September 12, 2023 - 7:48am
Check Out My Buns
I started with Sunflower Seed Rolls from "The Rye Baker"
Sunflower Seed Rolls formula - "The Rye Baker"
But...
- The formula calls for light rye. I am a fiber snob and stock only medium and whole/dark rye. So I used medium rye, which requires a lot more water than the formula calls for
- I don't understand the directions that say "add half the water to make a slurry like pancake batter" and then, later, "add the rest of the water". Pancake batter is a lot soupier than any bread dough I have ever seen. And that's from half the water? In any case, with medium rye, it took all the water just to incorporate all the flour into a fairly dry dough, not the wet, sticky dough of the formula. I added another 50-75g of water with the salt and got something like the description on the formula
- I ran out of sunflower seeds and didn't have any or the outside. So I left some bare and used sesame or caraway on the others.
They came out OK, probably with a tighter crumb than with light rye, but still pretty tasty. It's an easy and fast process, about 3 hours start to finish (I timed my start so that I could start preheating the oven on off-peak electricity rates),
The flavor is pretty good, but perhaps not as complex as sourdough formulas rather than the commercial yeast.
Share
for 3 hrs start-to-finish, a timeframe I am frequently faced with. We're coming into soup and stew season and these will go well with many of them.
They would be great wiping up the soup/stew bowl. You might want to leave off the sunflower seeds on the outside. Or not, if you like it. And the soup/stew will make up for the relatively light flavor from the quick process.
on leaving the outside seeds off.
I made a half batch of these last night. Like you, I found it too dry, the mixer struggled with it. I ended up adding 50mL of H2O to get a reasonable consistency. I normally reduce yeast by 33-50% for the altitude here, but seeing mostly rye, went -20%. Probably could have stayed with the original amount. Rising action was slow.
I skipped the outside seeds and baked at 350ºF for 37 min, which browned the rolls nicely. Taste is, as you said, quite light i.e. mild. If there is a next time, I'd roast the sunflower seeds first and bake at hotter temps. Rye seems to need that to bring out its flavor. These will probably taste better when split and toasted. They'll be fine for sopping up soups and stews.
Did you use medium or light rye?
I have been feeling lazy lately; I am going to try the yogurt rye in "The Rye Baker", which is about a 5 hr commercial yeast formula with a lot of yogurt replacing most of the water.
Lots of sourdough rye formulas call for a receding oven - start hot for ~15 minutes to promote oven spring and then turn the heat down for a longer, slower bake.
They taste much better after splitting and toasting. It's a "bland by design" recipe. But still useful. One doesn't want the bread/rolls to be the star of the show all the time :)
I did preheat to 375 and baked there for 10 min, then dropped back to 350 for the remainder. Another typical high-altitude adjustment, to counteract against the lower boiling point.
After a couple of days I did split and toast them - they are a great base for lox.
I made my first batch of green chili stew of the season last night (it's a cold-weather staple around here), and these went very nicely with it. I don't recall rye anything being a part of the local baking traditions... but it's a nice combo.
Green chile stew - did you say you live in New Mexico but I forgot? Sigh, making green chile with Anaheim peppers just isn't the same.
Yes, north central NM (Santa Fe).
I seem to recall being told that our local peppers were originally Anaheims, transplanted here.
I used to live in Chimayo (at 6000 ft altitude; you are at around 7000 ft, I think). I could drive into Sante Fe in half an hour.
I think the Anaheims went the other way. From Wikipedia:
"The Anaheim pepper is a mild variety of the cultivar 'New Mexico No. 9' and commonly grown outside of New Mexico."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_chile
Yes, I recall you mentioning your time in Chimayo. Beautiful area. There used to be a dairy there, their products were excellent, and we made annual trips to get a truckload of manure for my then-GF's garden. Sorry to see it go.
That could be... my recall sometimes goes the other way :)
I don't understand the directions that say "add half the water to make a slurry like pancake batter" and then, later, "add the rest of the water"
I went and re-read this instruction, and it doesn't quite say to add half the water to all the flour. It says to make a well in the flour, pour half the water into it, and stir in enough of the flour to get that batter-like consistency. So the rest of the flour is expected to remain dry around the outside of the batter in the center. At least, this is how I picture it.
That never occured to be because I had never seen an instruction like that before. Your interpretation makes a lot more sense.
I still needed more water than the formula, probably because I used medium rye rather than light rye.
But this thing of mixing the slurry in a 'well' surrounded by dry flour is more romantic/stylistic than functional, no?
When I saw that instruction, I skipped it and just made the slurry from half the flour in the mixing bowl, and added the rest later.
I sometimes wonder about it. Usually I think it's left over from when people worked up the dough on a counter without using a bowl at all, but who needs to do that nowadays? In this particular case, I have noticed that some other recipes in The Rye Baker tell you do do all the preliminary steps in the mixer bowl itself to avoid getting another bowl dirty. That may be the idea here.
Yeah, it certainly has a minimalist appeal. And economy of process. But mixing the slurry first only uses one bowl, anyway... oh well... no biggy.
I have not tried that recipe yet but have tried several others in the book and have issues with baking times. Borodinsky especially. The last (3rd part) of the bake takes about an hour longer to reach temp. Hapanleipa is way shorter baking time than stated. I use oven thermometers to check temp. I'd like to say my oven isn't off but it is by 50⁰ which I compensate for. I mill my own flour and do not sift. Flavors are spot on though. I'm in Alaska but have had requests from Russian and Finnish neighbors that say it tastes like home.
WIth the formulas I have tried, occasionally 2-stagers, usually just an overnight sponge and mix-bulk-ferment-shape-proof-bake the next day, I found it useful to check 5 minutes before the shortest baking time.
Today, I made the Val d'Aosta Pan Ner', and the minimum book baking time was dead on. Everything else, the hydration and the feel of the dough seemed to match the book exactly. Maybe my technique has gotten a little better. Pan Ner' I don't have a crumb shot because I am letting the bread cool/set for 24 hrs.