Home cooking: Rye and molasses no-knead bread

So, the adventures in bread making continue.

After my first attempts, I was still enjoying the bread, but I felt confused about how I could be using whole-wheat flour and rye flour and the bread just basically tasted like heavy white bread.

One of my latest culinary adventures, a twice-cooked lamb shoulder (an excellent recipe from Masterchef Australia…), left us with a jar of molasses. While looking for ways to use it up, I was surprised to see a solution to my quandary.

One quarter cup of molasses mixed in with the water makes everything brown and sweet. With the addition of some seeds and grains (as recommended from another recipe) and oh my god, this was my best loaf yet.

Because of the sugar, it browned too much, so I will cook it next time with the lid on the Dutch oven for longer, and less time with the lid off. Also: I liked how it turned out slashing the top with a knife. I think I’ll do diagonals next time.

I’ve also perfected my second rise technique. I’m not sure why I wasn’t following instructions from other folks, but the right thing to do, after the first rise, seems to be a bit of folding of the dough to activate the yeast again, and shaping it into a nice ball, and then leaving it to rise again, for somewhere between 45 minutes and a little longer than an hour.

One time I just forgot about it and left it for hours on the second rise; I think that was the crumbly loaf that fell apart when I tried to cut it (it didn’t taste terrible though).

Here’s the current recipe I’m using, letting the dough rise overnight for the first rise.

Rye and molasses bread
1 cup of rye flour
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 cup of all purpose white flour
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 t Instant Yeast
1-1/2 T caraway seeds (this made the loaf really yummy)
2 T oats
1 T pumpkin seeds
1 T sunflower seeds
1 T chia seeds
1-1/2 C Water (1/4 cup molasses then hot but not too hot water to make up the rest + 1/4 tsp of red wine vinegar)