PIERRE NURY'S RUSTIC LIGHT RYE

After finding out the Pierre Nury's Rustic Light Rye didn't have much if any rye taste or earthy taste either, I decided to try and see if I could get more rye taste and earth flavor without totally compromising Pierre's fine SD bread completely.

The changes include home grinding whole rye berrys and adding 25 grams more to make 75 total, adding 50 gramsof home ground whole spelt berries and deducting 75 grams of bread flour to keep everything in balance.  I also  lightly slit the loaves before they went into the bag for final rise to try to get them to rustically split on top. 

I really like this bread with these small changes. It kept all the great character of Pierre's original but produces more and deeper rye flavor and sour.  The spelt also gives the bread a very nice speckled brown crumb - something a Brownman appreciates :-)

Here are some Pic's

My next attempt at learning something new about bread, I decided to bake off David Snyder's SFSD that he is trying to perfect like the rest of his fine breads, with Pierre Nury's light SD Rye that I ran across in zolablu's fine blog.  Thought I would make them both as directed and bake them off in the same oven at the same time now that is is clean after my San Joaquin adventure even if it was a fiasco.  I used a compromised temp, steam and time since they didn't quite line up perfectly.  I did shape the Nury loaf and lightlu slashed it before in went into the final rise to try to get it to swell and split naturally somewhere on the top.  I used my new parchment containment system to control a very wet dough from spreading and ....It worked just fine.

David's small SFSD boule went into a heavily flowered basket that should have been floured more sanely.  I used 50% rice flour for this heavy handed dusting.  I have never done this before so, was flying a little blind and had read that they will stick when the basket is new.  Plus this basket was never meant for bread in the first place.  When I went to slash David's boule, it was pretty hard and my razor just sort of bounced off.  I finally butchered it with a big serated knife.  My slashing skills are quite primitive and weak to begin with even though I have seen many folks live, and on video doing it like it was easy as pie.  I think they are showing off knowing my slash challenged bread making skill :-)  David's didn't spring because of its tougher exterior and Nury's nearly exploded.  Both browned up nicely and I did bake the boule 5 minutes longer to get that deep dark skin.

The crumb was slightly more open on the boule but both were fine with holes of all sizes.  The weird thing was that I couldn't taste any rye in Nury's and I wanted to since I love rye.  Couldn't taste it in David's either.  In fact both the breads tasted the same to me. and both had the same sour undertone probably because they both used the same rye, spelt, WW and AP starter and levain.

David's won the taste test the next day as the crumb got , the sour revealed itself and it became more complex.  I can't wait for David to get it perfected as he is sure to do.  I have my own changes to make to Nury's 'Non Existent' Light Rye so that will be more rye like and complex in taste.  Here are some Pic's.

Pierre Nury’s Rustic Light Rye or Who Stole My Bubbles

Now I think it’s time to roll up my sleeves and dive into this rustic Bougnat from Daniel Leader’s Local Breads. This is another bread from the prestigious Meilleur Ouvrier de France award winner Pierre Nury who hails from the Auvergne region of France. The only characteristics of this bread that actually resembles a French style, is the stiff levain that is used — and, of course, its award winner baker!   All the other nuances I have gotten accustomed to in making French bread, the tight shaping, timing of the rises, scoring of the loaves… have been thrown out the window.

I have to admit to being a little intimidated when reading the description of this French rustic rye, a loaf that looks quite a bit like Italian ciabatta…especially the author’s caveat that “the high proportion of water in this dough makes it difficult to knead by hand.”  But I was not going to let a little wet dough scare me off.  It actually felt good to get loose, and play with some slack dough! While things are being turned upside down with this recipe, I might as well throw something else into the mix (no pun intended) and continue my experimentation with the autolyse process.  Until now I have not been adding the levain to the initial mix of the flour and water. After reading Teresa’s second experiment in the autolyse process, I thought it could only give the dough a better structure, stronger development and maybe make it easier to incorporate the stiff levain into such wet dough. The hand mixing was a little sloppy to start…but after a short time the dough developed into a silky, smooth wet dough…and passed the window pane test with flying colors.  The rest of the process went along smoothly with no other real predicaments… so after a couple of folds and a rise, it went into the regenerator for its long, slow overnight ferment.

The next day I was eager to see what became of the dough… but I thought I’d give it the full twelve hours before I looked in.  So, the hour approached, the timer went off for the moment of truth and I opened the refrigerator; I could not believe my eyes! The once little boule…had more than quadrupled in size, had reached the top of the bowl and was filled with lots of big gas bubbles. I gently turned out the dough, divided it and slipped it into the hot steamy oven. I really thought I had hit this one on the head!  But this was not to be the case. The bread had a great creamy crumb, a subtle, slightly sour rye taste, a chewy crumb with a nice mouth feel and crackling crust … but where were those “long glossy tunnels” described by the author?  I am not really sure what happened to all the gas pocket so evident when I turned it out…was the gluten structure not developed enough?…was it over proofed?… was it the Type 130 rye flour that I used?…. or maybe the Type 65 with its gluten additive was not strong enough to hold the gas?  I have a sneaking suspicion that it was the coarse, heavy rye flour might have cut the glutens and causing the “long glossy tunnels” to collapse.  The jury is still out on this one.

If you made it through to the end of this post…congratulations and thanks for reading!  Now…seriously…Do you have any ideas on who stole my bubbles?  Please leave me a comment. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts.

To see more pictures and recipe come to Weekendloafer.com

Thanks.....Captain Batard

My 1st attempt at the Nury (very) Rustic Light Rye and Bouabsa (non) Ficelle's,  I found both dough's quite challenging to work with as i'm not used to such wet dough's but they tasted great!, will have to work on my shaping/slashing  technique!

Nury's Light Rye

Nury's Light Rye Crumb

Mmmmmm .....

David