Rye Sourdough Bake-Off

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh

Of late, I've been baking more and more with rye since I've a german neighbour for 2 months. First, a small finger in, with a few tablespoons of rye, then I started baking from a rye starter, and the latest, almost half rye plus spelt. Interestingly, many rye bread recipes ask you to throw in that teaspoonful of instant yeast. Is it a valid crutch? I just ignored that bit and went full sourdough. Hey, whaddya know? It came out fine, with a pretty decent spring.

Please, please help me explore more on rye breads. I know there are braver ones amongst us who go full rye. And, why not? Rye breads pack so much (complex) flavour I'm thinking if I'll ever go rye-less again.

Let's celebrate this bake-off come-back with drool-inducing loaves!

Category: 
up
375 users have voted, including you.

Replies

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 16

Since I feed my white starter Rye I usually get Bobs Red Mill Organic Dark Rye however.... Every once in a while my best Cheap source runs dry so I am almost out of Rye.   Maybe I can substitute some Flakes... humm.  I'm still up for it but it might take a couple of days to source some flour or Flakes.  So are we talking all rye, mostly rye or any percent rye?

One thing for sure,  a good Loaf of Rye goes so well with Corned Beef!! And it is almost Saint Patricks Day after all! 

 

Terri

dave 2012 March 16

Ask your neighbours if they like schwarzbrot- 100% whole rye meal, 100% whole ryemeal starter.

 

I can help with that one.

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 16

You sure know how to make a person hungry! Rye bread and corned beef! YUM! And, for St Patricks! Gotta love these celebrations all over the world which we can jump right in and participate.

 

I've got a bag of Bob's dark rye too. Haven't opened it yet. Before, I used generic organic medium rye. All up to you how much rye you wanna put in your bread. It'll take me a couple of days to sort out what I want to bake. Will be busy today with cherry custard tarts.

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 16

Sounds a bit daunting, Dave. She may like it but my family may find it some getting used to. I've to meet them in the middle as I'll be baking enough for all. But, why not, indeed?

 

cummins 2012 March 17

 ill post some pictures so I'm not all talk :P i stated off with a white starter easier to get going then after a week or 2 went into adding rye as % of my flour weight adding 10% each feed i found that once i got to 70%rye 30% white it starts to get week and i get lees bloom with it. but soon ill have it worked out :) i feed mine 70g rye 30g white to 50g leaven and 100g water.

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 17

Although we love pix, talk about bread is good for us to explore together its wonders. I used to keep as many as 5 jars of starter in the fridge. A bit more confident now, I just keep one plain starter, use that as a base to refresh with whatever flour when I want to bake. For rye, I'd just give it 2 feeds with all rye. Cummins, why do you have that mix? 

One of these days, I'm going to experiment with baking using:

a) a rye starter plus plain flour for the dough

b) plain starter plus rye flour for the dough

and see how the flavour develops. Perhaps some of you have done it before. Which did you prefer?

 

 

LeadDog's picture
LeadDog 2012 March 17

 Just a picture of my Rye Starter all ready to go.

Rye Starter

I just hope the bread turns out okay as it has been a long time since I have baked with this much rye.

LeadDog's picture
LeadDog 2012 March 17

 No TP that is just my preferment for the loaf.  Looks like a lot doesn't it?  The loaf will end up being 39% Rye.  I might go for a higher percentage next time, maybe even to 100%.  You might like to read this thread as it explains what I'm doing to make this bread.  I'm substituting Rye for the Whole Wheat in the preferment.  The dough just finished the bulk ferment and it looked outstanding.  I was surprised as I didn't know what to expect.

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 17

Greetings all,

Just to let you know that I have decided to go all or nothing for a 100% rye loaf.  Wish me luck as this will be a first.

The starter look OK, so I am very hopeful.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of SuperRye.

Farinam

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 20

I was having some problems loading two pictures at a time, so I only loaded 1.  But I noticed you were having a similar problem in LeadDog's Fred Bread post.   I was waiting to comment till I can see what you were talking about. 

Maybe Maedi can look at them and give a suggestion.  I want more picture... I need more picture!!!  Maedi... Wo bist du?  Where are you, we are baking Rye and we want pictures!!  Terri

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 18

Often the term 100% rye has been equated to Bricks... If you are not certain of your skills go for less than 50% Rye Flour to test the waters.  And prepare to knead the stickiest glop you have ever seen!  But, if well executed the taste, as long as you can cut your bread, is amazing!

Adding Jane of Au Levain's Link - if your language is not English or French, she has other Translations...

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aulevain.canalblog.com&hl=fr&ie=UTF8&sl=fr&tl=en

You will have to search for Rye or pain de seigal on the right or try the following to see her article on Rye baking

Boulanger avec la farine de seigle/ Baking with rye flour

As for me, just cause it is easy, I will do my Apple Rye first - but Pierre Nury's is a great choice too and I have not done it in a while.  By the way I still had one more bag of Bob's Dark organic Rye so I am raring to go!

