Community Bake - NY Jewish Bakery/Deli style Rye breads

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 The Eric Hanner Memorial Jewish Bakery Rye Bread Community Bake

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For those who wish to limit or disengage from the flood of email notifications associated with long threads such as these CBs produce, Dan had written up how to do so

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66354/tip-how-stop-email-notification-any-topic

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As many of you know, Dan has been at the helm of the Community Bakes since its inception, and was his own invention.  Along the way he created a community within the TFL community with smashing success.  Recently Dan asked if I was interested in taking the steering wheel for a while, feeling that he needed to step away for some time.  Rather than hosting, he’d rather assume the role of contributor.  Gladly! 

Suggesting 4 categories to explore for this CB, I asked for those interested to select one.  The overwhelming response was rye.  My goal was to find a few breads that were not demanding of extraordinary time, effort and particularly avoiding out of the ordinary ingredients or baking tools and hardware.  And all having a common theme.

Paul McCool suggested I consider the Eric Hanner Jewish Rye Bread.  Eric passed away unexpectedly 8 years ago this month.  From all accounts he was a liked and well respected participant in the community.  This CB is in memory of Eric.

I offer three differing Jewish Bakery/Deli style Rye Breads.  All provide unique experiences as far as how the dough will react during all phases.  All employ a 100% hydration preferment.

The first two breads have a link to the original post.  The third is my own interpretation as well as my experience and steps.

Eric Hanner employs what he refers to as a Sponge, It is composed of 26% rye, and 71.5% hydration.  If your experience is anything like mine, the dough will challenge the newly initiated Rye baker to a formidable sticky and difficult dough to manage.  It bakes up beautifully and has an extraordinary taste.

David Snyder uses a Rye Sour.  Built in three stages.  It is composed of 44% rye and 72% hydration.  Contrary to any reasonable expectation considering the elevated rye percentage, it does not exhibit any of the overly sticky qualities of the first dough.  I would consider this the closest of the three to a true NY Jewish bakery rye bread.

Alfanso’s is a faux Jewish Bakery Rye, for contrast and variety.  It uses a standard AP flour Levain.  It is composed of 25% rye and 73.5% hydration.  I treat the dough as I do for mostly every other bread that I make.  It is the most manageable of the three and the least traditional.  If you wish to use a Rye Levain instead, make the appropriate adjustments to the amount of AP and rye flours for the final mix.  Percentages will not need to be adjusted (unless you want), only the amounts at Final Mix time.

My blog post of the 3 formula write-ups are found here.

Notes:

  • All three breads call for a Medium Rye Flour.  Mine is also stone ground.
  • All three of my own entries will be found in this link and have been scaled at 1000g.
  • These can be made within a 2 day span or less:
  • Eric’s version is made with a 1 stage overnight sponge, but if you are an early riser, the entire process can be done in the course of a day, the first 8 hours awaiting the sponge to complete fermentation.
  • David’s requires the 3 stage rye sour, which will take a full day to accomplish.  However, for the sake of expediency, I’ve whittled that down to ~6 hours via a heating pad and maintaining a 90dF environment for the rye to ferment.  This may sacrifice some of the qualities a longer fermentation, but can also be done in a short day.  This version also uses a significant boost of IDY, hence the short period between mix and bake.
  • Alfanso’s requires a levain to be readied.  Mixing and fermentation are minimal, but the formula asks for an overnight retard.  Instead, a few hours of countertop proofing if you wish, although I’ve never done that.

Traditional Jewish Rye Bread “begs" the use of an ultra high gluten flour, I wanted to avoid requesting people to source something along the lines of a First Clear flour.  For the first two I use a supermarket brand bread flour that may be as high as 12.9% protein.  For the third I use my standard  King Arthur AP flour that has a stated protein of 11.7%, but to get a more optimal result I did add VWG.

You do not need an ultra high gluten flour to produce these.  Unfortunately if your only available flours are weaker than what I mention above, you may have to supplement the flour with something like a Vital Wheat Gluten to elevate the protein.  If you decide to do this, there is the long-way manual tool Pearson’s Square, which can be used to adjust protein percentages.  OR use this link to the Foodgeek VWG% calculator.

