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Simple Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Rye Bread
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.
Table of Contents
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.
Simple Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Rye Bread
Beautiful rye bread made from fresh milled flours
Ingredients
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.
Fresh milled flour sourdough book
Ready to bake great sourdough bread, pizza, and pastries from freshly milled flour?
Baking great sourdough doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Whether you’re using fresh milled flour or store-bought flour, you can make delicious bread, pizza, and more in your own kitchen.
Sourdough Without Fail is written for real home bakers and homesteaders who want recipes and methods that work in real-life conditions.
- Flexible recipes that work with fresh milled flour and store-bought whole grain flour (wheat, ancient grains, and gluten-free options)
- Multiple options for different batch sizes and schedules
- Understand the “why” as well as the “how” of sourdough
- 75+ adaptable recipes for bread, pizza, pastries, and more
- Practical techniques that work in real life
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About Kate Downham
Kate Downham has been growing, preserving, and cooking real food since 2007. She is the author of four books on homestead skills: A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen, Natural Small Batch Cheesemaking, Backyard Dairy Goats, and Sourdough Without Fail.
Off-grid with her family of nine in the Tasmanian forest, Kate milks her own goats, makes all their cheese, mills all her own grain, and bakes fresh sourdough bread daily.
2 responses to “Simple Fresh Milled Flour Sourdough Rye Bread”
Lovely recipe. Followed it up to the point where the dough had proofed and then gets gently stretched then folded in three and shaped to be put in a loaf pan for a final 2-hour rise. Instead of the 2-hour rise, I did a 48 hour long cold ferment in the fridge. The loaf did not rise much in the fridge so it was fairly flat when baked and didn’t rise much, if at all during the bake, even with the steam and cookie sheet on top for the first 20 minutes of the bake. After the bake and resting overnight for 12 hours, I sliced it and it was a bit gummy on the inside. So I toasted it and tried it. That helped get rid of the gumminess. Quite delicious with the distinctive strong and complex rye flavours and a crispy, chewy crust with a lot of tooth. But mine did not appear to have the same fluffy rise as yours pictured in the recipe, which looks more like a dense sandwich bread loaf. Will try it again as my rye starter may have needed to be pre-fed before making the levain. Still learning to understand the starter as a living organism and read its moods. Thanks for the meticulous step by step instructions.
Thank you!
A 48 hour cold proof is too long for this loaf, so I think that is most likely what has gone wrong. But a couple of other things that you could tinker with would be the state of the starter that you add to the pre-ferment (if it’s overfermented, use less of it than you would ripe starter, but ideally, ripe starter is what will yield the nicest, fluffiest bread), another thing is the rye flour that you are using – it may be worth holding back a couple of tablespoons of water per loaf, just in case your rye flour isn’t as thirsty as mine. Increasing the baking time slightly might also help too.
I’m glad you loved the taste of it, even if the texture wasn’t perfect this time around.
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