Jewish Sourdough Rye Recipe | The wonderful bread known from NYC

Jewish Rye Bread is famous all over the world. Nowhere in the world does it have the same iconic status as in New York City. Every delicatessen and sandwich shop serves its delicious sandwiches on Jewish rye bread. While these loaves of bread are delicious, they often miss the mark regarding the depth of flavor you get from a long fermentation. I created my version of this iconic bread, using a sourdough starter as leavening, with a long cold fermentation to tease out all those delicious tastes hidden in the grains. This is my recipe for Jewish sourdough rye.

A cousin of the Jewish rye bread is the Swedish limpa, a sweeter type of bread. They do love their syrup in Sweden.

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The history of Jewish rye bread

Rye was one of the first cultivated grains. Scholars believe that farmers domesticated rye around 1,000 BCE. The higher classes didn’t consider rye the best food, and the “large, unwashed masses mainly consumed it.” The first written records on rye cultivation were by the Roman naturalist Pliny, the Elder, around 77 BCE. He noted that it was “very poor food and good only to avert starvation.”.

The rye flour itself has a pretty mild flavor. Pairing it with a sourdough starter brings out more of the sour notes people crave. The Jewish bakers would often add caraway seeds or nigella seeds to the rye bread, which is what Americans often associate with the taste of rye bread.

The two types of rye bread prominent in Europe were the kornbrot (Korn being the Yiddish word for rye) and the schwartzbrot (the black bread).

Schwartzbrot is the type of rye bread we eat here in Denmark. Kornbrot contains more wheat flour, whereas schwartzbrot contains mainly rye flour. The difference is in how much wheat flour bakers put in the bread.

Kornbrot was brought to the States by Jewish immigrants and closely resembled was Jewish bakeries make now. The big difference is that those loaves of bread are usually baked using commercial yeast and fermented much faster.

With this bread recipe, we’re returning to the roots and fermenting the bread with a sourdough starter. You can use any starter, though. Using a rye starter will make for an even tastier bread.

The dough in this Jewish sourdough rye recipe

Vitals

Total weight	1542 grams
Pre-fermented flour	9.1%
Hydration	70%
Yield	Two small loaves

The dough

The flour choices for this bread are as follows: 65% bread flour for structure and gluten power; since there’s a significant amount of rye in this bread, you should use strong bread flour. 25% light or white rye for excellent rye taste, but still a tender crumb. 10% whole grain rye flour boosts the rye flavor and a bit of texture.

The inoculation is 20%, and the salt content is 2%, which is very common.

The amount of barley malt syrup is 2.5% for some outstanding malted notes, which works well with the rye taste.

We add 1.3% caraway seeds to the dough. If you like the taste of caraway seeds, you can easily double this.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker's Percentage
520g	bread flour	65%
200g	light rye flour	25%
80g	whole-grain rye flour	10%
536g	water	67%
160g	starter (100% hydration)	20%
20g	malt syrup	2.5%
16g	salt	2%
10g	caraway seeds	1.3%

If you want to play around with the formula, change quantity, hydration, and inoculation, you can do so here in my Bread Calculator.

I don’t have/can’t get barley malt syrup. Can I make a substitute?

You can create a good taste substitute if you cannot get barley malt syrup.

Combine 125g/1 cup of dark ale and 125g/1 scant cup of dark brown sugar in a pot. Bring it to a boil, and then let it simmer uncovered until you have a very thick syrup. `You can use this syrup in place of barley malt syrup.

Stored in the fridge, it stays good indefinitely.

The conclusion of this Jewish sourdough rye recipe

You are in for a treat if you mostly eat wheat-based sourdough loaves of bread. This bread has a great flavor profile. Excellent rye taste, a distinct sourness, the mild anise notes and earthy notes from the caraways seeds, and the malted notes from the barley syrup.

It’s just the perfect storm of flavors coming together to create something more prominent than the sum of the parts.

The crust is super crunchy, and the crumb is soft and moist.

The flavor pairs well with meats and cheeses but is also perfect all by itself or just accompanied by a wonderfully thick layer of butter.

If you’re into excellent tasty artisanal sandwiches, this is the bread for you.

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