All three breads have caraway seeds added, as do many Jewish Rye breads.  You can eliminate these if you wish or supplement / replace them with a fennel seed, for instance.

A few references about rye flours:

The fine print...

As always, the CB is a place created for a collaborative effort, both to enhance one’s skills as well as to help others with their skills.  By no means are the formulae meant to be the be-all-andend-all of the CB.  Rather, they are a framework of three distinct ways to achieve a bread that meets the general criteria.  I encourage you to experiment and explore, to modify and to introduce to our CB participants your own experiences and versions.  And most of all, to learn and help all of us to better ourselves as bakers.  I also encourage you to find something you like, change one or many things about it and to make it your own!

And as Dan said:

All bakers of every skill level are invited to participate. Novice bakers are especially welcomed and plenty of assistance will be available for the asking. The Community Bakes are non-competitive events that are designed around the idea of sharing kitchens with like minded bakers around the world, "cyber style". To participate, simply photograph and document your bakes. You are free to use any formula and process you wish. Commercial Yeast, sourdough, or a combination of both are completely acceptable. Once the participants gets active, many bakers will post their formulas and methods. There will be many variations to choose from.

Here is a list of our past CBs. They remain active and are monitored by numerous users that are ready, willing, and able to help if assistance is needed. A quick browse of past CBs will provide an accurate picture of what these events are all about.

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Since many of the CBs grow quite large, it can become difficult to follow the progress of each individual baker. Things get very spread out. In an attempt to alleviate congestion and consolidate individual baker’s bread post, the following is suggested.

Links to baker’s BLOGs that have posted a compiled list of bakes for this CB

End note:  By no means do I consider myself a skilled rye baker.  This is my first experience baking Eric’s version and my third with David’s. My own version I bake with some frequency.

*For the original postings please click the links above.  My posting of the formula write-ups, click here. 

if you want the extra capacity to mix a larger amount of dough. The kneading action doesn't mimic hand kneading like the center post version. The stainless is stickier than the plastic bowl and needs an occasional non-stick spray. I saw the new version has a stainless bowl but still a plastic center post. 

That is correct the new version still has the post. I feel like the Kitchenaid bowl was naturally stick-free! However it has been a while. 

I agree with your plans for a future bake, I think that Dan's idea of fully developing the gluten before adding the rye sour is a excellent one.  I was pleasantly surprised at the crumb I baked using his methods.  

Don your bread has an excellent oven spring and crust, I bet with a few adjustments you'd be super pleased with the crumb.  I bet you're having an excellent reuben as I type this.

you and Dan had used an improved delayed integration mix and I think your crumb was a beauty that defied the normal rye crumb. I saw that one of Dan's version had the vanilla and fudge swirl so I balked at that for my first rye attempt.

I was wondering how you are getting along with your rye starter and if you had used it for non rye breads yet?

My all rye starter is doing well so far, I guess the test will be long term use and whether it will start vigorous.  I actually have used it several times now on enriched breads with a white levain.  I've never had such good levain activity with an all white flour.  It will now grow to 3x which never happened before.  Something I never really did before but likely everyone else does already, is that I am mixing these white levain until I get some gluten development.  One of the reasons I think that my white levain never appeared to rise more than just shy of 2 x is that I believe I never mixed them well enough.  Thus they were too liquid to hold the gases that they would produce and then never grow very much.  I believe that with the greater activity of the rye starter and with more vigorous mixing to form some gluten the white levain are much much more active.

The babkas I've made weren't very successful, but that wasn't the fault of the levain, in fact they did a good job of leavening the dough.  So far so good Don thank for asking.

Looks to me like you did everything right. I know what you mean about clay, it feels like that to me, too.

Enjoy!!

blushed and had to hide them before the wife came into the room.   Great shaping, about as classic as they come.  For the most part, rye and dense crumb generally go hand in hand once the rye hits @40%.

The suggestion for the caraway-averse is to cut down on the amount, eliminate them completely or replace them with something like a dill seed.

