(Non)sour bread with appel stroop

Since a proper sour dough rye bread is practically unavailable here, I keep experimenting with all sorts of recipes to achieve something similar, preferably without going through the whole trouble of make-your-own rye starter. I had a recipe using some molasses kind of thing, which we normally do not buy either; and there I came up with an idea to use appel stroop instead, because it is similar consistency thing, just with apple flavor, obviously. I suppose honey or any other honey like substance could work too, especially if it is on a sour side.

Need:

for plikinys (boiling water starter):
100g rye flour
2 table spoons of appel stroop or molasses
1 table spoon of caraway seeds
300 ml water
1 tea spoon of citric acid
2 table spoons of bran (zemelen, sėlenos)

for dough:
300 g of rye flour
100 g of wheat flour
1 table spoon of salt
1 table spoon of brown bastard sugar
2 table spoons of sunflower oil
14 g of dry yeast
250 ml of warm water

Part I: Plikinys
Boil the water with molasses/apple stroop, caraway and citric acid, stir it so it is evenly dissolved. Pour 100 g of rye flour into boiling water and whisk it like hell, so it turns into a smooth mass without lumps. Stir in bran and leave the whole thing to rest for a few hours.

Part II: Bread
To the bread baker add water, boiling water starter (aka Plikinys, kneaded/stirred a little) and the rest of the ingredients, with dry yeast at the end, on top. Set to whole grain program (longest possible). Alternatively, knead, let it rise, knead again, let it rise, bake till done.

Notes:
It is not a bread that rises much, if at all. It is worth exploring a possibility to use 200g rye and 200g of wheat mix for the dough. Also, I did not knead the starter before adding it to the bread baker, which seemingly resulted in some areas with a bit of more appel stroop. Not that it is a very bad thing, but I'd rather have it more evenly spread.