March 14, 2021 - 4:18pm
Rye
Hello bakers, Can anyone tell me what the difference is between dark rye and pumpernickel. Can i substitute dark rye for recipes that call for pumpernickel or light rye? I tried to google it but it still wasn't quite clear to me. Thank you
Share
http://theryebaker.com/rye-flour/
https://nybakers.com/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=bay+state+rye&x=0&y=0
http://www.theartisan.net/Flours_One.htm
https://nybakers.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=16&products_id=28
Pumpernickel is whole rye, milled coarsely.
Dark rye has about 30% rye bran in it and it is very high in protein and fat content. It has 50-100% more protein and up to 3x more fat than whole rye or pumpernickel flour.
When they mill whole rye flour, they sifts some bran out of it and obtain a lighter colored medium rye flour. What's left after sifting is called "dark rye".
Whether to substitute or not is up to you. It won't work in 100% rye breads, but in blends of wheat with rye the difference is less noticeable.
There are two definitions of "dark rye".
Mariana gave the definition used by NYBakers and Bay State Milling (see my links above.) "Whole rye with some endosperm removed." Giving it a much higher % of bran and germ than even whole rye.
The other definition is that "dark rye" is just another name for "whole rye", which is the definition Bob's Red Mill uses. See: https://www.bobsredmill.com/organic-dark-rye-flour.html
--
"Pumpernickel" is more a term for the bread, not the flour. "Pumpernickel" is not tightly defined.
"Pumpernickel flour" means flour that can be used for Pumpernickel bread. It is usually whole rye, but its grind (particle size) can be "meal" , "coarse", or "medium."
If you look at the links I gave above for NYBakers, they have several flours/meals that can be used to make "Pumpernickel bread."
--
Please read the page at theryebaker.com to understand and help untangle the confusion. There just doesn't presently exist good fixed terminology for various types of rye flour, so you have to look at nitty gritty specs, like ash%.
There is something fishy with Bob's dark rye, they list its composition as being different from their whole rye berries, which is by definition as whole rye as it gets.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/1206897/nutrients
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/1181510/nutrients
Otherwise I agree that in North America there is no standard for rye flours, their names, or composition. Still, USDA clearly distinguishes among them by analysing dozens of samples from different millers and giving us averages. And by USDA definition of dark rye Bob's dark rye is not plain whole grain rye flour.
At home, it is very easy to see what they sold you as dark rye, both by reading the label, where its protein content would be way too high compared to normal rye grain/whole rye flour, and by a ball of dough made from an ounce of dark rye flour and a tablespoon of water, it would look distinctly different from whole rye flour.
Ahhh, marketing departments at work.
You're right, the numbers for protein and fiber don't match, not even close. With the berries showing higher protein than the "dark" flour.
The two listings don't even give the same type of nutrients, potassium missing from whole berries.
Then there is also human error, as data is transcribed from one system to another, which I recently noticed at a reseller of Ardent Mills, Baker's Authority, mentioned here: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67178/where-does-ardent-mill-source-their-rye-berries
--
Another nutrition source I use is: https://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-rye000000000000000000000.html
Thanks guys. Lots of reading to do i guess. i bought a bag of roger's "dark rye flour" and the ingredients say: rye flour, rye bran. i sometimes make a SD that is 10% WW and 90% APF. 70% hydration. Can i just sub the WW with this "dark rye"?
I liked working with Roger's Rye flour a few years back. They had also recommended on the package to add some lemon juice (acid) to the flour at that time for high % of rye in the total flour. 10% is a hardly noticable amount dough feel wise but it adds a lot of subtle flavour. Can go higher too. Did you google Roger's rye in the site search engine?
The addition of rye may speed up and shorten your fermentation times.
I saw the LJ recommendation on the package too! Was gonna try that. No i didn't google rogers rye...Maybe i should. any reason why you don't use rogers anymore?
when I baked with Rogers. I'm back in Austria, rye flour is prety easy to find here. Even with the flour sell out a year ago, it was back on the shelves very quickly. Most of my favourite flours were never in shortage.
The price of beer keeps dropping, soon they may be giving it away as the market is overloaded. Some clever folks are learning how to cook and bake with beer.
Ah I see.. Austria how nice!
I think I’ve heard of beer in bread or maybe in starter
Hamelman does it and you can too. He sells two different Vermont sourdough breads, one with 10% rye and another with 10% whole wheat flour. 90% all-purpose. They are identical in everything else in their formula and method and this substitution makes two different breads.
The basic rule is that 5% difference will not make a difference, but 10% difference will make a distinctly different bread. You can substitute 5% of anything in bread recipe without changing the nature of bread itself, yet improve it, but 10% substitutions or alterations will profoundly change flavor, looks and overal perception of bread.
No wonder Rus only uses up to 5% of whole rye CLAS in white bread. It retains the characteristics of a "white" recipe, while greatly improving the quality of the bread. Smart ???
Yippee
When you say 5% will improve it. In what ways is it improved?
What I meant is that variation in amounts of any ingredient within 5% still preserves the essense of bread as recognizable kind of bread. Any amount more that that and it becomes a distinctly different kind of bread.
