This fresh milled flour sourdough rye bread is made from a mix of whole fresh milled rye and wheat (or ancient grains). It makes a beautiful loaf served on its own, for sandwiches and smørrebrød, and pretty much anywhere. A perfect balance of sweet, sour, and full-bodied flavour. This is a beautiful loaf to savour and make again and again. Still with some of the benefits of wheat, but with enough rye to really call it a rye bread.

The instructions below are for pan loaves, but you can also make this as a dutch oven loaf.

Rye really thrives with steam, so this recipe has instructions for trapping steam on top of pan loaves by putting a cookie sheet on top for the first 20 minutes, but you can use any other method of creating steam, such as the dutch oven method, or adding ice cubes to a preheated cast iron frypan in the oven.

About the pre-ferment (levain) method

This bread uses the pre-ferment method, which is also called the levain method. If you don’t like the extra step of mixing up a special pre-ferment the night before, feel free to just use ripe wheat starter in the place of the pre-ferment 

The pre-ferment method that I use basically involves adding the starter-feeding-up as an extra step of a recipe. Rather than looking at a recipe and thinking “I don’t have enough starter for that…” or having to think about feeding your starter as a seperate chore from making bread, the feeding-up is included in the actual recipe.

To make a pre-ferment, you simply mix up the pre-ferment ingredients in the bread bowl, remove a small amount of it in the morning, before you mix the final dough, and this small amount of pre-ferment becomes your sourdough starter for your next bread.

See my post on sourdough timelines if you’d like to know a bit more about different approaches to fitting sourdough into life.

Flour options

For the rye in this recipe, fresh milled rye flour is the best choice. Or choose whole rye flour (also called dark rye flour).

For the wheat in the recipe, you can either use wheat starter and wheat flour, or use fresh milled emmer or Khorasan in the recipe to replace wheat without needing to adjust any other ingredients.

You can also replace all the wheat flour and wheat starter with spelt or einkorn – simply reduce the amount of water by 3 tablespoons, because these grains need less water than wheat.

Fresh milled flour sourdough rye bread recipe

Ingredients for 1 loaf

For the pre-ferment:

10g (2 tsp) sourdough starter

112g (3⁄4 cup + 1 Tbsp) whole fresh milled wheat flour

112g (scant 1⁄2 cup) water

For the final dough:

225g (scant 1 cup) pre-ferment

156g (1 cup + 3 Tbsp) whole fresh milled wheat flour (or use ancient grains, see headnotes)

181g (1 1⁄3 cups) whole fresh milled rye flour

275g (1 cup + 2 Tbsp) water

8g (2 1⁄2 tsp) salt

Method 

Mix pre-ferment, ferment overnight 

Combine all the pre-ferment ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Leave to ferment overnight at coolish room temperature, or for around 6 hours in a warm room. 

Remove starter, mix final dough 

Remove some of the pre-ferment to use as the next day’s starter. Add the flours, water, and salt to the pre-ferment and mix until no traces of flour remain. 

Rest, stretch, and fold 

Allow to sit for around 20 minutes, then do a series of stretch and folds.

Ferment 

Ferment for around three hours, or until puffed up, doing another two rests, stretch, and folds early in the fermentation period if you wish to make a very strong dough. 

Divide, shape, and proof 

Grease a loaf pan with butter or lard. Gently shape your dough into a pan loaf shape and place in the pan.

Proof for around two hours, or until risen. Alternatively, you can proof this at fridge temperatures overnight.

Bake

Preheat the oven to 210ºC (410ºF). 

Place your loaves in the oven, with an optional cookie sheet on top to trap steam. Bake for around 60 minutes, removing the cookie sheet after the first 20 minutes.