Weekend Chocolate Rye

I'm a baker by profession, and I love it. So here's what I do on my weekend : I bake! This week's project is a chocolate rye boule

Here is the formula I used. For the white flour, I use a mix of King Arthur Bread and AP Flour, and used Bob's Red Mill Dark Rye

The Dry team, using Ghirardelli cocoa powder

The wet team, with some nice dark molasses to sweeten things up and offset the bitterness from the cocoa

Using Ryelander as my starter. Remember to save some leftover starter to feed your culture. Learn from my mistakes

Starter...

Water and molasses...

And mix it up!

In goes the drys, which I sifted together earlier

The smell of this is amazing, it's like fudge

Salt!

Add and let the dough rest for 20 minutes

All mixed up! Normally, I like to aim for 77°F, but since rye ferments faster than regular flour (and not to mention the sugar that I added) a little colder doesn't hurt to retard the dough.

Greased my tub and let it bulk ferment for 3 hours.

Soaking up some rays

Time to fold! (I had a video, but I took it in slowly motivated, so it's not super good)

One fold and an hour and a half later...

... Time to divide!

I weighed the loaves out to 1lb 9 oz, approximately. Then I preshaped! ( https://youtu.be/ZEJg06sKvCE )

And a nice 40 minute rest, and then the final shape ( https://youtu.be/1a5PnYuZyo4)

And now we wait

For 18 hours

But thanks to the magic of the Internet, they're ready to roll in 5 seconds

My how they have grown

So next, I preheated two Dutch ovens to 480°F for half an hour then carefully dropped their boules in there and gave them a quick criss-cross score.

Baked with the lid on for 20 minutes...

...And continued baking for another 25.

Finally, they are done!

Look at that crust!

A nice, dense crumb, perfect for a nice sandwich. (Reubens for dinner, I think) The chocolates flavor is mild, and it isn't too tangy, and the crust is nice and crisp.

And cat tax. This is our neighborhood cat, Czech. He visits every once and a while.

Thanks for looking, and happy baking!