Sourdough Limpa Bread Recipe – Amazingly Simple Swedish Rye Bread

Rye bread. There are so many variations. Pumpernickel, rugbrød, all-rye, flatbreads. Jewish rye has many variations: Russian, Polish, and Scandinavian. In Sweden, their preferred rye bread is sweet rye bread with spices. This is my recipe for sourdough limpa bread.

I love rye flour; it has a fantastic taste when baked. Even rye cookies are awesome. My favorite sourdough bread has 20% whole-grain rye flour, and the most perfect 100% rye bread is my danish rye bread.

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The dough in this sourdough limpa bread recipe

Vitals

Total weight	1385 grams
Pre-fermented flour	8.8%
Hydration	67.2%
Yield	One large loaf

The dough composition

The flour in this limpa bread is 100% sifted rye flour, called light rye flour in the states.

I developed this bread with enriched dough. It contains both butter, milk, and syrup. The salt content is a bit above 2%, which brings out the taste of the rye flour.

The inoculation is shy of 20%, which should give the bread a fermentation time of around 5-6 hours if you have an active sourdough starter.

The dough’s hydration is around 67%, and while that seems pretty low, for a 100% rye bread, that is pretty fluid, sticky stuff. That is why you bake this bread in a pan.

Weight	Ingredient	Baker's Percentage
620g	light rye flour	100%
430g	skim milk (0.5%)	69.4%
50g	butter, salted	8.1%
145g	light syrup	23.4%
120g	sourdough starter (100% hydration)	19.4%
13g	salt	2.1%
2g	cardamom	0.3%
2g	ginger, powdered	0.3%
1g	cloves, ground	0.2%
2g	bitter orange peel, powdered	0.3%

If you want to play around with the formula, change the quantity, the hydration, or other vital stats, you can do so here in my Bread Calculator.

The conclusion of this sourdough limpa bread recipe

While this bread is a 100% rye bread, some key factors set it apart:

• The bread is not sour but a tad sweet. That’s both due to the sifted rye and the added syrup.
• The crumb is wonderfully soft and full of small holes. Quite unlike the usual dense crumb, you get from rye.
• The crust is dark and super caramelized. Not crunchy like everyday rye bread.

Sourdough limpa is a beautiful bread. It’s perfect with a homemade jam or jelly.

This bread pairs great with a generous layer of butter, which we call “teeth butter” in Denmark because you can see teeth marks after you take a bit. I love it with cheese.

It’s great bread; make it one of your staples.

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