Improvements in bread are its aroma profile, volume of loaf, taste, looks, softness or firmness of crumb, color of crumb and crust, etc.
Thus, you can add or remove up to 5% of certain kind of rye flour in your best recipes of bread with beneficial results as you try to improve them, but any more than that and it becomes essentially a different bread and you would name it differently.
This trick is used by many famous French bakers. They add 5% rye to their purely white wheat breads and get delicious signature flavors without changing the name of bread and its nature.
The same could be said about flour. 5% difference in ash content of flour still makes the same bread, but 10% in ash difference, let's say type 55 and type 65, makes a radically different bread and requires adjustment in amount of yeast, sugar, length of fermentation, acidity, etc. to reveal its beauty in bread.
Thanks for clarifying. So if i'm going to modify my all white dough to 10% WW, i guess it's going to be called a partly WW SD. How might i adjust it to retain the openness in the crumb and to retain great oven spring. I'm already doing 4 rounds of stretch and folds . shd i add more?
Hi,
I am not skilled at bread design, figuring out recipes in my mind, so I am not sure I would be able to help you.
10% wholegrain sourdough, be it 10% whole wheat or 10% whole rye and the remaining 90% being APF is widely known as Vermont (or Norwich) sourdough, because it was named by Hamelman as such and his book is very popular.
See how it is done here, and notice how it differs from your formula and method:
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/my-new-favorite-sourdough/
Also, notice that it is up to baker to decide how open to make its crumb. This particular person, Susan, she is from this forum and later studied baking at SFBI, bakes it both moderately open and very open, as she wishes:
It mostly has to do with how strong is your chosen flour, or how strong you make it to be as you knead it more or less and tighten it more or less with more or fewer folds. In the slice on the left the flour is way stronger and/or the dough is kneaded less (gluten is less developed) that in the slice on the right. Plus there is a defect in the crumb on the left (big hole made of coalescing pores) due to one slash in the middle vs two diagonal overlapping slashes in the loaf on the right.
Stretches and folds don't really replace kneading. For the open crumb one or two stretches and folds during bulk fermentation and later as you shape your loaves is enough. Some people of course take it to the extreme and not only make super wet dough but also laminate it with water, approaching the structure of croissant. It takes so much work to create thousands of layers and the bread literally looks like pastry or work of art, and it does de facto becomes prohibitively expensive, it's not even "daily bread" anymore.
Whether additions of 10% rye or 10% WWF will affect the crumb, mostly depends on two things
- how strong is the flour that you are using. WWF varies greatly, immensely even, and on its own will give very different breads using the same formula and method. For example, the same bread baked using different whole wheat flours, from different farmers, different millers:
- how large are its bran particles. Some whole grain flours have finely milled flour part and huge bran particles added to it. Others are uniformly milled into a fine whole grain flour.
Finely milled bran particles of finely milled flour won't affect your bread crumb or oven spring, because they don't interfere with gluten network as much and they would require maybe a tablespoon more water to adjust the consistency (bran is thirsty, absorbs more water):
white bread (left), 5% bran, 10% bran, 20% bran, 30% bran
large bran particles added to white bread flour
again: white bread (left), then 5%, 10%, 20% 30%. Compare to the slices above, so that you can see how large particles damage gluten and affect tightness/openness of crumb and bread volume, or its oven spring if you wish.
These pictures also illustrate the 5% vs 10% rule. See that even pure bran if added only to the level of 5% doesn't affect bread that much. 10% substitution make huge, noticeable difference.
Source: Classification of whole wheat flour using a dimensionless number.
so if i want a more open crumb, do fewer stretch and folds?Hi,
in my experience more open crumb has nothing to do with the number of stretches and folds. Stretches and folds are done to degas and to add strength.
See the difference between these two. Both had only one stretch'n'fold during bulk fermentation and were shaped identically.
The only difference is that the one on the left was NOT autolyzed and kneaded only for 10 min on 2nd speed in a spiral mixer. The one on the right was autolyzed before kneading and was kneaded more vigorously, to a better gluten development for a softer and less irregular crumb.
Autolysis and longer kneading before bulk fermentation give less irregular or less open as you would say crumb, because both help develop gluten better.
I’ve never kneaded sourdough before. I thought that wasn’t needed, no pun intended. And I’ve never used a mixer for SD. So if I were to knead it, is it done after autolyse and for how long? Please forgive my ignorance
PS: everyone I bake for tell me they prefer a tighter crumb so I don’t know why I insist on achieving a more open one. I’m stubborn I guess
Hi,
there is no difference between kneading sourdough or yeasted dough. The only difference is the outcome. Sourdough loaves tend to be taller, have more volume, because of additional degree or two of acidity in them due to lactic fermentation. Acid modifies gluten so it stretches more and rises taller.
So, if you already know and have experience with kneading yeasted dough to obtain that open crumb that you strive for, do the same for your sourdough.
For example, ciabatta crumb like this one
requires about 8-10 min of kneading in a mixer, if it's a two-step dough (15 hr liquid levain with 35% flour prefermented -> 4 hr dough stages).
