If you think you can replace water with another liquid in making sourdough bread, think twice. 

I do yoghurt at home and sometimes it makes whey. As this is such a great ingredient with high protein content, I wanted to use it for bread.

The acidic environment of whey and its foreign protein affected the dough of this bread and some extra effort was needed to rescue this dough.

This is an interesting experience to bake bread. More than following a recipe, it is very important to read the dough. When I noticed that things were not OK, I had to adjust my steps and my techniques to correct the dough.

The adventure in making this bread is recorded here:

What I like the most with bread experiences is that you get a lot of lessons learned out of them. For example, this is what I learned by making this bread:

1. Sour whey does affect the dough by weakening the gluten development.

2. More sour whey in bread liquid requires extra handling and may lead to inconsistent baking.

3. You may keep higher whey quantities but use sweet whey, that is less acidic.

4.  For an easier bread, reduce the hydration in this recipe by lowering the whey quantity (with 50g, let's say).

Although tricky, I am happy with these loaves: crunchy crust, soft crumb and what a flavour ...

Rye flour is clearly different than wheat flour. It has weak gluten that is not capable to form a gluten network and when mixed in a dough develops almost no elasticity. It looks like a viscous paste and is breaking quickly at an attempt to stretch it. Rye flour does not benefit from autolyse either, so forget this technique when baking bread with a high percentage of rye flour.

Kneading a rye dough has no effect because the gluten in rye is not capable to form an elastic dough. Rye dough relies on pentosans to be formed. If you do not like to knead the dough, then this bread is for you.

When baked in a loaf, it gives to the bread a dark crumb and a lower volume should be expected. The crumb is denser, you won't get big alveoli but rather smaller holes. Expect then a loaf with a dense crumb with small holes.

Instead, rye bread is more nutritious than wheat bread because it contains more bran. When ground, it is more difficult to separate the bran from the flour, so the content of bran is much higher in rye flour. But if you use whole grain (dark) rye flour you'll get the entire bran as it was not sifted out. 

Here is the video with the recipe and description for this special rye bread:

Compared to wheat flour, rye flour absorbs much more water and makes the bread last longer.

Rye bread tastes better 24 hours after baking and actually improves with age. It will stay moist inside for a week.

Rye bread is known for its specific aroma and taste and is very popular in North European countries.

A slice of 100% whole grain rye sourdough bread is a perfect match for cheese, pâté, salmon, eggs and I let you discover other ones.

So, are you ready to bake and taste this bread?

If you are like me, baking with sourdough and keeping the sourdough at room temperature you understand that it is very easy to end up with a lot of discarded sourdough in the fridge. I feed my sourdough twice a day, and with every feed, I get ~50g discard. This makes about 100g a day and 700g a week. That is a lot but there is no way that I through away such an incredible ingredient. I simply store it in my fridge, and every week or every other week I do something with it. It can be crackers, pancakes, anything. Sometimes I use it as such for making pizza dough. It is incredibly useful and healthy ingredient so I am happy to use it.