The 8 x10 glossy was an Arlo Guthrie “ Alice’s Restaurant” reference for those of you playing along. 
I am glad to finally have the chance to explore the neglected rye chapter in Hammelman’s book with the help of this CB. From the look of things I have a lot to learn about rye. 

The few times I baked Rye bread prior to the CB Caraway seeds were used. It looks like rye and caraway go hand in hand. I really did not like the flavor of the bread at all. Don’t know for sure, but the frozen slices may have been fed to the birds. I really didn’t like eating it.

BUT, since the CB, I’ve baked rye without the Caraway seeds and at 40% rye it is tasty and a joy to eat. I blamed the rye when it was the Caraway seeds after all.

I know Caraway is very popular with rye breads, so many people must really like them. But if you are put off by rye bread and it has Caraway seeds, try baking one without. 

You learn all kinds of things when you get together and bake with like minded bakers.

Danny

I like the flavor I get from rye in a pain au levain but the caraway smothers it even when the rye is 40%. That being said the Rueben sandwich I had for lunch would not have been the same without the  caraway seed. When I volunteered at the food pantry we made a rye bread with pickle juice in it. Now that had an unusual bread aroma when it came out of the oven.

 

These are very, very common. I'd say over 3/4 of my rye breads have blow-outs. Assuming good loaf shaping (No really weak spots), the main issue is under-proofing. I usually run out of time or patience and bake a bit before I know I really should. 

I haven't tried really deep scoring. I suppose I should. Informed guesses are trumped by data.

David

 A little while back, I took a page from My friend Danny's book and hosted a few group- bakes at the FB rye baker club. I submit, Spiced honey rye.

Pleased to see this bake. I chose the David Snyder version for the higher rye content.  

I deviated in minor ways - ground the caraway, dropped the temp to 420dF as the loaves browned early, and glazed only after the bake.  House smells great, bread tastes great.

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Run4Bread, your images are not latge enough.

When you post images you’ll notice a popup window asking for dimensions. I you add a number in the “width” box you will be able to control the size. For full page put “625”. The length will atuo-fill. 

Also you don’t want the “Thumbnail” box checked.

I enlarged the thumbnail images and although the quality was not good, I could tell that your bread is beautiful.

Your enlarged images are gorgeous!

This was the first time I've been successful with a cornstarch glaze. I followed David's directions carefully and applied it with a bristle pastry brush as someone recommended when the bread was just out of the oven. 

I like the look of your loaf and crumb. How would you describe the fermentation? Under, Over proofed, etc. How did the dough feel and behave when shaping?

Recently, many of the TFL SD bakers are bulk proofing to about 30% (more or less). I'm not sure that works with Rye.

Your bread didn't blow out, cracking the crust. Other bakers with similar loaves are asked the same.

Hi, Dan, I followed David's recommendation of 15-20 minutes for bulk fermentation. However I kneaded the dough using slap and folds until I achieved a strong windowpane. I've been working on a 50% whole wheat oat porridge pan loaf and learned from TxFarmer that a strong windowpane is important. So I thought I'd try that here too. I was surprised that I could get a good windowpane with 44% rye. Must be that 66% bread flour. (I used a locally milled flour, Expresso (T85) from Cairnspring Mill.)  

I was disappointed with my scoring. Should have gone deeper. Didn't know the loaf could take a deeper score. Didn't spring back much from the poke test. 

I also placed the two loaves as far apart as I could on the baking stone. And sprayed a lot during the steam phase. 

 

WOW! 15-20 min BF?
How much CY?
what was the ambient temp during your BF?
Did the dough grow in that short time?

For this type of rye bread I am also a big fan of gluten development. That’s why I develop the gluten in the mixer for the white flour and final dough water only before adding the rye levain to the mix. The present thought is that the highly developed white flour first, makes incorporation of the rye levain more efficient. That may or may not be the case, but that’s my reasoning. The dough dose handle and shape very nicely, but I have limited experience dealing with large percentages of rye.

Yes, I had to re-read the instructions for 15-20 mins BF! And yes, it definitely grew. In my proofing box at 75dF.