 

Terri

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 18

Terri...for sharing that bit on rye. I'll be doing a 50% rye (black bread). And, THANK YOU, LD, for that handsome loaf. Details and crumb pix, please! Can't wait!

LeadDog's picture
LeadDog 2012 March 18

 TP the first bite was just WOW.  I don't know what it is about making bread like that but I get more flavor out of the flour doing it that way.  The crumb had small pea size holes in it.  Now to get my courage up to go for a higher Rye percentage.  The really scary part is the picture of my preferment has a hydration of 175%.  The rye flour absorbed all of the water.  I think for a 100% Rye bread I'm going to have to increase my hydration more than I was expecting.  

 

TP details?  Did you read how I make Fred Bread?  This is made that same way as that bread is made the only difference is that instead of whole wheat flour for the preferment I used used whole rye flour.  The preferment is 944 grams at 175% hydration, 600 grams of water and 343 grams of rye flour and 2 grams of my storage starter.  I let that ferment for 24 hours and then add 16 grams of salt and 540 grams of bread flour.  That is how the dough is made.  The rest is just the normal bread making stuff.

Rye Crumb

It was a great bread to have for St. Patrick's Day.

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 19

If we could just taste a little bit...  LeadDog - that is a lot of preferment - what was total dough weight! ?

LeadDog's picture
LeadDog 2012 March 19

 Yes it is a lot of preferment but it was one of my crazy ideas that I really like.  You can make your own if you want a taste.    The total dough weight was 1500 grams.

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 18

Greetings bakers-off (or should that be baker-offs?)

I have to admit that I piked out of the idea of making my loaf free form.  The comments about the characteristics of 100% rye dough were spot on.  Although the French lady did seem to manage.

Anyhow, the long and short of it is that I baked in a tin.  Which isn't so bad really - the class I went to in Italy, they baked the 100% rye in a tin.

Here's how it turned out.

The rise in the tin was pretty good, but there was absolutely no oven spring.  It will be interesting to see how it cuts.

But that is for another day.

Farinam

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 19

The weather here is a bit crazy.. usually we are getting our last big snow.  But today we were out cleaning up the yard in t-shirts!  My starter is trying to make it's summer adjustment for warm weather already, it's a little Hyperactive.  So my first loaf was a little overproofed even though I put it in the Fridge right away.  I have a new way of slashing overproofed bread that helps. Also it had risen to the top of the pan so I was afraid to let it warm up so the crumb turned out a little moister than it should have.  I'll post pictures and then add them.

 

Terri

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 19

All your breads look soooooo good!

 

Quite shy about posting my bread, but, what the hey! I definitely made a couple of bad decisions here. 1) this bread is much too complex, should hv just done a plain rye. This one has cocoa, coffee, molasses, cummin seeds, grated carrot, 50:50 dark rye:plain. It's tweaked from Dan Lepard's Black Bread. 2) Baked it free form. Crazy for a bread with 72% hydration (and, a bit got stuck to the banneton...which got it deflated somewhat.) Baking from a cold oven didn't help either. I'm not sure if I'll bake this bread again. The flavours were a bit too much for me. Methinks it'll go very well with a chicken curry. ;)

 

I'll be travelling for most of the rest of the week. I'm going to throw in another loaf next week. Thanks for posting the link, LD. I have a lot of catching up to do with the older posts.

 

Cheers

TP

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 20

I tried a Rye once with coffee and cocoa... I wasn't sure about the flavor either.  The Ohio Apple rye is only about 20-25% rye, but the White Whole Wheat helps make it more whole grain.   http://sourdough.com/recipes/ohio-apple-rye-white-wheat

 

Today I am doing a 50/50  rye spliting everything down the middle and using an approximation of my everyday bread recipe - that doesn't usually contain Rye. I am also a bit of a chicken like Farinam, and will stick to loaf pans for the 1st attempt. 238g of 100% hydration starter, half rye and half white.  300 g of water and 8g of salt, then added 450 grams of flour, half unbleached bread and half dark whole organic rye. After today I will have to find some more rye flour, before I can try again - so hopefully this batch goes well.  The other loaf lets say... didn't turn out too badly, because it is almost gone today!

 

Terri

lluisanunez's picture
lluisanunez 2012 March 19

I came across this description of the method used in german bakeries to develop a richer flavour in rye bread. I tried it when I made my Christmas breads, and I can tell you the flavour was incredible. The advice is to begin with just 2-3 grams of your active starter (or you could end with 10 Kgs of starter!)

German Rye fermentation method in three steps (Dreistufen-Sauerteigführung)

 1rst feed:  Refresh. It increases the yeast growth1 + 1 + 1 (starter, flour, water)time: 6 hourstemp: 25ºC 2nd feed: Acidification: it develops the sourness of the dough1 + 5 + 3 (starter, flour, water)time: 8 hourstemp: 23º-25ºC 3rd feed: Complete acidification: it develops lactic acid aromas1+ 1,2 + 1,4 (starter, flour, water)time: 3 hourstemp: 30ºC 

 

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 20

Greetings,

This method sounds vaguely similar to a description that I read about three stage builds (see my blog on Starter/levain Building Spreadsheet) although it didn't talk so much about the flavour aspects that I recall.  It was also in the context of changing the starter hydration to suit a recipe if it was different from your stock.

