Russian Rye Bread: Rizhsky Khleb
The following recipe marks King Arthur's very first venture onto the Internet — we obtained it from a Russian student at Moscow State University, via the web, back in late 1995. Since then, we've learned its inspiration came from a wonderful book on Russian cooking, "Please to the Table: the Russian Cookbook", by Anya Von Bremzen.
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (105°F to 115°F)
- 2 tablespoons barley malt syrup or dark honey
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
- 1 1/2 cups medium rye flour or pumpernickel
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon caraway seeds
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
- 3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
Instructions
- To make the dough manually, or with a mixer: Pour the warm water into a mixing bowl and add a teaspoon of the malt extract or honey.
- Stir in the yeast and rye flour. Let this sponge work for at least 20 minutes, until it's expanded and bubbly.
- Add the remaining barley malt extract or dark honey, the salt, caraway seeds, butter, and enough of the unbleached flour to create a dough that begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. At this point, cover the dough with a towel or plastic wrap, and let it stand for about 5 minutes.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured or lightly oiled work surface, and knead until it's smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Halfway through, give the dough a rest while you clean out and butter your mixing bowl.
- Shape the dough into a ball, place it in the buttered bowl, turning to coat, and cover the bowl with a towel or plastic wrap. Allow the dough to rise for about 1 1/2 hours, or until it's not quite doubled in bulk.
- To make the dough using a bread machine: Place all of the dough ingredients into the bucket of your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer, program the machine for manual or dough, and start the machine.
- About 10 minutes before the end of the final kneading cycle, examine the dough; it should be smooth (though still sticky), not "gnarly." Adjust the dough's consistency with additional unbleached flour or water, as necessary. Allow the machine to complete its cycle, leaving it in the machine until it's just about doubled in bulk.
- To complete the bread: Punch the dough down, and divide it in half. Shape each half into an oval, place them on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, cover, and let rise for about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 375°F.
- Bake the bread for about 45 minutes, or until the crust is dark brown, and the interior temperature of the loaves measures 190°F to 200°F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove the bread from the oven, and cool it on a wire rack.
- Store, well-wrapped, on the counter for 4 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.
Tips from our bakers
- While working the dough, add only enough flour (or oil on your hands and the work surface) to keep the dough from sticking unbearably.
- Rye doughs will always be a bit sticky, so resist the urge to keep adding flour to eliminate this inherent stickiness; adding too much flour will make a heavy, dense, dry loaf.
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Reviews
I live at 7000 feet, therefore halved the yeast. I find that breads are best put in the refrigerator over night for a first slow rise. It adds to the flavor immensely. This is an outstanding bread!!!
I tried this one yesterday. I could not get all three cups of all-purpose flour into the dough. I stopped at 2.5 cups - and probably should have stopped at 2 cups, because the final dough was not as elastic as it should have been. That being said, the final result was delicious. It made two small rustic looking loaves that just taste wonderful. Next time I am trying molasses instead of the honey.Hi there, Jeff! We're so glad that you enjoyed this bread! It sounds like there might have been a tad too much flour in the dough. When using volume to measure out ingredients it is easy for too much flour to get compacted into the cup measure. We recommend checking out the "Recipe Success Guide," link next to the ingredients header above. You'll see that either measuring your flour by weight using a scale, or fluffing and sprinkling the flour into your measuring cup are the best ways to ensure your recipe turns out perfectly. Happy baking! Morgan@KAF
This was one of the best rye bread recipes I have ever baked. I did make a couple of changes. I substituted 50% of the hydration with strong black coffee, and I converted the recipe to grams, entered it in my baker's spreadsheet and increased it to make 2 1kg loaves. I also cut down the yeast to .5% and gave it a 4.5 hour fermentation and an almost 2 hour proof. This was just done to give the flour time to absorb all the flavours from the brewer's malt and coffee. The bread came out with a nice semi-thick crust, a beautiful crumb and amazing flavour. I would recommend this bread to anyone.