I planned to autolyse the bread flour and water, then knead before adding the levain, but it was too dry (50% hydration, and that flour can be thirsty). I autolysed with as much flour as I could, and only 15 minutes, no kneading. Didn't want to add more water, as I learned on TFL to follow the recipe the first time, then deviate. 

I guess a take-away is that gluten development can happen with the rye in it, at least at this level. 

I like high % rye. I'm going to work on some volkornbrots. No shaping, plop into the pullman. I also want to try the 3 stage Detmolder, haven't done that yet. And I want to try my first Pannetone. 

40 Percent Caraway Rye Sourdough – Hamelman

Today’s bake was Hamelman’s 40 Percent Caraway Rye. The last rye bake was a 3-stage 70% rye sourdough, but I thought the rye was too strong for my liking. It was also complex with multiple temperatures. This bake was a lot simpler and took much less time. The flavour is exceptional with the caraway seeds being a great affiliate.

I used home-milled whole-rye flour and Lauche Wallaby bakers flour that is 11.5% protein. The dough was easy to handle and not overly sticky. I used a mixer to incorporate the ingredients and added the stiff rye sourdough in chunks. The overnight stiff rye sourdough felt soft and sticky. The DDT hit the 27C target.

Bulk fermentation for 1 hour. Pre-shaped into a ball and rested for 10 minutes. I then shaped the dough into an oblong. Final proof in a couche for 50 minutes at 27C, seam side down. I liked that the dough felt soft and delicate when I moved it to the peel.

Baked in a pre-steamed oven at 238C for first 15 minutes. The temperature was lowered to 227C for 25 minutes.

The taste is very nice and the best rye loaf I’ve baked so far. I treated myself to a lunch of rye bread with cream cheese and smoked salmon. A sprig of fresh dill would have set it off.

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Wow Gavin, that is one handsome rye loaf.  I’m amazed at the ear on it.  Beautiful crumb and crust and of course delicious looking sandwiches.  That is a triumph.

Benny

So far I also found that the Hamelman version you baked to be the most flavorful of those I've baked so far. Great shaping and lovely loft and oven spring for a 40% rye bread.

...and I'll take it an unreasonable step further. Hamelman's 40% Rye is my very favorite bread. I know it's crazy. There are a million better breads out there and I love love love them all, but this is my everyday bread. My mom sent one of us to the bakery every day for a loaf of bread, but rye bread was a Saturday-only treat. After the old bakeries started disappearing and you couldn't get this kind of bread anymore, I was determined to figure out how to make it. Nostalgia is a powerful influence.

Great to hear your sentiment about rye bread. I followed Hamelman's formula and process exactly, so I could have confidence in repeating the results if I liked it. I must say that this is the nicest rye I've tasted.

Cheers,

Gavin

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This is a light rye bread from Leader's Local Breads that he has titled Polish Cottage Rye.  It employs a rye sour that is then combined with bread flour, water, and salt to form the final dough.  The process is pretty straightforward.  The rye sour is made the evening of Day 1 and ferments overnight.  On the morning of Day 2, the sour and the rest of the dough ingredients are combined, kneaded (I employed my KitchenAid mixer), fermented, shaped, and proofed before baking.  The dough moved along briskly enough that I pulled the bread out of the oven a little before 1:00 p.m.

The rye constitutes 25% of the flour and is entirely prefermented.  Leader calls for white rye flour; I used home-milled whole rye flour.  Overall hydration is just a hair under 75%, which makes this a fairly sticky dough.  It's the first time that I've had a major sticking problem while attempting to remove a loaf from the brotform.  The process of detaching the dough from the brotform caused the loaf to spread out more than desired but it came back with some impressive oven spring, so no harm done. 

Since we have a partial loaf of other bread that is already in use, it may be a few days before I cut into this one to see what the crumb looks like.

So, why this bread instead of the CB bread?  Well, in effect, this style bread is a precursor to what became deli-style rye bread in the U.S.  Leader's formula doesn't call for any seeds, so all of the flavor is from the flours and the fermentation.  It's a relative, if you will, from the Old World.

