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Rye Sourdough with Roasted Cracked Wheat - Take II

amolitor's picture
amolitor

Rye Sourdough with Roasted Cracked Wheat - Take II

I'm working on this recipe.

My current state of the art is:

Evening of Day 0

  • 1/4 cup WW flour
  • 3 T water
  • 1 T WW starter

(this approximates 100% hydration starter mix). Let rise overnight.

Morning of Day 1

  • starter from last night
  • another 1/4 cup WW flour
  • another 3 T water

Let rise until about noon (6 hours). Should be Quite Active at this point.

Noonish of Day 1

Toast 1/4 cup + 1 T cracked wheat in dry skillet until Dark Golden Brown, mix with 1/4 cup + 1 T boiling water. Let rest/soak/cool.

  • starter
  • 1/2 cup rye flour
  • 1/2 cup WW flour
  • 1 cup + 1 tablespoon water
  • 2 tsp salt
  • toasted cracked wheat mixture
  • sufficient bread flour to hit a moderately high hydration dough

Knead dough until it starts to develop. The dough will be moist and sticky, if you form it into a blob and grab one end you can lift the blob up off the working surface. Holding it there, it will sag, eventually pouring slowly out of your hands over a minute or two. It's as thick as a Very Thick muffin batter, and somewhat springy due to gluten development. Mine was starting to windowpane, weakly -- I didn't want to overdevelop since the ferment goes on a while.

Bulk ferment for 5 hours, S&F every hour.

Into the fridge around 6pm.

6 am Day 2

Remove from fridge, place somewhere warm. S&F after an hour. Form up a loaf after 2 hours. Proof until done (2 hours in this case). Bake at 450 with steam for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 425 for another 25 minutes. Results:

 

I had good development going in to the fridge in the evening, but it seems to have started to vanish by morning. I feel like the dough was starting to fall apart. The next test will be to follow the same pattern, but aim for mixing dough about 3-4 hours later, so there's only 8-9 hours in the fridge instead of 12. This experiment went off rather better than the previous run (the dough was less sticky, and much more willing to stand up, but the surface gluten network wasn't quite what I want it to be). The flavor and texture are very very similar to the previous result, and the loaf is more staisfying to me, but I feel I have more work to do.

Previous experiment is here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19856/rye-sourdough-roasted-cracked-wheat

Comments

Franko's picture
Franko

Hi,

From what you've posted for your formula I'd say that the salt is higher than it needs to be, but then I don't know how much bread flour your adding to get a "moderately high hydration dough. Rye and whole wheat flour both provide lots of nutrients for wild yeast, so you might want to try cutting back on your fermentation time..considerably. As far as kneading rye dough, it's not so much a kneading action as it is a folding & combining method. Rye dough should be treated like a paste rather than a 'dough' in most cases.  Gentle working is the way that rye responds to best . Stretch and folds are rarely indicated for rye breads, so that may be something you want to avoid as well. Just a few thoughts to consider.

ATB,

Franko 

amolitor's picture
amolitor

I'm adding around a cup and a half of bread flour, so this isn't a very rye intensive dough. There's enough rye to make it sticky, but not enough to make it a true rye bread (at this point, the original recipe may have more rye in it, I forget).

There's in the area of 13oz of water, 2oz of rye, 7oz of WW flour, and 9oz of bread flour.

 

Franko's picture
Franko

This new info helps a bit. The salt is IMO still a little more than you probably need at

2.35% to total flour weight which I put at roughly 509 grams. Try cutting the salt back slightly to 2% or a bit less and add it to the mix last after the levain and other ingredients are incorporated. Try giving it less kneading and less bulk fermentation..say 1-1/2 hrs instead and a room temp (70F) rise and see if it helps things out. The red flag for me in this is your description of the dough after you've kneaded it. It just doesn't sound like a healthy dough if it's that fluid in your hands. It's difficult to say for sure since I can't see or touch the dough but the steps above may help on the next one..I hope. Let me know one way or the other OK?

Franko

amolitor's picture
amolitor

If you're thinking the doughw as overkneaded, and starting to fail at that point, no it was not. It was not fully developed, although it was definitely starting to develop (that was my goal after the first attempt, to get it lightly developed through kneading, so it would complete during the long bulk ferment).

This is just a high hydration dough, behaving, I think, more or less normally (during kneading and shortly afterwards). It's the next morning where it begins to misbehave.

 

Franko's picture
Franko

It did sound like it was over-kneaded, but you're the person with hands on the dough and can certainly make a better evaluation of it than I can from just reading about it. Sometimes a remote diagnosis can help and sometimes they don't .It sounds like you have a good idea of what to do on the next mix to get the result you're after, so keep us posted .

All the best,

Franko

amolitor's picture
amolitor

I am always happy for input, I hope I didn't come across as ungracious!

Franko's picture
Franko

Just had another look at your post re: the starter , and this may be a factor as well. You say it "should be quite active by now" so I have to wonder how active it was. With a liquid levain it should be showing little bubbles on the surface. That's the best indicator of how active it is. What did it look like to you?

amolitor's picture
amolitor

It was definitely bubbly on the surface. It was fully active but I think not "ripe" (it had not yet started to fall).

Franko's picture
Franko

No worries! I'm sure in short time you'll have the loaf you want. It just takes some time and playing around with different methods. Keep at it.

Franko