These aren't the loaves you're looking for.

I don’t know about you but my family time growing up was typically spent on the couch, with large bowls of popcorn, watching Star Wars. All four of us sitting there – me with a pillow to hide behind when Luke fights the monster in Jabba’s palace – just munching away and not really talking or interacting with each other at all (hmm…). We, of course, didn’t have actual store-bought copies of the movies though. Instead we had some (completely legal I’m sure) taped over VHS versions, which included a never before seen moment of intergalactic fuzz part way through the first 10 minutes of Empire Strikes Back (I didn’t see the movie in its entirety until just a few years ago).

I doubt my parents were intentionally trying to make a geek out of me, but it worked. I like most things intergalactic space travel or Middle Earth oriented. I didn’t necessarily mean to make bread in honor Darth Vadar and his offspring, but marbled rye does have both a light and a dark side. And it was recently national Star Wars Day (May the 4th… may the force…) so I think it’s fitting.

In case you actually read my blog regularly, no, this is not the bread from Tartine (I still haven’t gotten around to starting that yet). But this bread does involve using a yeast starter and forces you to go through the 12 steps of bread baking.

1. Scaling
2. Mixing
3. Fermentation
4. Punching down
5. Portioning
6. Rounding
7. Resting
8. Makeup and panning
9. Proofing
10. Baking
11. Cooling
12. Storing

While this seems like a lot of work to do, it’s really not that bad. But I’ll be honest with you, this is a two day process, or at the least one very long day. You aren’t actually in the kitchen doing things for two days, it’s a waiting game. You mix something, wait. You mix something else, then wait again. You do something else, then wait yet again. Making bread isn’t complicated, it just requires you to plan. But it’s all worth it. Nothing smells better than fresh bread baking. And since everyone thinks it’s super complicated, you’ll look like a genius!

Marbled Rye

Now before you do anything, make sure you have everything. It sucks to get part way through something and realize you don’t have enough flour. You also need a kitchen scale for this that has a metric function.

Rye Starter

• 9 3/4 oz light rye flour (10 oz would be fine)
• 6 grams fresh compressed yeast (or 3 grams instant yeast)
• 8 oz warm water (warm to the touch is sufficient)

Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well with a spatula. You could use a stand mixer for this but it isn’t necessary. A rye starter is typically pretty stiff but I wanted a wetter dough so I upped the water quantity. Make sure there aren’t any dry or wet spots in the starter, it should be uniform.

Leave the starter in the mixing bowl and cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for 6 – 24 hours. I let mine sit for an entire day. 6 hours is probably pushing it. 12 hours is most likely sufficient but I wasn’t about to start making bread at midnight. Different starters behave differently. Some get all airy and foamy, some don’t appear to change much at all. The rye starter will be noticeably bigger, but it won’t be all foamy and bubbly. Below you can see what it looked like when I first mixed it and then the next day.

Light Rye Dough

• Half of the starter, about 8 1/2 oz
• 6 1/2 oz warm water
• 1 T pure maple syrup (or molasses)
• 12 oz bread flour
• 4 grams fresh compressed yeast (or 2 grams instant yeast)
• 3/4 T salt

Dark Rye Dough

• Half of the starter, about 8 1/2 oz
• 7 oz warm water
• 1 T pure maple syrup (or molasses)
• 12 oz bread flour
• 1 oz cocoa powder
• 4 grams fresh compressed yeast (or 2 grams instant yeast)
• 3/4 T salt

You have to mix the two doughs separately, but the process is the same for both. Do the light one first obviously so you don’t get brown flecks in the dough. I weighed everything directly into my mixing bowl, but feel free to scale it out separately and then add it.

Place the bowl for your stand mixer on the scale and tare it (set it back to zero). Measure in your starter and water, then add the syrup. Sift in the flour (and cocoa for dark) and then add the yeast. Using the dough hook, start mixing the bread on the lowest speed. Begin adding the salt to the dough once it starts forming around the hook, about 20 seconds or so.

The light dough will be a tad wetter than the dark dough and will need a little help during mixing because of this. Knead the dough for a minute or so and then stop the machine and use a bowl scraper to get under the dough blob and flip it upside down. You want to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom and not getting mixed in. Knead it for a little bit longer. You’re looking for a uniform dough, not any wet or dry spots, everything appears to be thoroughly mixed and the gluten structure is coming together. A properly mixed dough should be smooth and supple. Since the light dough is a wetter dough, it won’t be so smooth and supple, but you can see what it looks like in the photos below.

Once it’s mixed, transfer it to a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it ferment until double in size, about two hours but this depends on the temperature of your ingredients and the room in which the dough is fermenting. To check to see if the dough is ready, dip a finger in some flour and then poke the dough. If the hole you made doesn’t start closing back up, it’s ready. If it does close back up, the yeast is still doing its thing in there so let it be.

