This dramatic loaf can turn out more purple than black. The purple comes from this recipe’s addition of black rice flour. The rest of the dark color is from dark beer and whole or dark rye flour. I like using Guinness stout to hydrate the dough. You could also use a porter, a different stout, or a dark ale.
I’ll eat this bread with fresh cheeses, sausages, pickled vegetables, cured fish, or egg salad. It’s excellent as a base for canapés. It’s also a good platform for a spread of soft goat cheese and sliced hard- boiled egg with mayonnaise, or for mini sandwiches with butter and ham. I like to put small croutons made from this bread on salads.
Breads such as this that are very dark, even if they aren’t fully black, have long been referred to as “black breads,” such as Germany’s Schwarzbrot, and are almost always made with rye flour. Pumpernickel is a good example. A true pumpernickel gets its dark color from the very long baking in a low- temperature oven in a lidded pan to the point that a Maillard reaction occurs not just in the crust, where we are used to seeing that browning happen, but in the inside of the loaf as well. The lidded pan keeps the moisture in while all of this is going on, and the 100 percent rye versions of these breads are very dense and dark. However, most black breads these days get their dark color from additives, such as dark molasses, cocoa powder, coffee (or instant coffee flakes), and even charcoal (don’t go there!), rather than a very long bake.
I like this recipe best when baked in the lidded bread pan, which is"what I give instructions for here. The loaf will bake into an even form with squared-off edges. If you don’t have a lidded pan, try this recipe as a pan bread in any open pan or Dutch oven.
This dough includes a modest amount of brown sugar, but the final bread is not sweet at all. The brown sugar offsets the natural, slightly bitter flavors of the black rice flour and the stout beer.
You may have to order the black rice flour online, as I did.
1. Autolyse
Measure 250 grams white bread flour, 150 grams rye flour, 100 grams whole-wheat flour, and 100 grams black rice flour into a container, then blend them by hand. In a small saucepan, warm 250 grams Guinness stout until it reaches 90° to 95°F / 32° to 35°C—it happens fast, so don’t walk away— then put it into a 6- quart round tub or similar container and add 250 grams (90° to 95°F / 32° to 35°C) water. If you have a levain, add 100 grams from the refrigerator—you can weigh it directly into the dough tub with its liquid. Stir a bit with your fingers to loosen up the culture. Add the blended flours. Mix by hand just until incorporated. This will make a sticky but cohesive dough.
Sprinkle 13 grams fine sea salt and 15 grams brown sugar evenly across the top of the autolyse dough. Then sprinkle 3 grams of instant dried yeast on top of that. Let them rest there, where they will partially dissolve.
Cover and let rest 15 to 20 minutes.
2. Mix
Mix by hand, wetting your working hand before mixing so the dough doesn’t stick to you. Reach underneath the dough and grab about one- fourth of it. Gently stretch this section and fold it over the top to the other side of the dough. Repeat three more times with the remaining dough until the salt and yeast are fully enclosed. (You’ll notice the rye dough doesn’t stretch as much as the doughs made with just wheat flour.)
Use the pincer method to fully integrate the ingredients. Make five or six pincer cuts across the entire mass of dough. Then fold the dough over itself a few times. Repeat, alternately cutting and folding, until all the ingredients are fully integrated. Let the dough rest for a few minutes, then fold for another 30 seconds or until the dough tightens up. The whole process should take about 5 minutes. The target dough temperature at the end of the mix is 77° to 78°F / 25° to 26°C. Cover the tub and let the dough rise until the next fold.
3. Fold & First Rise
This dough needs two folds. It’s easiest to apply the folds during the first hour after mixing the dough. Apply the first fold about 10 minutes after mixing and the second when you see the dough spread out in the tub. If need be, it’s okay to fold later; just be sure to leave it alone for the last hour of rising.
When the dough is two and a half times its original volume, about 3½ hours after the mix, it’s ready to be made up into a loaf and put into its pan. If you are using a 6- quart dough tub, the ideal point is when the edge of the dough has reached all the way up to the 2- quart line on the side of the tub, and dough will be domed—not flattened, not collapsed. If you’re not using a marked dough tub, you’ll have to eyeball it. Use your best judgment.
4. Remove the Dough from Its Tub
Moderately flour a work surface about 12 inches wide. Flour your hands and sprinkle a bit of flour around the edges of the tub. Tip the tub slightly and gently work your floured free hand beneath the ough to loosen it from the bottom of the tub. Then turn the tub on its side and ease the dough out onto the work surface without pulling or tearing it.
Even if your bread pan is nonstick, you might want to give it a light spritz of cooking spray. Nonstick pans are sometimes not 100 percent nonstick if they have been used a lot.
5. Shape
With floured hands, pick up the dough and ease it back onto the work surface in a somewhat even, rectangular shape. You will stretch and fold this slack dough into something equal to the width of your bread pan.
With two floured hands, stretch the dough, simultaneously pulling it right and left (just spread your hands both ways at the same time to stretch out the dough) until it resists—two to three times its original width—and then fold the ends back over each other, creating a “packet” the width of your baking pan.
Brush off any loose flour from the top of the dough and do a roll- up motion from the bottom up or from top to bottom to form a tube of dough that’s about the same width as your baking pan. Place the dough seam-up or seam-down into the pan; either way is fine.
6. Proof
Put the lid onto the pan and set in a warm place to rise. It will be ready to bake when the dough rises to about 1/4 inch below the lid. If it’s pressing into the lid, it’s okay to go ahead and bake it.
Plan on baking the loaf about 1-1/4 hours after it is shaped, assuming a room temperature of about 70°F / 21°C. If your kitchen is warmer, it will be optimally proofed faster.
7. Preheat
About 45 minutes prior to baking, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 450°F / 230°C.
8. Bake
Place the pan on the center of the oven rack. Turn down the heat to 425°F / 220°C and bake for 30 minutes. Then lower the temperature again to 375°F / 190°C and bake for another 30 minutes.
Remove the pan with oven mitts or thick kitchen towels, remove the lid, and carefully tilt the pan to turn the loaf out. Let the loaf cool on a rack, so air can circulate around it, for at least 1 hour before slicing; overnight is much better for this bread.
