Fresh Deli-Style Rye Bread Loaf (with Seeds)

This high-hydration deli-style rye bread is soft, chewy, and full of that classic caraway flavor. Made with a blend of rye flour and bread flour, it has a moist, slightly airy crumb and a lovely thin crust with just the right amount of crispness. A simple caraway seed tea infuses the loaf with the tangy, earthy flavor you expect from a seeded deli rye bread. Baking it in a loaf pan ensures a perfect, sandwich-ready shape every time.

Like all my homemade bread recipes this is a beginner-friendly recipe that you don't need a lot of special equipment to make. You do need a kitchen scale, but you don't need a mixer, and you can make this in the span of a few hours on a lazy afternoon.

Even if you've never made bread before, with this easy rye bread recipe you'll have fresh homemade rye bread coming out of the oven before you know it!

When I first started working on this seeded rye bread, I approached it like I did my soft white sandwich bread recipe — I dumped all the ingredients in a bowl, kneaded vigorously with my stand mixer, and plopped it into a loaf pan. Using that method, however, produced a dough that was so sticky and hard to handle. Loaf after loaf baked up dry and dense. It wasn't pleasant.

So I took a step back and began testing a different, more gentle approach to handling the rye dough. Out went the mixer and the vigorous kneading. In went a little more patience and a few sets of gentle folds.

The end result was a vast improvement; an airy and easy-to-handle dough that consistently baked up into a gorgeous rye sandwich bread. It was soft and chewy with a moist, slightly open crumb that toasted beautifully. Yes, it's a little bit of a longer process, but since it's mostly hands-off resting time, I really do think the extra time is so worth it for the end result.

After many rounds of testing, the final version of my seeded deli rye bread uses a blend of 25% rye flour and 75% bread flour. Rye flour on its own has a low protein content and is notoriously bad at developing a strong gluten network for shaping, so blending it with a high-gluten flour like bread flour provides the necessary strength and structure for this rye bread to hold its shape.

I use King Arthur Baking Company's medium rye flour, which has an 8% protein content and their high-gluten bread flour, which has a protein content of 12.7%.

Because rye flour is tremendously absorbent, this dough clocks in at a whopping 95% hydration! While most doughs with that much water in them are super sticky, loose, and hard to handle, the rye and bread flours do such a good job absorbing the water that this rye bread dough ends up being really lovely to work with.

Instructions: How to Make Deli-Style Rye Bread

I know caraway seeds can be a bit divisive. My husband hates them (that's okay, more rye bread for me), but when I think of a deli-style rye bread, the flavor that comes to mind really is the caraway seeds. Including caraway seeds in this recipe was a non-negotiable.

Just like in my easy rye bagel recipe, the first step of my rye bread recipe uses one of the most useful techniques I learned in pastry school for adding flavor to dough: making a caraway seed tea. Letting the caraway seeds steep in hot (but not boiling) water for just 10 minutes softens them, and using that water in the dough infuses the bread more evenly with caraway flavor.

When the caraway tea is finished steeping, it's time for the autolyse step, which sounds fancy, but is really quite simple.

Because rye flour is super absorbent but not great at forming a strong gluten network, giving it even just 10 minutes to autolyse after being combined with the water gives it lots of time to fully hydrate. This 10-minute resting period makes a big difference in your final rye loaf — it will be much softer and chewier because of the autolyse!

While the dough is autolysing, I combine the remaining liquid ingredients with the yeast in another small bowl to give the yeast a head start to begin activating. It also helps the sugars in the honey begin dissolving to incorporate evenly.

To finish mixing the dough, first, I sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough. Then I pour the yeast mixture over the salt.

Squish, squeeze, pinch, and fold the dough over itself until you don't feel any grains of salt and all of the liquid has incorporated into the dough. The dough will be very wet and sloppy.

Resting and Folding (Bulk Fermentation)

After the dough has been mixed, I let it rest for two hours (this is called "bulk fermentation"). During this two-hour window, I periodically build strength and structure into the dough using a technique called folding.

There are a few different folding techniques, but for this dough you'll be doing a stretch and fold. The folding process criss-crosses the gluten network over itself to build structure and strengthen the dough, trapping air inside.

The two-hour timer starts immediately after you finish mixing the dough. The first set of folds is counted 30 minutes into that resting period. So the dough will rest for 30 minutes, and then you'll do the first set of stretch and folds. 

You'll be able to feel the dough getting stronger with each set of folds. On the first set, the dough might tear a little; that's fine. By the last set of folds, the dough will feel very strong and elastic.

By the end of the two-hour bulk fermentation window, the dough will have almost doubled in size and will be quite airy.

Shaping Rye Sandwich Bread

To shape my rye bread into a sandwich loaf, I work on a lightly floured surface.

Cover the pan loosely (I like using these elastic, plastic bowl covers) and let the rye loaf rise until it fills out the length of the pan. Use the fingerprint test to determine if your rye bread is ready to bake.

Immediately before baking, use a lame or a sharp knife to score several diagonal slashes across the top of the bread about ¼" deep. The dough is sticky and even with a clean, new lame blade I found there was some catching and tearing on the dough. It'll be fine, I promise!

Letting the rye bread cool on the rack is super important for air flow. If you leave it to cool in the pan, the steam escaping from the loaf will make it soggy. Let it cool on a rack so the steam can escape, and you'll have a nice crust!

📖 Recipe