Because rye bread was on my mind, I visited King Arthur's new bakery (which opened officially on July 8), seeking out Jeffrey Hamelman. Jeff is King Arthur's head baker, spiritual bread leader, writer, good friend, obsessive fisherman, and a master of a great, light, 40-percent rye bread, available two days a week at the bakery. I wheedled the following recipe out of him because Frank and I had bought and gone through great quantities of it as we ate our way through the gravlax and smoked salmon we managed to bring home.

Although nothing can compare to the way our bakery's new French oven bakes (it's a Fringand, from the folks at Pavailler), the following recipe will make a reasonable facsimile of Jeff's bread in your own home oven, until you can get to our bakery yourself. (It is a great bakery, something I've dreamed about for years. Now that it's become reality, it's created a mental war zone for me. I just cannot physically handle all the bread and pastries that I feel, professionally, I should be eating… and continue to bake at home as well. This is a terrible problem to have to sort out. I hope it takes me a very long time.)

Anyway, Jeffrey very nicely, with a lovely program on his computer, scaled his rye bread formula down to a manageable 3 pounds. It goes together very much like the ciabatta I make with a biga (recipe follows), a cinch if you have a bread machine and pretty easy if you don't. And it gives you a chance to use your sourdough starter, or whatever culture you may have on hand.

The Night Before (Overnight Starter)
1 tablespoon starter of whatever persuasion
2 cups (8 ounces) pumpernickel
7 ounces water

Dough
the overnight starter
1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) water
4 1/4 cups (17 ounces) unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
scant cup (3 1/2 ounces) pumpernickel
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

Place the starter ingredients into a small mixing bowl, or the bucket of your bread machine. Mix together and knead for 3 to 5 minutes or so, until the starter is well mixed into the flour/water mixture. Cover and let work overnight.

In a large mixing bowl, or the bucket of your bread machine, combine all of the dough ingredients. Mix until the dough begins to "pick up," and then turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it until it becomes cohesive. Rye dough tends to be sticky, so keep your hands well-floured (or well-oiled) and resist the temptation to keep adding flour. If you're using a bread machine, program it for dough. Check it occasionally, as you may need to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula as it kneads. Allow the machine to complete its cycle, removing the dough from the bucket, gently deflating it, turning it over and replacing it in the bucket midway through its rise.

If you're kneading the dough by hand, cover it with plastic wrap and give it a rest. This autolyse gives the dough a chance to relax, and the flour time to absorb the liquid. Continue kneading until it's as smooth and "springy" as a rye dough can be. Return it to the lightly greased mixing bowl, cover it, and let it rest for about 30 minutes. Pick the dough up (this will gently deflate it), and fold it over onto itself a couple of times. Return it to the bowl, and let it rise for another 30 minutes to an hour.

Cut the dough in half, shape each half into a boule (round ball) and, if you have them available, place the boules smooth-side-down in a couple of well-floured brotformen. If you don't have any of these dough-rising baskets, place the boules in medium-sized mixing bowls that you've lined with well-floured linen towels. Cover and let rise until the dough looks well-expanded but not necessarily doubled; it's difficult to say how long this will be, as it very much depends on the warmth of your kitchen.

Preheat your oven to 425°F. Turn the boules out onto parchment-lined or lightly greased baking sheets. (If you're using a baking stone, turn them out onto a piece or two of parchment.) Slash the tops of the loaves simply; rye doesn't take to fancy slashing. Spritz them with water, and place them in the oven (onto the stone, if you're using one). Bake the bread for 40 minutes, until it's a deep, golden brown; its interior temperature will register 190°F-205°F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove the bread from the oven, and cool it on a rack. Yield: 2 loaves.

Nutrition information per serving (1/20 of recipe, 73g): 146 cal, .5g fat, 5g protein, 31g complex carbohydrates, 5g dietary fiber, 321mg sodium, 176mg potassium, 2mg iron, 12mg calcium, 146mg phosphorus.

This recipe reprinted from The Baking Sheet Newsletter, Vol. XI, No. 5, Summer 2000 issue.