Rye and spelt sourdough

I've been experimenting with the formulas from Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf recently and this weekend I decided to take another crack at his rye and barley sourdough. Except that I found myself without any barley flour! I decided to substitute spelt instead, even though I really have a lot of trouble working with spelt. I've also been practicing my scoring, trying to be more confident in my slashing and experimenting with different patters. Here's what I ended up with:

Crumb shot:

Please pardon the poor quality pictures, I only have the phone on my camera. Anyway, I am absolutely thrilled with the way this turned out. Never in my life have I achieved such a nice open crumb using spelt flour! The formula I used is below (in the end, I didn't really end up using Lepard's formula except as a sort of guide):

Levain build:

125 g Bread flour

100 g Water

40 g Levain @ 80% hydration

Final Dough:

100 g Whole rye flour

100 g Spelt flour

175 g Bread flour

275 g Whey (leftover from yogurt making)

10 g Salt

All of the levain build

1. Refresh the levain and leave for 8-12 hours to proof.

2. Mix together ingredients from the final dough EXCEPT levain and salt. Autolyse for 30 minutes.

3. Add levain to the final dough and knead for 2 minutes on lowest speed. Let rest for 15 minutes. Knead again for an additional 5 minutes, adding the salt in the final 2 minutes.

4. Bulk ferment at room temperature, S&F every 40 minutes x 3.

5. After the final fold, retard in the fridge overnight (12-24 hours)

6. Next day, preshape dough and let rest for 30 minutes. Then shape dough and let rise in a banneton until nearly doubled (this took about 4.5 hours)

7. Bake at 450 F for 40 minutes. I created steam using a heated cast iron pan and 3 ice cubes.