narrow bowl is fine), mix 2/3 cup rye flour with 1/2 cup water, along with the tiniest pinch of instant yeast — less than 1/16 teaspoon. Cover and let sit for about 24 hours, then add the same amount of both flour and water (no more yeast). Repeat twice more, at 24-hour intervals; 24 hours after the fourth addition, you have your starter. (From now on, keep it in the refrigerator; you don’t need to proceed with the recipe for a day or two if you don’t want to. Before making the dough, take a ladleful — 1/2 to 3/4 cup — of the starter and put it in a container; stir in 1/2 cup rye flour and a scant 1/2 cup water, mix well, cover and refrigerate for future use. This starter will keep for a couple of weeks. If you don’t use it during that time and you wish to keep it alive, add 1/2 cup each flour and water every week or so and stir; you can discard a portion of it if it becomes too voluminous.)  

2.  To make the dough: Combine the remaining starter in a big bowl with the rye flour, the whole-wheat or white flour and 2 1/4 cups water.  

3.  Mix well, cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight, up to 12 hours.  

4.  The next morning, the dough should be bubbly and lovely. Add the salt, the cracked rye and 1 cup water — it will be more of a thick batter than a dough and should be pretty much pourable.  

5.  Pour and scrape it into two 8-by-4-inch nonstick loaf pans. The batter should come to within an inch of the top, no higher.  

6.  Cover (an improvised dome is better than plastic wrap; the dough will stick to whatever it touches) and let rest until it reaches the rim of the pans, about 2 to 3 hours, usually. Preheat the oven to 325 and bake until a skewer comes out almost clean; the internal temperature will measure between 190 and 200. This will take about 1 1/2 hours or a little longer.  

7.  Remove loaves from the pans and cool on a rack. Wrap in plastic and let sit for a day before slicing, if you can manage that; the texture is definitely better the next day.