Viking-ish Wild Rye Sourdough Loaf
Ish? What’s up with the “ish” on the Vikings? Well, most of the time, when we think of medieval Scandinavians, we also think of Vikings. But most of ‘em weren’t Vikings (who really were a fascinating combination of pirates and colonizers, making it as far east as Constantinople and as far West as Canada). Most of them were farmers and/or tradesmen. So maybe the Vikings got to eat this bread while they were on land, but maybe not. For sure, though, medieval Scandinavians would have been able, if they had an oven instead of only a griddle, to eat bread very similar to what I’ve made for you today. You’ll note, though (or maybe you won’t?) that the cloth my bread is on has Viking longboats on it. My friend Lori brought it back from Europe as a gift for me, and it is my favorite bread cloth EVAR.
So, we already know that rye doesn’t really rise, because we learnt all about that on Sunday. But that was okay, because most breads in that region back then were pretty flat, whether they were fermented or not. The bread pictured above was about 1.75 inches tall. One of the very coolest things about working for Positively Probiotic is that in working with a wide array of sourdoughs, I get to explore indigenous breads from various parts of the globe. I am a lover of food history, so this is totally my jam, as it were.
What we know about breads in this area and era, other than their flatness, is that breads made with wheat and/or rye were only really accessible in the southern portions - think southern Sweden (Scania specifically) and Denmark here. Up north, you’re mostly looking more at barley and the like. The vast majority of archaeological finds of bread were located in Birka, were cooked on a griddle or similar (hot rocks, whatever gets the job done, yeah?), had no rye (but yes to mixed grains dominated by barley), and were unleavened. But in Denmark? Oh, Denmark. Y’all have real evidence of leavened rye bread baked in ovens over there! Ovens, in fact, whose analysed residue was super duper rye dominant.
There are 4 basic ways in which risen loaves could be made back then:
You made your own wild sourdough starter, presumably the same way you’d do it now.
You mixed your dough in a dough trough. Period finds demonstrate that these were not really cleaned in the ways we think of cleaning a dish (though in fairness, not much was back then). Mostly, the theory goes, the residual bits of dough were brushed or wiped off the trough, and they likely didn’t even get water for cleaning. Yeast accumulates in the cracks of your trough and goes on to leaven the bread. Sometimes it’s a good thing to not clean all your kitchenware! Most of the people who still use this method are historical reenactors.
You saved a bit of the last batch of dough to make the new one. This technique is still used today, and prolifically.
You snaked some of the barm from your ale (basically everyone made ale) to leaven your dough. This is also still used today, but mostly by people who either brew or are plucky enough to go ask the local brewery for their barm.
No commercial yeast, if you’ll recall from the sourdough post, because no one had isolated and reproduced it until the 19th-century. Different scholars agree or disagree about what was most likely in a given find, but we all agree that the troughs did leaven and that all of these methods were both possible and probably used, depending on the needs and abilities of the baker in question.
A quick note: by request, I have modified this recipe to include US/Imperial measurements and, where possible, volumetric. You will still need to double check these conversion figures, and in cases where my conversion app didn’t have a specific ingredient, you will need to play with it a bit or do a bit of extra research to figure out what the volumetric conversion is.
These troughs are housed in the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. Image courtesy of: http://www.vikingsofbjornstad.com/MuseumVikingShipOslo2.htm
I can’t, by any stretch of the imagination, claim to have reproduced a medieval Scandinavian, leavened, rye loaf. But I can say that this passes muster for what is possible to have been found on someone’s table back then. I know, because I actually checked with experts on this. Mostly because I wanted to verify that the rise time I chose was likely/accurate, but nonetheless. Turns out my views on long rises allowing people to conduct their lives without being slaves to the dough are pretty much how you’d need to do a leavened bread if you had the intense amount of work to do every day that people then did (they hand-milled their grain daily in a quern, y’all).
This is from the Iron age instead of the Viking, but they’re basically all the same structure during these periods.
Image courtesy of: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/07/10/research-proves-quern-used-norway-early-roman-iron-age/
This is a sticky, sticky dough. Just so you know. Get out your big bench scraper and some cold water for when you need to use your hands to shape. It’ll be a nightmare otherwise.
Onward and upward: let’s do this!
Here’s what you’ll need
350 grams (2.73 cups, 12.346 ounces) of dark rye flour
14 grams (2.3 teaspoons) of salt (I used Morton’s kosher here)
204 grams (7.196 ounces) of wild dark rye sourdough starter
140 grams (4.938 ounces) of water
Now, let’s prepare the dough!
Stir together the flour and salt, then add the starter. Please don’t do all three at once, as salt sometimes will retard yeast if they come into contact. This might matter a bit less with wheat bread, but it definitely matters with rye if it happens.
This is roughly how it should look once you add the starter.
Once that’s mixed up, let it sit for 10 minutes, covered. Then, add your water and knead for 3-5 minutes, or until you can feel the beginnings of elasticity. We don’t want to go all crazy with the kneading, because we already know it won’t make a tall loaf and we definitely want all the lovely little pockets of sourdough glory in the crumb.
Dough should look like this.
Let that bad boy rise for 24 hours once you’ve covered it with cling film or whatever it is you like to use. Yep, 24 hours. It’s super convenient, because you can just ignore it and go about your business. I like to do this in the oven with only the light on, but before I had an oven with a light, I simply tucked my doughs in the oven to get them out of my way. You could do this for 4, 8, 12, or whatever hours, but I personally am a fan of no less than overnight, and ideally 24. Different strokes and all that.
Once that’s all done and risen (it won’t have risen much, but you will see the activity underneath once you remove the dough from the bowl. Be gentle - you don’t want to deflate it and waste all the hard work of your starter! This deflation is called “degas” in the baking world. It’s not named after the artist, but rather sounds like de-gas, because that’s what happens when you tump it out all willy nilly.
Upon tumping, mush it into something approximating a shape with your bench scraper or wet hands. It’s sticky. Really, really sticky. But you can dew eet!
Second rise time!!
So you’ve got your little ball of sticky rye stuff, and at this point you’re probably pretty sure you don’t understand why you listened to me to begin with. Don’t fret. It will work out. What you do next is line a bowl or basket (I used the little holiday nuts basket I got at the grocery store last year for this, because I don’t have the fancy baskets people like to bake with) and some kind of cloth, or with the Kleynhuis Organic Cotton Yogurt Strainer. That works beautifully for this type of task too! Dust the fabric liberally with more rye flour. I mean it: liberally. If you don’t, the moisture that leaches from the dough to the fabric will cause it to stick. I’d say shoot for maybe half to a full millimeter thick on that flour. Gently nestle your blob of dough in there, add lots more flour to the top, and fold the fabric over the top of the dough. This will all not only help it rise in its shape, it will dry the dough out just a bit. Then tuck it wherever you’re doing your proving again for the next 4 hours.
Bake time!!!!!!!!
Preheat your oven to 450F (230C, gas mark 8), then gently turn your bread out onto either a sheet pan, cake pan, your baking stone if you’ve got one, or whatever you want this to bake on. Give the little loaf 45-50 minutes, then cool completely before nomming.
