Recently, I was finally able to find a bag of rye flour.  Of all the things I knew would be harder to come by after moving here, rye flour was not one of them!

In anticipation of baking day, I got a rye sourdough starter going last night, using 2 cups rye flour, 2 cups warm water, and about 1/3 cup of our usual starter.

Allow me to introduce you to…

…The Rye of Sour-on.

My kids are hilarious.

Because our original starter has aged so well, it can be shared or used as a base for “overnight starters”, which some recipes call for.

The girls didn’t bother looking up any rye bread recipes.  They just modified their usual Quick and Easy Sourdough recipe (minus the optional garlic and Parmesan with herbs).  With their usual double recipe, they used 2 cups of rye starter, substituted the sugar with molasses, and added 3 cups of rye flour before switching back to all purpose.

The result was a denser bread that didn’t rise as much during backing.  Which is good, because it means they slices will fit completely in the toaster, unlike our usual loaves, which sometimes need to be flipped. 😀

Hearty and delicious!

I like the idea of using multiple kinds of flour when baking bread, but that requires having multiple kinds of flour on hand.  Which we really don’t have the space for, anyhow.  So we usually just use all purpose flour, since it gets used for so many other things as well.  I think I’ll make an exception for rye flour – which was only available in a small bag, anyhow.

It looks like we’ll be maintaining two sourdough starters now; Sir Sour Alot and the Rye of Sour-on.

The Re-Farmer