This is a recipe for an airy, light rye bread, basically a sourdough rye ciabatta. It’s is a 45 percent rye, 55 percent wheat bread that uses an overnight sponge. The result is a fantastic, tangy, summery loaf.

Unless you’ve been following me on Instagram, you wouldn’t know that I have been working with rye breads of all kinds for nearly a year. I am using as my bible the great book The Rye Baker, but Stanley Ginsburg.

Until now, I’ve been religiously following his recipes, learning how rye flour works in all sorts of forms. There really is no better book for this than Ginsburg’s. And this light rye bread is indeed inspired by his recipes, but there’s enough of my own take here that I feel OK to post it.

Let me start by saying that if rye is tricky, a rye ciabatta is even trickier. Ciabatta dough, if you are familiar, is wet and flowy and sticky. Add rye to this and, well, it’s wetter and flowier and stickier. But hang with me and follow my directions and you’ll have a fantastic, airy, light loaf of rye bread — not something you may be familiar with.

The genesis of this recipe is one for a Galician rye in Ginsburg’s book. It’s the lightest rye in that book, with the most open crumb — ciabatta bread is known for a wide open crumb, with lots of big air pockets in it.

I start with all the rye in the recipe, 45 percent of the loaf, as a sourdough sponge. This ferments all day on the countertop, then I refrigerate it overnight to develop the sour even more. I let it come back to room temperature before adding strong wheat dough — bread flour is a must here — mixing it way more than you think you should, then baking it hot.

That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s start with the starter.

Rye Starter

You will want a rye starter. Yeah, I know. When I said this loaf was a long time coming, I meant it. It takes the better part of a week to get a rye sourdough starter going, but it’ll last forever if you feed it.

Making a rye starter is pretty easy. Mix equal parts rye flour and warm water by weight, and put it in a jar with a lid. Yes, weight. I have found that I absolutely need a scale to make good bread — if I want to be able to repeat my results. So everything here will be by weight. And in grams. (Sorrynotsorry)

So mix 70 grams of rye flour and 70 grams of warm water together. Cover the jar and let it sit. Every morning for at least 5 days, and likely a week, discard 50 percent of the jar’s contents and refresh it with a new 1:1 mixture of rye flour and water by weight. Stir this in and let it sit.

At some point, usually 5 days in, you’ll get that nice sourdough smell and the starter will be all bubbly and active. Now you can make your light rye bread.

Note: I make rye bread every week. I keep my starter active. You may not be so ambitious. You can keep your starter in the fridge for up to 2 weeks between “feedings,” and you can also freeze it.

Or, if you’re really a casual baker, dehydrate it at 100F until it’s a crust, then keep that dry stuff in a jar. Then, you’ll want to add fresh flour, water and this dried starter a few days before you make another batch, feeding each day.

In all cases, you will want to give the starter a day or two of regular feedings before you bake again.

Light Rye Flour

So, most supermarkets only carry dark rye. Why only God knows. Yes, you can make this “light” rye bread with dark rye, and it will be good, but it won’t be light in color, just light in texture.

I vastly prefer to order white rye online. I get mine from Janie’s Mill in Illinois. It’s fantastic. White or light rye is used mostly in Polish ryes, and it’s kinda spicy compared to the darker flours, but I notice this because I eat an awful lot of rye bread and can tell the difference. You may not be able to, I dunno.

This light rye, plus the high protein bread flour, which I also get from Janie’s, makes a pale loaf that will trick most people into thinking it’s 100 percent wheat.

Whatever you use, it must be fine flour. Don’t use coarse rye or rye chops, which are basically rough meals better suited for German black breads. They’re great, but this is not that.

Light Rye Sponge

A sponge is basically a wet mix of flour and water and starter. You use them because you start with a smallish amount of starter, and you are feeding that starter with more flour and water for many hours — usually 8 to 16 — so the end result is a fully yeasty mass that will lift a whole loaf.

This light rye bread uses a massive rye sponge to leaven the whole loaf, more or less. I add a scant 1 gram of store-bought yeast as an insurance policy. That’s it. We’re talking serious, no joke, long-ferment sourdough here.

And just because I like it sour, I take that sponge and chill it overnight for it to develop even more. I learned this trick from working in a pizzeria back in New Jersey: The dough guy made all the balls for each pizza at night before he left. They hung out in the fridge all night and morning, and got taken out late morning for lunch, then as needed.

Ginsburg has a French rye in his book that does this, too.

Working the Dough

OK, not gonna lie: This is a wet dough. You can’t knead it. You will need lots of extra flour and floured hands to manipulate it. And if you want to do things right, you should get a banneton, a wooden bread proofing bowl that’s usually lined with linen.

I use this banneton, but you can use any you might have. If you are a casual baker and don’t want to buy a banneton, here’s a post on banneton substitutes. I have not used any of these substitutes, however.

Ginsburg’s recipe for the Galician rye does something wild: After mixing the sponge with the rest of the ingredients, he uses the dough hook on the stand mixer for a full 30-plus minutes! I’ve never seen this, and the result is nothing short of amazing.

The gluten development in this light rye bread is astonishing. First, the rye gluten fully develops in the overnight fermenting stage, then this long mix with the high-protein bread flour creates an insanely elastic, wet dough that holds air bubbles like nobody’s business.

Downside: You need a stand mixer. Ain’t no way you’re manipulating this dough for 30 minutes by hand.

Finishing the Light Rye

The finished dough has a long ferment — two-plus hours. But a short proofing time. The dough needs to go from banneton to a parchment-lined baking sheet and into the well preheated oven within seconds or it will flatten horribly. (Ask me how I know…)

You start with steam, which you get by pouring boiling water into an open container — I use a hotel pan — and put that in the hot oven. That steam helps develop a nice crust. You then remove the steam container, drop the heat and let the loaf finish up.

Don’t slice it until it has cooled. Rye breads don’t like to be eaten right out of the oven, because in many cases the crumb will be wet and gunky if you slice it when it’s hot. Rye needs that chill time.

The upside: Rye doesn’t go stale quickly, so keep this bread out, uncovered and slice off pieces to eat and it’ll be fine for up to five days. I turn the loaf on the cutting board so the cut side is down, which keeps that open part from getting too stale.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.