Koivisto rye bread

Rye bread must be the most common food to eat in Finland. We love it too and lately we have trying to make it on our own. We started it by making a mother dough. In Finnish it's called 'taikinajuuri', dough with roots. Quite a nice word. A farm with a long history and roots should definitely have an own dough. Water and flour are the only ingredients needed. The process takes about five days until the dough is ready. However at the beginning our bread was quite flat. It needed many tries, baking and testing. After one month we had enough experience and maybe the time did its magic too. A dough for a bread with a perfect texture and airiness.
Making the sourdough:
Day 1. Mix 100g flour with 100ml warm water in a large bowl and place it in a warm place covered with a plate. After 12 hours stir the dough briefly and let it rest.

Day 2. After another 12 hours add 50g flour and 50ml warm water to the dough and mix it well. Cover the dough again and put it back in the warm place. This time, let the dough rest for 24 hours. You can already smell, that the dough is evolving and it has some bubbles.

Day 3. After 24 hours add again 100g flour and 100ml water to the dough and mix it well again. Cover the bowl and put it back in the warm place, stir the dough again after 12 hours and let it rest again.

Day 4. After another 12 hours add 100g flour and 100ml warm water to the dough and stir the dough. Cover again and put back in the warm place and let the dough rest for another 24 hours.

Day 5. The dough is ready to use for baking. Store the dough in a fridge in closable glass jar.
Now the actual bread. Our favorite ingredient, which gives a nice flavor to the bread is caraway. Otherwise you can add come seeds to bread or just make it pure only with the sourdough, water, rye flour and salt. Add a cup of mother dough. Mix it with water, around 300ml. Add rye flour, around 500g. Add the flour in small parts, feel the dough. Sometimes it needs more flour, sometimes less. If you like add some sunflower, pumpkin or flax seeds. And for the nice flavor, add caraway. Don't forget to add a little bit salt. Remember to feed the mother dough with new flour and water after using it for baking. Let the dough rest couple of hours before making the bread. The dough is ready to become a bread. After forming the bread it needs to rest again about an hour. Cover it up with a kitchen towel. When the bread is ready for the oven, put the oven to a temperature of about 225 degrees (electric oven). Bake the bread for 20 minutes and then lower the heat to about 200 degrees. Continue baking for less than an hour. The bread is ready when knocking the bottom has a hollow sound. Our tasty bread is ready! The tiny bread has the shape of a traditional Finnish rye bread, made from the rest just for fun. Unfortunately our oven is currently broken and the baking has to wait. But we have also good news! The renovation is getting further and the second floor will be completely renovated before summer.