Unless you start baking with non-Canadian flours, autolysis is not necessary. Otherwise, there is kneading to homogeneity (300 turns if by hand) before autolysis and then another period of kneading after autolysis (300-500 turns if by hand to reach the minimal degree of gluten development).
Try this recipe from alfanso:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67746/kingdom-bakery-ciabatta
If you achieve the same crumb with your chosen method of kneading (by hand or in a machine), then you would be able to recreate it with your sourdough loaves as well.
Notice that in that recipe there are three stretches and folds altogether, but zero shaping. Normally, we have one stretch and fold during bulk fermentation and then stretch and fold dough twice later on: once during preshaping and then when we shape it into loaf. It gives us the same three stretches and folds altogether as well.
I understand your preference for a more open crumb. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people simply like it: be it in bread (baguettes, ciabatta) or pastry (croissants, puff pastry), it fascinates them. Also, it's a matter of principle. We simply want to be able to create it at will, to understand its know-how. Whether it's a stiff dough or a very slack dough, to understand the principles of creating open crumb and to practice those principles is to be a more skillful baker.
There was one time that i did 4 sets (4-5 turns each set) of what i thought were stretch and folds over a 2 hr period but if i recall i was being so rough with it that i was essentially kneading it. I was pushing down on it with the heel of my hand after each fold. the crumb turned out beautifully open. is that attributed to my unintentional kneading? as I did more reading , i decided not to be so rough with my future doughs and did super gentle stretch and folds and the crumb was also open enough for my liking. did all that gentleness preserve the gas thus leading to a more open crumb? sorry , i know i'm just all over the place with this. thanks for your patience. I think i just need to keep baking more and keep track of what im doing to reach my ideal crumb and oven spring.. i'm so obsessed. ?
Thanks for the link, i was just looking at it.
Kneading is applying energy to dough, stressing it out: tearing it, shearing it, stretching it beyond its limit and any other way of 'working the dough'. There are millions of way of doing it: by slapping it hundreds and thousands of times, by punching, by incessant stretching by hand or in a spiral mixer, by cutting dough, by making holes in it with your thumbs, by rolling it out with a rolling pin or in a pasta making machine, by making it rise several time in a row and degassing it thoroughly each time, or by making it rise only once but for a very long time as in poolish or in no-knead method where it is subjected to two relentless forces or energies at once: gravity and gas.
I personally can't knead any dough made from Canadian flour by hand, it's too strong, it needs mechanical kneading: a bread machine, a special mixer able to knead dough, or a food processor. The only exception is RobinHood's Best for Blending flour. It is possible to knead it well by rolling it out with the rolling pin using that special method developed by Manitoba scientists in the mid-1970s.
An open crumb is always due to the layering of the already kneaded dough. Kneading gives dough strength necessary to maintain that openness, so that it doesn't collapse during proof and baking.
While creativity in baking is great, when learning the basics we don't have to reinvent the wheel, you know. Just find a recipe that gives you an open crumb and follow that recipe. In the end what matters is good bread on the dining table and the pleasure of working with dough, of course. Too many frustrations spoil that pleasure.
I applied your principle and made my pain de mie with 5% WW flour and it still essentially looks like a white loaf. (from the outside crust) I can't wait to see the crumb.
It's a beautiful bread. Congratulations!
Wow thanks everyone. U ppl are such a good resource. I do find that subbing 10% ww in the white sd formula yields a tighter crumb which i don't particularly like so I think i might increase the hydration to make up for it. I'm getting experimental now. Will add flax seed without soaking them to see what happens. been reading about disastrous slimey bakes with soaked flax seeds. why not just up the hydration of your dough and skip the soaking?
BTW, anyone know where i can buy paper bags to put my bread in to give away to friends etc? I tried the grocery stores and they only have lunch bags . I then have to cut my loaves in half to fit them in which is a good excuse for me to cut them to see the crumb before giving it away but the presentation is lacking. i tried the wholesale club but you gotta buy 500 bags at a time. amazon is a bit pricey. i guess my next stop will be the dollar store. does anyone have other packaging ideas? i dont like plastic zip bags.
If you buy at the price of a 50-bag bundle, the largest paper bag available sells for less than $1 per bag, or you may choose a smaller quantity of paper bags and pay a bit more Shipping is $ 2.11, but it is expected that it will take at least a few weeks to receive your order. Therefore, please plan accordingly. You can also search for other fancier, reasonably priced bread bags of different sizes such as this one and this one on this platform.
Yippee
Thanks yippee
wrapped around the bread. The towels manage to find their way back especially if one side of the folded towel is sewn. The corners tie nicely into simple knots to carry.
That’s a good idea. IKEA has some nice linen ones
Hence did not show you this one.
Yippee
I was thanks. Then Mini gave me the cloth idea. Good link. thank you
pumpernickel contains a lot of cracked grain, I don’t think it is interchangeable.
http://www.brantflourmills.com/
this mill in Scotland Ontario specializes in rye flour.
Thanks. Too bad I’m in BC. Looks like a nice local mill