Rugbrød - attempt #2

So despite my enthusiasm for the Venø starter last weekend, the final product was a little flat in the taste department.  My guess is that Venø did not have enough time to act on the sugar in the flour.

So here we are - a beautiful Saturday and the second batch is in preparation.

Venø seems to be quite happy in our fridge.  Upon retrieval this am, there was a layer of alcohol on top of the starter, which is a good sign.

So I added two tbs of Venø to 100g of rye flour and 100g of well water, mixed this together and let it set for four hours.

After four hours, I added the following to the mixture:

500g well water
400g rye flour
100g of oat groats
15g sea salt

Mixed together and added it to a greased bread pan.

So here it is in the bread pan after 6 hours. It has almost doubled in size and has a heady, fermented smell.

The baked loaf is quite a bit lighter than the last loaf.

Smashing. Good flavour with the sourness I was expecting.  

The bread

We made our first rugbrød using the Venø starter this past weekend.

Friday evening involved mixing 1 tbsp of our Venø starter with 100g of rye flour and 100g of water and letting the mixture set over night.

First thing on Saturday morning, we mixed the Friday component with 400g of rye flour, 100g of cracked rye and 500g of water.  This was put into a buttered bread pan, covered, and set aside for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, the wild Venø yeast was very active and the dough had a distinct beery aroma.

In a 350F oven, we baked the loaf for 60 minutes.

The resulting loaf looked good, although in the taste department it was lacking the full punch of lactic acid that I was expecting.  This means that I need to leave the dough in the bread pan for a longer period of time in order for the yeast to work their magic.

Venø the starter

You can't bottle up your vacation and take it back with you but this might come close.

Last winter I tried to capture wild yeast to make traditional Rugbrød.  There wasn't much to it - mix equal parts of rye flour and water together, expose to the air, feed twice a day for a week and then use it to make bread.

My starter worked, but it was lacklustre.  It took twice as long to work as what most recipes called for but the final product turned out ok.

Fast forward to our vacation and our second to last day on the island of Venø in Denmark. I found some flour in the cupboard, mixed it with water and let it sit in a wild flower patch next to the cottage with a steady ocean breeze blowing over it.

On the day that we left, I took a teaspoon of the exposed mixture and put it into a sealed bag and brought it back to Canada.  

I inoculated a new rye flour and water mixture with the Venø mixture and the results have been spectacular.  It doubled in size in less than 12 hours and produced all of the tell tale signs and smells of being an exceptional sour dough starter.

First loaf of bread will be made this weekend.

My starter - now called Venø