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1
Build the rye sour 8–12 hours before mixing the main dough. Combine the active rye sourdough starter, 200 g whole rye flour, and 200 ml water in a bowl. Stir thoroughly, cover, and leave at room temperature. The sour is ready when it has swollen visibly, smells sharply lactic and vinegary, and a small spoonful dropped into water floats or just holds at the surface.
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2
Soak 200 g of the whole rye berries in cold water for the same 8–12 hours. This softens them sufficiently to provide yielding textural contrast within the crumb without hardness. Drain before use. The remaining 100 g of berries are left dry and firm — these provide the secondary, harder grain pockets that distinguish rugbrød from flour-only rye bread.
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3
Combine the mature rye sour with 300 g whole rye flour, 350 ml water, 12 g fine sea salt, and 15 g barley malt syrup. Mix vigorously with a stiff spatula or dough scraper until completely homogeneous — there is no gluten network to develop, so no kneading is required. Fold in both the soaked and the firm rye berries until evenly distributed. The dough is thick, sticky, and pourable rather than shapeable; it will not hold form outside a tin.
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4
This is where the bread lives or dies: the fermentation must be long enough to develop full lactic acid character. Scrape the dough into the well-greased Pullman tin, smooth the surface with a wet spatula, and slide the lid on. Leave to ferment at room temperature for 6–10 hours — or until the dough has risen to within 1 cm of the tin's top edge and the surface, when the lid is briefly lifted, releases a clean, sharp, sour-grain aroma with no residual raw-flour smell. A short fermentation at this stage produces a starchy, flat bread; the full souring cannot be rushed.
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5
Heat the oven to 200 °C (conventional). Place the closed, lidded tin in the oven and bake covered for 60 minutes — the trapped steam prevents a hard outer crust from setting before the dense interior has had time to firm. After 60 minutes, remove the lid. The exposed top surface should be set and beginning to colour to a deep mahogany.
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6
Continue baking uncovered for a further 30–40 minutes until the loaf is a deep, uniform dark brown and has pulled slightly from the tin sides. An internal temperature of 96–98 °C confirms the starch is fully gelatinised. Remove from the tin and cool completely on a wire rack — the crust should sound hollow when tapped on the base.
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7
Wrap the cooled loaf tightly in beeswax paper or cling film and rest at room temperature for a minimum of 24 hours before slicing. The crumb, gummy and unsliceable directly from the oven, firms as the starch structure sets. After 24 hours the loaf yields clean, even slices of 5–7 mm. The sourness and malt flavour continue to deepen over the following 2 days.