The following recipe is for a 100% rye bread. Don’t take the quantities all that serious, and do a little bit of experimenting. The right amount of sourdough culture also depends on the particular flour you are using and your personal taste.

For approx. 1kg bread:

-500g rye flour
-500g rye sourdough starter (don’t forget to keep a bit of the starter for your next bread)
(-1 teaspoon of dried yeast, only for your first bread)
-1 tablespoon of salt
-approx. 200ml of lukewarm water

Combine flour, starter, salt, and yeast (only for your first bread), add lukewarm water if needed, and knead until all ingredients are well mixed. Be aware that this is a much stickier dough than from wheat -using a wet hand helps-, and that you don’t need to knead it as long as wheat dough, as rye has a lot less gluten, and will never get the bouncy consistency of wheat dough. It is also much wetter.

Let the dough rest for 20 minutes, then knead it again.

I use a bread tin lined with baking paper for rye bread, as it is much easier than trying to form a loaf. Plop the dough into the lined tin, and smooth it with a wet spatula.

Let the dough rise in a warm place. If you use additional commercial yeast, it’s likely to take about an hour, for a pure sourdough culture dough about 2 hours. Please be aware, that rye bread rises less than wheat dough. Make sure that your bread stays moist during the rising period. I use a water spray bottle, and douse the dough surface one to two times during rising.

Preheat oven to 250C (480F). Bake for 15 min on high heat, then reduce to 180C (360F) and bake an additional 40 min or so, until done.

Let the bread rest for a day before cutting.

Hope this helps!

There does seem to be a trend to go back to “how it was done” that I think is very encouraging.

Cheers!