Update - Here’s a picture of the crumb:


It’s fairly uniform with a few larger cells.  The texture is quite firm, thanks to the bread flour.  In the mouth, it is moist with a light sour tang.  The bread makes a delightful ham sandwich, which is what I enjoyed for lunch today.  

Since I’m already a bit off topic with the above bread, let me share a Double Chocolate Rye Banana bread with you:


The only flour in it is whole rye flour that I milled.  You really want to make this. 

It was a great idea to celebrate the extended family and a great bake, too. It looks like it will have a nice light crumb. Will you post another pic when you cut into it? I've never made one at a higher hydration and am interested to see. Thank you!

I like to look of this bread. I have Daniel Leader's Local Bread book and find it very interesting, almost a travel guide of bread history. As yet I haven't baked any of his recipes. Nice bake. I am interested to see the crumb shot in due course.

 

CLICK HERE to see a compilation of all of my Rye Bakes during the CB.

Bake #4

A repeat of Bake #3, Hamelman’s 40% Rye. The hydrations was upped to 70%, but 68% may be my sweet spot. Added 0.4% diastatic malt and increased the Chocolate Malt (N/D) from 1% to 2%. It darkened the loaf and crumb more, but the jury is still out on this change. At this time the flavor seems a liitle nicer on the previous bake, but I think that will change as the loaf ages in the next day or two. NOTE - the salt on the crust is a real treat and adds a blast of flavor. It doesn’t take much coarse kosher salt to do the trick.

 

Phil Agnew, also known as PiPs on TFL, was an early contributor and both an outstanding baker and photographer from Brisbane.  His version used fresh milled rye, and at 73%, pushed the envelope on hydration.  The other day someone posted their rye with a chevron score, which reminded me of Phil's posting, squirreled away deep in the back of my formula book.

Along with the Hamelman version at 40%, these are the most flavorful of all the rye breads I've baked so far.  The scoring of this wet dough leaves a lot to be said, but good eating out-votes good looks at my dining table.

Two roads led me to believe I know the errors of my ways with this formula.  Firstly, fresh milled grain is thirstier than the packaged version, hence my dough is seemingly more slack than Phil's version.  I tried the Dan concept of developing the gluten in the white flour first, which provided me with a low hydration somewhat impenetrable ball of dough to then incorporate the rye sour into.  This in itself was surprisingly difficult and there were numerous hand and scraper dips in water in order to manipulate the dough in the mixing bowl and scraping down of the bowl sides.  I'm certain this introduced another 1-2% hydration, making the task of getting the dough to later behave itself even more difficult.

Again, I have nothing but admiration for the taste, but the poor little thing looks like an aberration compared to Phil's sterling composition.

40%PFF, 40% Rye, 73% hydration (but somewhere higher in my version).  750g x 1 batard.

Oh, and regarding incorporating stiff wheat dough and rye preferment, using lamination helped me a lot - stretching the wheat flour dough and folding in the rye sour. Then you still need to mix it to homogeneity by hand, but that was totally doable.

even my gloves into a sticky levain.  For all of these bakes, I've been using the mixer, something I really don't use much.  Beyond the incorporation of the levain into the ball of dough, I really didn't see much of a gain from autolysing and trying to mix just the flour and water, as Dan outlined vs. what I was doing before.  Still worth a try.

Aside from the shaping and scoring, I'm also pleased with the crumb.  And the flavor is heavenly!

Thanks, alan

I decided to bake this again, partially because it is a good bread but also because I wanted to see if pushing bulk further would reduce the splitting in the sides of the crust.  Someone posted that the splits occur if the dough is a bit underproofed.  So for this bake I pushed bulk much further maybe about 50% further, although it is hard to say because the dough temperature was low due to the proofing box being full with another dough.

The proof was definitely pushed because you can see the oven spring wasn’t as great as the first time and the bread spread somewhat in the dutch oven.  The sides didn’t split though so I do think that you can minimize that splitting by pushing bulk, but I do think I pushed it a bit too far.

I may not be able to post a crumb photo because this loaf will be gifted.