I'm still tweaking this wonderful recipe and my results are getting better each time. This week, I tried kneading in the food processor and this was the best batch yet - gorgeous crumb, crisp crust. I can't thank you enough for introducing me to this kind of bread. I had to split the ingredients in two (my food processor isn't very big), but with only 45 seconds of kneading, who cares.
I've been making bread at home for over 30 years, and I've always wanted to try seeded rye bread - not sure why I didn't, but I'm so glad I tried this one today. My tweaks: I let the rye/yeast/1tsp regular honey mixture sit at (cool - it's Maine in November) room temperature, covered, overnight. I used 1/2 regular honey, 1/2 molasses. I used King Arthur bread flour, and found that it only took about 1.5 cups flour, even with 1/3 cup of water addd. I kneaded in another cup or so, and in the middle of the kneading did a round with olive oil and no flour. The dough was sticky, but soft and workable. The 1st rise only took about an hour. I used butter and corn meal on a cookie sheet and made 1 oval free form loaf and went with the 30 minute 2nd rise. I made 4 cuts with a lame and got a lovely, plump loaf - it rose beautifully and the 45 minutes was spot on! The crust didn't darken a lot, which is not at all a concern, as it turned out to be a beautiful honey color. The crust is nice and chewy and the texture of the bread is magnificent. If Thanksgiving wasn't right around the corner, and if I had more days off (had the gift of a snow day, as a teacher, last Friday!), I'd be making more batches of this and sending it to everyone I know! Thank you...
I followed your baker's advice (in answer to my question) for leaving the starter overnight -- except I missed the part in the recipe about using only part of the malt syrup in it and I put in the two TB. This did not seem to affect the result as my loaves are beautiful and tasty and they rose extremely well. The recipe says nothing about slashing the top; perhaps it should as both my loaves "broke out" at the sides.
Brewers yeast isn't easy to find around here, first time I used honey, second time I used blackstrap molasses, I loved the result.
Easy recipe. Flavorful results. Only change I made was using light honey instead of dark because it was the honey I had on hand. Makes two small loaves. First loaf disappears before it is cool. Second loaf might last till the next day.
This rye bread came out remarkably well on my very first attempt. I used the recipe printed on the back of the Rye flour bag, but I omitted the caraway seeds as I don't like the flavor of caraway. I wish I could post pictures of the finished product. The crust is crisp at first, and then becomes chewier and tender as the bread cools. The interior structure and crumb are absolutely beautiful...moist and chewy and resembles the rye bread I remember from my youth. The overall flavor is interesting with nutty notes. Again, I did not use caraway seeds. I'm extremely impressed at how well this came out. The process is really no more difficult than say a basic white bread recipe, and yet the overall product is lights years ahead of any of the other breads that I've been making. If you've mastered French baguettes, I would highly suggest giving this rye bread a try as a gateway to more advanced and interesting breads and baking techniques!
I really like this recipe and would love to make this bread again with added cracked-rye berries and malted wheat flakes to add some texture and heartiness. What would be a reasonable amount? Should I presoak the berries and flakes separately or add them to the sponge and leave for resting? Also, I would love to use KAF whole wheat flour instead of all purpose plus KAF pumpernickel as the recipe calls. I am just learning to make different breads and was wondering how much water to add to accommodate those modifications? Thank youHi Inna. We wouldn't recommend making more than one of these changes at a time. If they work out, then try to combine the changes. We'd begin by substituting whole wheat flour for half the AP flour, and add 1 tablespoon of water per cup of whole wheat flour substituted. From there, you could gradually increase the whole wheat content in future baking adventures and/or try adding grains as described below.
Add 1/2 cup of grains that you've covered with boiling water and allowed to sit for an hour or more (until they're room temperature). Drain the grains of any excess water. If you're doing this in combination with the whole wheat substitution, you probably won't need to add extra water for the whole wheat flour. Add the grains towards the end of the kneading process. The added grains will make the dough wetter and denser. Happy experimenting! Annabelle@KAF