I have used the method without changing the hydration as well but I am not sure that I have absolutely detected a flavour benefit.  But then again I have never been able to do a side by side comparison.

Hope to have my rye crumb shots later today.

Farinam

lluisanunez's picture
lluisanunez 2012 March 21

[quote=TeckPoh]

What's clear rye?

[/quote]

Sorry, TeckPoh, my fault. Here we call "clear" or "semi" the flour that is between 85% and 90% extraction

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 20

Terri, the bread's not sweet. The dominant flavour is bitter (!) with a background sour. My german neighbour ate it and said, "So nice...so nice!" The flavour is really puzzling...it's not my ideal bread flavour and yet it's so interesting, I'm eating piece after piece.

 

Go, bake-offers/bakers-offs (whatever), Go!

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 20

Hi guys,

I had the same thought when I tasted mine for the first time today - a hint of bitterness - and I can't blame any other additives so it must be down to the pure rye flour.

Any how, here is the long awaited crumb-shot.

As I commented previously, the dough rose well during proving, but there was absolutely no oven spring.  So - was the gas able to escape rather than expand?  Maybe the presence of bran etc made the cell walls porous.  Or maybe I didn't work it enough the develop the gluten.

Still, it went down a treat for lunch and that is what matters.

Signing off with a rye smile ;-p

Farinam

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 20

The taste must be outstanding!

Well, I'm not sure if any spring (if at all) is expected for a 100% rye. I note that Hamelman said that scoring is not necessary. Would love to hear from full rye bakers.

I'm quite sure the bitterness in my bread comes from the cup of thick black coffee and cocoa. Nothing subtle about it. Interesting that yours had a bitter note too.

I'm certainly not bitter about rye, looking forward to many more rye smiles :D

dave 2012 March 20

Cut while hot, not the true colour, looks more chocolately, plus a shadow at the bottom. I've gotta get better with my camera.

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 20

I'm sure your bread is not. Did you park your pix over at the sourdough.com gallery first? We can't see your pix, I'm afraid.

dave 2012 March 20

[quote=TeckPoh]

I'm sure your bread is not. Did you park your pix over at the sourdough.com gallery first? We can't see your pix, I'm afraid.

[/quote]

 

How do I do that? I can't see that option.

dave 2012 March 20

[quote=farinam]Hi dave, This should give you the option to set up a gallery. Farinam[/quote]

I see gallery album, but it's not clickable.

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 20

Hi TP,

I assume you are talking to Dave.  I can see his pix.  He hasn't stored them in the gallery but that shouldn't make any difference.

What browser are you using?

Farinam

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 20

I use firefox. All I see are 2 boxes of toads.What should I do if I can't get ahold of magic glasses?

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 22

Let me at em!! I'll throw em in my Garden to eat the bugs!!!  I don't see any toads in firefox...  See my post below.

What I was getting in IE was the top 1/8th of a picture for some of the posts, and a tiny red X in a box - in a bigger empty white box.

 

Terri

farinam's picture
farinam 2012 March 20

I also use Firefox and I see two shots of very nice looking bread.

Maybe the dreaded cane-toad has made its way into your computer ;-)

daves other bread

daves bread

Let me know if you can see these.

Farinam

TeckPoh's picture
TeckPoh 2012 March 20

This time I see the url, and, when I click on it, the toad-in-a-box.

 

p/s Will be out for a couple of hours. ...to escape from the *%^# toads. Not.

Aggie3 2012 March 20

 The rye breads featured here look amazing, my German taste buds can test it already, nice, solid and chewy -yum. 

 

This whole business of uploading pics doesn't work for me either but I haven't checked out the gallery as part of my profile yet. Thanks for the tip

Millciti's picture
Millciti 2012 March 22

Okay - before even reading all the updates I was looking at Farinam's pictures and wishing I could see them.  I was thinking- "doesn't he know we can't see his Pictures for his posts?"  Then I got the Brilliant Idea that my Browser might be the problem, I had been using IE.  So I switched to Mozilla Firefox - and Voila, I can see all the Pictures now!!  So If anyone else can't the all the pictures at this site - try logging in with Firefox... Maybe Maedi can also tweak something but using Mozzila for some will work for now! 

If you havent' dowloaded Mozilla go to http://mozilla.com -Mozilla will recognize your Operating system and suggest the correct version.  I will note that I do not use IE settings or bookmarks to set up, or set as my default browser.  Also watch for any toolbar add ons and uncheck them unless you want most sites to be blocked if the pop-up blocker deems the site to be unsecure.

Computer Help desk tech putting in 2 bits here.... 

 

Terri

Pages

Post Reply

Already a member? Login