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I am hoping for a safe holiday anyway. Things aren't so happy on this side of the fence right now. Keep up the nice bakes that help spread the joy! and stay safe.

Let me preface this to say that I’ve only baked these rye loaves twice and each with using Eric’s formula which I believe has only 29% rye and uses a IDY boost.  Also I didn’t use an aliquot jar since doubling is so large a volume increase that I didn’t think it needed the precision of the aliquot jar like trying to hit 20% rise for baguettes.

I think the first bake I hit 100% and I thought it was excellent except for the cracks/splits on the sides.  In my second bake it probably went 125-150% rise as it sped along way too fast and I didn’t catch it early enough.  I think it needs to bulk just over 100% would be my guess.

Don't get white line fever!  When you are folding the dough as in the video, you are introducing a layer of raw flour however slight, between the layers because you are overflowing the counter.  If you wish to try, you can spread a layer of water on the work area with flat palms - just dip your hands in water.  The dough will not stick to the counter and the raw flour will not be present at all.

Yes I can see that my lightly flour the counter ended up being more than light especially when I've already floured the side of the dough that is going to land on the counter.  I tried using water several times in the past and had reasonable results, but I found for me that the dough seemed to lose some tension in the skin and compromised oven spring somewhat.  So I switched back to flour.  I've just ended up using too much flour on this rye loaf.  Fortunately my friend doesn't have the eagle eyes that we have here examining the crumb!

I've been starting an aliquot jar immediately after mixing with my home milled HWWW + rye adaptation of dmnsnyder's formula without the IDY/CY (admittedly a different bread).  Things move along very rapidly with whole grains and such a large PPF.  I have been creating an aliquot jar immediately after the final mix, shaping shortly thereafter while the dough has good strength, and baking after observing a rise of approximately 1.5x.  I'm happy enough with the end product for my first rye bakes, but would like to improve the height of my free standing loaves.  I know the whole grain bakes are destined to be shorter, but I expect there is significant room for improvement.  In standard whole wheat sourdough bakes, TFL discussions have steered me towards a relatively short (25-50%) bulk fermentation with a cool final proof that goes directly in the oven for fairly reproducible oven spring, especially when combined with a cloche.  I'm curious how rye heavy bakes fit into this approach.  Does anyone have experience applying this scheme to this style of bread?  I'll be doing the final mix for another loaf shortly and wanted to reach out for thoughts.   The first clear formula calls for a rise of 2x.  For comparison, Peter Reinhart's closest rye whole grain formula from WGB calls for a rise of 1.5x, which is what I've been using.  I'm considering shaping the dough into two loaves and baking at 25% and 50% to observe differences, although the single large loaf does make better sandwiches.

Very interesting formula! and it looks delish. I bet that will be amazing and I can't wait to see the crumb shot. Sounds like something that would pair great with a hearty soup or stew. Or a nice cheese.

I see you are using BreadStorm. Great program and I'm afraid to upgrade my Mac for fear it won't be supported anymore. I've been moving all my formulas into spread sheets in anticipation of it not working some day soon :-(

You can see the crumb shot on my regular post.

That does suck about BreadStorm.  I take screen shots now of all my formulas.  I used to be able to save them as image files but that stopped working.  It’s going to be real bad when it doesn’t work at all ?

to put beer in my bread - yet!  But Guinness is as good a choice as there probably is.  A really nice looking loaf - and beat's the pants off that Mookie guy's version from years ago! ;-)

NY Metropolitans jersey #1?

Mookies’ is sitting right next to me now and is not happy ?.  He had some choice words for you but he realized this is a G rated site.  Jets and Mets for this long suffering New Yorker!

Today I made an old bread that is new to me: Corn Bread from George Greenstein’s Secrets of a Jewish Baker. Greenstein uses volume measurements in the book, but I converted them to weights and followed the recipe faithfully, except for these things: 1) KAF pumpernickel (whole organic rye) and KAF bread flours were substituted for white rye and first clear flours and 2) commercial yeast was reduced to a level teaspoon from from a heaping tablespoon. 