Repeat this process with the dark dough.

Punching, portioning, rounding, resting, makeup and panning

After the dough is fermented it’s time to punch it down, and no this does not mean make a fist and plow into it like you just ran into Emperor Palpatine. Grab your bowl scraper and get it under one side of the dough, pull up and then fold over and down towards the center. Do this three more times, like you’re wrapping a package. This expels the gas that has been created inside the dough and equalizes the yeast.

Now dump the dough(s) out onto the counter. You’ll need some flour for the light dough but probably not any for the dark dough. Portion each dough in half, I believe mine were about 14 oz each, give or take half an oz. Grab each ball of dough and use both hands to round it into a ball. To do this, fold it into itself kind of like you did during the punching stage. Flip the side with the seems over so that it’s facing the surface. Cup your hands around the dough and move your hands in a circular motion while pressing down and around firmly. You’re looking to create a smooth surface all around the dough, except for perhaps a pucker on the bottom side.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 10 minutes to allow the glutens to relax.

A side note real quick, dough dries out quickly. Always cover it whenever you aren’t working with it. Also, you’ll notice during bread baking that you go through enough plastic wrap to cover an entire space station… to avoid this I use (and reuse) a clean trash bag. Less waste and a lot less hassle.

To makeup the dough, flatten each ball into as much of a rectangle as you can get it. I used my hands but feel free to break out the rolling pin. I got each dough blob about 3/4 inch thick, but thinner would be better. Now take a dark rectangle of dough and place it on a light rectangle.

So this is where you “marble” the bread. This is also where I screwed up my first loaf. There is, obviously, more than one way to mix the light and dark doughs. On my first loaf I decided to just roll it up like a burrito. This will work, but only if your dough is wide enough to do a few rolls (hence the thinner is better from earlier). My first loaf looked like this:

The second picture shows how I pinched all my seams together, which is very important. If you don’t pinch your seams together, they are likely to split apart during baking, making things a bit ugly in the end.

On my second loaf I stacked the dough like before, but then cut it in half and placed one half on top of the other. I then did this a second time, flattened it out a bit and rolled it up again. I obviously have seams exposed on this one, but I couldn’t get around it.

Place both loaves in their pans, seam sides down, and cover with plastic wrap.

Proofing, scoring and baking

Now you have to let the bread proof until about double in size. You can do the finger poke text again here if you want. This will probably take about an hour or so. If you under proof the bread, it will tear during baking. If you over proof your bread, it will actually shrink during baking. Fun, fun.

Before the bread’s ready to go in the oven, preheat it to 425.

When it is ready, brush the tops with some soy milk and then score it with a sharp knife or a lame (pronounced like Tom). I just did five slashes across the top, but feel free to make any design you’re capable of. You can also throw some caraway seeds on top at this point. I’m not caraway’s biggest fan so I left them on the shelf.

Place both loaves in the oven and bake until golden brown and sound hollow when you tap them with your finger. Mine took about 45 minutes but every oven is different. You can even take its temperature if you’re really worried, but you’ll need a digital thermometer. Lean breads should reach an internal temp of about 205 – 210 when thoroughly baked. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack when they’re done.

So that first loaf I did, the one that I screwed up? It didn’t “marble” at all. I knew this was going to happen before I baked it, but the doughs had already clung together and I didn’t try very hard to take them apart and re-work them. We can call this Tunneled Rye.

The second loaf turned out much better. It actually looks “marbled,” which is always a plus when you’re making marbled rye bread.

I did, however, still manage to screw this one up a little bit. Either it was under proofed just a tad, or it was because I had seams on top from mixing the two doughs together (or likely a combination of both), but it tore in the oven. It’s still sliceable and edible of course, just not as pretty as it could have been.

This bread has a moist, fairly tight crumb and an adequate crust (but isn’t overly crusty).

Because this bread is homemade, they’re isn’t much in the way of preservatives in it so you might find yourself hard pressed to eat both loaves before they stale too much. You can cut the recipe in half of course, but who wants to go through all that trouble for one loaf of bread??? The nice thing about bread is that you can freeze it. Place one loaf in a plastic bag, or wrap it well with plastic wrap, and toss it in the freezer. You can thaw it by just setting it on the counter for a few hours or tossing it in a warm oven for a bit. It’ll taste the same as it did the day you made it!

Be weary of the fridge though. While freezing temperatures stop the staling process, moderately cool ones cause breads to stale quicker. It’s best to just leave the bread on the counter, wrapped well, if you aren’t freezing it.

Well I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted. I’m not sure which took longer, making the bread or typing this post out. But the sun is shining outside right now and I think I’m going to go take advantage of that. Definitely let me know if you make some marbled rye, and what technique(s) you use to marble it.

Have a great day, and may the force be with you (and your bread).