Beer Bread Knot with Whole Grain Rye Flour

Look at this guy! Have you ever seen a tastier-looking knot? I think ‘knot!’ Haha! Ok, all puns aside, as a German, I thought that the right thing to do for this recipe was to use a German beer when making it. Though you can use any wheat beer that you like, German beer really makes it the most amazing.

Let’s ‘knot’ delay and we’ll just jump right into this recipe!

For the pre-ferment you need:

4g Dry Active Yeast

1 tbsp. Molasses

250g Whole Grain Rye Flour

250g Water (room temperature)

Dissolve the yeast in the water and stir in the flour. Mix it with a spoon or spatula until there are no more clumps. Cover it up and let it sit for 12 hours at room temperature. That’s plenty of time to enjoy a German beer (or any other), get chores done (yawn!), or even sleep (hooray for sleep!).

After 12 hours have passed, here’s what you do…

Combine the following ingredients with the pre-ferment:

150g Whole Grain Wheat Flour

300g Bread Flour

250g Hefe Weizen Beer (or a wheat beer of your choice)

15g Salt

Knead for 10 minutes, then cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

Use your hands and a very small amount of flour to roll the dough into an 18-inch-long (perhaps just a wee bit longer) rope and form a loose knot.

Place the bread knot into a floured proofing basket, then cover it up and let it rest for 2 to 3 hours at room temperature.

I’ve used the plastic proofing basket in the picture below.

If you’ve never used one of these before, follow these steps:

Give it a light coat with water using a spray bottle. Then dust it with a mix of whole rye flour and potato starch at a ratio of 1:1. Let the coating dry for a few minutes, then repeat those steps one more time.

Pro tip: you can prep the basket before you start kneading the dough so it will be nice and dry by the time the dough is ready.

Bake the Beer Knot Bread on a Bread/Pizza Stone for best results.

Preheat oven incl. the pizza stone to 450F for 30min place a steaming pan on the bottom of the oven.

Transfer the Beer Bread Knot on a pizza peel using parchment paper in between bread and peel for easier slide onto the pizza stone. Bake for 20 min with steam. Drop the temperature to 420F and bake for 35 min. without steam.