return to rye

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squattercity on 31 Mar 2025 at 07:17

45% whole rye/55% bread flour (all the rye prefermented with a 3% inoculation for 12 hours) ... 1% caraway ... 1% salt ... total hydration ~80%

tastes great ... but in my quest for a more expansive crumb, I'm thinking that next time I might replace the bread flour with all-purpose ... and possibly add a pale rye malt scald.

Rob

Sail upon the seven seas of rye! Love the pale colour, and that crumb looks just right to me for some kind of deli meat and mustard.

-Jon

though I'm interested in your quest for a more expansive crumb, Rob. Would AP help with that? And how would the scald help with that too? And by expansive, are we looking literally for something that expands more, i.e. more holes, more rise, more spring? Or is it also the texture of the crumb you're targeting, i.e. a more tender crumb? The tenderness I've definitely gotten with AP; the holes I have more luck with bread flour (for same day bakes, and with hand mixing). 

thx, Lin, for your thoughts. The bread is delicious & the crumb is plenty tender & moist. But it's a bit dense/heavy. Before my problems with my rye flour (finer grind yielding over-fermented levains, which I successfully combatted with a reduced inoculation), my loaves came out light & airy. This one rose beautifully but still felt heavy when I pulled it from the oven.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe the problem is the finer grind of the rye and I have to dial the rye %age back.

But after reading this from Maurizio Leo -- https://www.theperfectloaf.com/sourdough-bread-high-protein-white-bread-flour/ -- my thought is that maybe the bread flour could be weighing it down.

Rob

Did the dough using the finer grind behave differently during bulk fermentation and proof? I'm wondering if the grind changes its ability to absorb water, for example, which would affect fermentation, baking duration etc. I also wonder if just pushing BF and proof further could be worth trying first - at least that's what I will do first - and if that doesn't change things, at least we can try other things. 

 

With 55% bread flour and hand mixing, perhaps more gluten development could also help. As a hand mixer myself, I find that giving the dough a lot of time for BF to build strength, with some SFs, or good upfront mechanical kneading of the dough is necessary when using a good amount of bread flour in the dough. The shorter the BF and less folds I can manage, the more I knead upfront. So maybe the grind has affected BF duration and hence....?

 

All just guesses of course. 

great points, Lin. Concentrating more on developing the dough might be the key ... thanks! 

My rye flour definitely handles differently. I sense that it's thirstier and harder to get fully hydrated. I used to do 10 or 15% inoculation and the levain would stir up easy and spread in the bowl (I think of this as 'reclining' -- like being tilted back in a la-z-boy lounge chair with the built-in footrest up) without overfermenting when I left it for 16 or 18 hours. At 3% inoculation, the rye pre-ferment was still taut after 12 hours -- not relaxed or even visibly bubbly.

Interestingly, the finished loaf also seems darker than it used to be. (see https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73244/45-rye for one of my bakes with the coarser rye flour.)

I hand kneaded this one reasonably vigorously for maybe 12 minutes. But I probably used to do at least 15. I also did 2 folds during a 2 hour bulk -- but I used to do 3. Proof is about an hour. I've been keen to keep the bulk and proof short because I don't want the dough to overferment and repeat all those bakes where my loaves spread without rising. Also, I like the idea of starting the levain at 7 in the morning, returning at, say, 7 or 8 in the evening, and having the bread out of the oven & cooling on the counter (if I can resist slicing into it) before midnight. 

Rob

I keep on wondering about your rye flour, do you tend to stick to the same brand? I'm also thinking of that interview with the modernist bakers where they realised that American rye flour was not as good as the European one. 

 

-Jon

the brand I use (farmer ground flour, which is a local NY collaboration between farmers & a miller) is the best whole rye I can get in the small quantities I need 👉🏼(tho having written that, your question reminds me that I could try some Euro whole rye from a reasonably local Polish grocery)👈🏻

👍🏼

Rob

PS -- I like modernist fiction ... but I don't know about modernist baking🤔

Thanks so much, Jon. But I think these modernists are secretly baking nihilists (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_29yvYpf4w).

First they assert that the Austrians rigorously test and classify their ryes by Amylograph numbers while Americans don't.

Great! So test! But nowhere does it appear that they did the 'modernist' thing & checked how American rye stacks up against Austrian.

Then they assert that the grind matters, saying that the Austrian rye has the big particles removed -- "almost all the bran and germ sifted out." But, of course, that's not whole rye, is it? So there's a good reason why it ferments and bakes differently.

Adding my experience to the mix makes things more complex because I got better results with my locally grown coarsely ground whole rye than I have been getting with the same rye four finely ground. And, compounding the issue, I've baked many times with Swiss volkornroggenmehl -- whole grain rye flour. The Swiss are pretty precise on these things. So, yes, it's finely milled, but I have no reason to doubt that it's whole grain. I've gotten some great results, for sure. But not that much better, I don't think, than my best results with local rye here in NYC -- and much of the difference could be attributed to this: in NYC at the time, I was baking in a gas oven without a dutch oven. In Switzerland, I was using my brother-in-law's Anova -- with super-precise steam and temperature.

I don't doubt that Euro rye flour may be superior to American rye flour. But the modernist's discussion didn't really enlighten me on anything.

Rob

Thought you'd find it food for thought! Yeah, I was thinking about your preference for coarse rye and the whole back history of your own, which contradicted those guys.