The dough is 60% rye flour, half of which is pre-fermented using the 3-stage process. I understood that 60% whole rye would make for a denser loaf than Greenstein intended, but the specified flours aren’t available these days. Plus, whole rye works at 40% in my deli rye, so I was hopeful it would work here, too. The hydration is almost 87% and the dough is described by Greenstein as wet and sloppy, but as long as you keep your hands wet, it’s easy to handle. Bulk took one hour and I can't imagine how fast it would have gone if I hadn't reduced the CY. When it came time to shape the breads and incorporate the caraway seeds, I skipped the seeds because it wasn’t clear to me how they would become distributed throughout the dough at that point. I divided the dough into 2 small boules of about 570g each, but I believe this bread would have benefitted from the extra size and longer bake, so I wish I had made one large loaf. 

The instructions said to flatten the top of the shaped dough and not to let it proof. Greenstein said the dough would spring up in the oven but, in this case, the oven spring was nothing to write home about – which I think that can be chalked up to the whole rye flour, the reduction in CY, and inadequate steam. Both loaves blew out, but the surface of the dough was already splitting open at the 5 minute mark when I opened the oven to vent the steam and stipple the dough. I could already see the crust beginning to harden at that point, so I guess the lava rocks weren’t doing their job.

The crumb was about as dense as expected and perhaps denser than hoped. This is a hearty bread – extremely moist, robust flavor, and very filling. It tastes a lot like deli rye, only more so. For the sake of comparison, I might make it again some day with first clear flour and a blend of white and medium ryes. 

I am interested in the experiences of other bakers that have fermented their rye levain according to Hamelman’s 40% Rye Bread instructions. 5% seed sounds very low, a 1-20 ratio.

  • what percent of seed are you using
  • what temperature are you fermenting
  • how long do you ferment
  • what type of growth rate (rise) should I expect

I ask because I am using whole rye (fresh milled) and the levain doesn’t rise much. It seems the lack of gluten is producing results that I am not familiar with.

just checking...

OK, so I haven't tried that exact recipe, but just speaking from experience of using a rye starter, it should definitely have a good rise! I haven't tried freshly milled rye, but whole rye is very good at supporting fermentation. Are you using a rye starter to inoculate it? It's possible switching the flour can give a temporary shock to the yeast and/or LABs, but they should acclimate quickly.

You can use very warm water to speed it up (like 40-50°C works great!). As usual, keeping it warm will help it along too, but will change the flavour, if the recipe doesn't call for a warm ferment.

I wouldn't say lack of gluten affects how the starter performs in terms of rising.

Ilya, I am using a Rye Sour to seed the levain.

” I wouldn't say lack of gluten affects how the starter performs in terms of rising.” I think gluten has everything to do with rise.

The levain is aerated and shows signs of fermentation. It smells mature, but it doesn’t rise too much. I suspect it is the lack of gluten that allows to dough to trap gas. It definitely doubles, but at 83% hydration and rye bran in the mix it is a thick and heavy dough.

I stayed with Hamelman's formula. My stiff rye starter is 85% hydration so I thought that would not make much difference to the 83% sourdough preferment in the formula. In a 680 gram dough, the sourdough was 100% whole rye flour - 158 gram, 83% water - 131 gram, and 5% stiff rye seed - 8 gram. Fermentation time was 14 -16 hours at 21C. I went for 15 hours at 21C. You will not see much growth externally, but the feel of the fermented rye will be light and sticky.

My submission is at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66523/community-bake-ny-jewish-bakerydeli-style-rye-breads#comment-475582

Cheers,

Gavin.

a 3% inoculation!  I like the action in the second stage.  I only use 1 type of rye flour - stone ground dark, so whatever it will come out as, so be it...  Meanwhile I still have a stockpile of rye from these backs waiting for  morning toasting sessions.

I mix to Hamelman's 83% but sometimes add a few drops of water if it feels too compacted to breathe. It doesn't rise much but it gets a little puffy with a slightly rounded top when it's good to go and it has a nice fermented smell.

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DanAyo on Mon, 12/14/2020 - 14:10

Your description is what I am seeing. How long and at what temp are you fermenting Hamelman's levain for the 40% rye?