The modernists, mind you, are a step beyond the Big Lebowski. They had the most amazing test kitchen for testing bread and it was founded by big bucks, well worth a read about Modernist Cuisine and probably worth buying their baking box set too for a mere $625. So... they tested. And they tested some more. What I'm trying to say is that I trust those guys even if I haven't bought their books, and perhaps you've been wrongly exposed to them out of context from my linking the interview above! And I'm not even saying that because they're American and I'm not [and ve don't mention ze vor... or ze t*riff$].

When it comes to my own history with rye, I've also had good bags and bad bags, so I sometimes find rye a bit like Uli Kunkel [*]. I tend to not use my rye flour quickly enough, and it is often near the sell-by-date. Which is bad for rye. One of the millers makes a blend that has fantastic activity when fresh and it ferments for me twice as fast. And goes off twice as fast too!

-Jon

[*] "We believes in nothing Lebowski, nothing! And tomorrow ve come back and ve cut off your chonson!"

The taut unbubbly levain might also be a sign that it could probably go further, what do you think, Rob? Maybe something in the flour has changed yet again. I wonder if a less active levain than usual could ultimately be at the root of all this. Perhaps if the levain could be used when it's at a bubblier stage, then the usual BF, proof and gluten development processes/duration could remain the same. If I were to keep the same 12-hour frame for the levain, I might well increase the inoculation a slight bit and go from there. After all, a levain that has gone past its peak for an hour or two within this time window would still be very good to use. 

The comparison with your loaf of 2023 is quite stark both in terms of crumb and crust colour. But also in terms of rise and spring. They certainly behave like two completely different flours! This reminds me of something really funny that happened to a friend recently. We buy the same 10kg bread flour bags from the same mill, and he was having difficulties with his loaves for a few months - everything would go well until the loaf was loaded into the oven, where it would quite simply collapse. When I looked at the crumb shot of the 100% bread flour loaf, I remarked that he must have used a different flour by mistake - the crumb was so dark, essentially brown. I had never gotten that colour, ever, from the same flour! I told him something must be really wrong with that flour. Turns out we have been using the same flour, but his bag had already gone slightly rancid, a couple months past its expiry date! His loaves recovered the moment he bought a new bag.

All this to say - crumb colour can sometimes also indicate fermentation issues that in turn might reveal more about the state of the flour.

Thanks, Lin. Lots to say here. 

  1. I agree that a 5% inoculation to start with is worth a try.
  2. I have previously experienced the evils of baking with rancid flour -- and I don't think that's the problem here. I only bake with flour that's fresh -- approximately a year from its use-by date. If it's any closer than 6 months, I throw it away. I do this because early on in my baking, I had experience with a different, well-known, nationally distributed brand of rye flour that went bad months before its use-by date -- and it almost killed my starter. Also, I can smell and taste bad flour -- there's a distinct bitter note to it -- and I am sure the flour I am using has not gone to the dark side. Indeed, when I first mixed the levain for this bread, it had the same wonderful fresh sweet 'n' spicy scent that I have come to expect in lively rye.
  3. Before I adjusted the inoculation, I could feel the problems in my doughs. They were flaccid and would not build strength no matter how much I kneaded and folded. To get them to minimally hold together before baking, I had to stitch them several times. So this wasn't the case of them suddenly collapsing in the oven. They were loose from the moment I added water.
  4. Alongside all this, I should note that the change in the grind has changed the characteristics of my starter as well. Previously, I would simply feed it 1:3:3 or 1:5:5 or 1:10:10 (didn't matter which) a couple of times and then stash it in the fridge. For weeks and sometimes months thereafter, I wouldn't feed it at all. I would just scoop out what I needed and mix my preferments. This doesn't work anymore. Now, each time I bake, I have to do several feeds before the starter is ready to make bread.
  5. All-in-all, it's no longer a forgiving process. Before, I used to be able to be very casual, scooping an amount of starter out of the jar in the fridge, making levains without worrying about how long they fermented, and baking when the time seemed right. Now, everything has to be timed and tracked and thought about. It's annoying. I hate thinking.

Rob

Rob, in my experience, the more you spoil your starter with such high maintenance routine, the more it is unsustainable in the long run. My rule of thumb for starter maintenance, if 2 hours ferment and a week of refrigeration seems to much, time to pivot.

This is coming from a guy who likes to overcomplicate things and have fed his starter with various outlandish flours unthinkable by people in the western hemisphere, only to simplify things later on 😂

Jay

for sure, Jay, for sure. But pivot to what? I am using what at least used to be excellent rye flour that made excellent breads with little fuss. I have been trying to pivot the fuss (i.e. the process). I could also pivot the flour -- and go to the Polish grocery for some Euro rye, which would even save me money (it's about 1/3 the cost of the rye I buy now.) What other pivot is there except away from baking entirely?

Rob

The process at the moment just sounds so tiring to read, less to say go through it, Rob. I would just try something else completely different now. Why not give the euro rye a try for your next loaf? I hope it comes in small bags. 

If I try the Polish rye and the Anson Mills, the cost will even out -- and maybe one or both will lead to a rye revolution. Thanks for the link, Tom!

Rob

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squattercity on 4 Apr 2025 at 15:42

Anson MIlls' minimum order is 10 lbs -- which makes the price per pound ok but means I'd have to be an absolute rye dervish to use it all up.

I'm surprised because I've bought smaller sacks of various grains before.  Maybe I've always combined enough to get to their minimum and didn't realize.