rye

For some time I have been looking for German bread formulas, although not systematically. Some time ago I came across Meister Süpke's Blog about sourdough, and setting up a German group at my Son's school gave me finally the incentive to try out Mr Süpke's formulas for bread using the "Detmolder Einstufen-Führung" as I agreed to provide the bread.

Bread according to these formulas (see German Baking Day) can be made with various amounts of wheat and rye using a stiff rye starter at 80% hydration that has been refreshed with 5%-10% mature starter and kept at 24C to 28C for 12 to 18 hours. The Detmolder single step process uses a small amount of commercial yeast in the final dough.

The yeast content raised some questions: Is it necessary? Is the bread loosing sourdough characteristics? Are the bakers in Germany giving up quality in favor of quantity?

From Meister Süpke I got the answer that he could make the bread without yeast added, but in order to get through his schedule he has one hour for the final proof, which is being archieved by adding 1% yeast or less.

Another answer comes from Daniel DiMuzio's book Breadmaking: For some formulas he says one can add up to 0.7% of instant yeast without changing the character of the bread significantly, e.g. p.232, San Francisco Style Sourdough

Well, I wanted to know if the yeast does more than cutting the prooving times short, so I did some comparative baking.

First some pictures.

The 60% Rye loaves:

The 30% and 100% rye loaves:

Conclusion:

Quite surprisingly, there is hardly any noticeable difference in the appearance the bakes with and without yeast. The slightly higher volume of the loaves with altus are due to the additional amount of altus in the dough, I didn't scale those down to 500g.

The loaves with altus were also a bit chewier and tasted more earthy. There was a slight difference between the 60% rye with and without yeast, the sourdough only version being milder. And the 100% rye with yeast maintained a bit of the starter's fruity notes.

The only striking difference loies in the times for the final proof, as shown in the table with the formulas below.

This experiment would suggest that the yeast is not necessary, but it is a great tool to fit this type of bread into a production schedule without the loss of quality. I would be very interested to hear if anyone has different experiences.

Now to some details about the process:

Starters:

All the breads in this comparison call for a rye starter with 80% hydration. For the 60% rye batch I used wholegrain rye flour, for the others I used light rye flour (Type 997). I am maintaining a liquid wholegrain rye "mother" at 200% hydration, which is very reliable and worked well as a seed culture.

The starters were made in two elaborations (same process for wholegrain and light rye starters):

 1. 100% flour, 80% water, 10% mother fermented at 24C for 16 hours

2. 100% flour, 80% water, 10% starter from (1) fermented at 24C for 16 hours

This way the original liquid "mother" makes up just 1% of the starter - no worries about the wrong hydration or grain. The starters rose well to about four times their original volume, and had a nice tangy smell. The light rye starter developed a very nice fruity-flowery smell.

The altus (fresh "old bread", 80% rye) has been added to the water for the 2nd elaboration to soak. No aditional water added. There was very little difference in the starter consistency with and without altus.

WARNING - This post contains some disturbing bread images!

First of all - I trust my liquid rye starter. He hasn't got a name yet, but I trust him.

Last Sunday we were having some friends over, some with wheat intolerance, and I decided to make the 100% russian rye (from Bread Matters), that always works, I thought.

And I had made a few nice batches of Hamelman's levain with wholewheat, and somehow the Polish Rye we made on the baking course I recently visited felt not so far from that, and I could make it with my rye starter.

Great.

I took the starter out of the fridge the day before where it had been for some weeks, taste and smell OK, and made my pre-ferments.

The stiff pre-ferment for the levain was coming along a bit sluggishly, but the liquid one for the russian rye had some bubbles soon (although not enough bubbles, in retrospect).

I expected to make some levain loaves like these from an earlier batch:

Good oven spring, nice open crumb, delicious ...

Well, now come the images... You have been warned, I am not responsible for your bad dreams.

They all tasted delicious.

But ...

This is the levain. The top loaf proved for 3.5 hours at 26C. Seriously underproofed.

I didn't trust my finger test!

I will use this one for experiments with old bread.

The bottom loaf prooved for 9 hours. Great taste, crumb not ideal.

With the Russian Rye I expected no problems, but it rose very slowly.

Well,

The photo speaks for itself ...

After 11 hours the dough had risen to a level I expected (usually it takes half that time) and I baked it.

My starter was simply starved, and I didn't pay attention to the warning signs.

As I said, I trust my starter, still.

Currently he is being pampered with some fresh flour ...

Happy baking,

Juergen

Last night, sometime past midnight, I got a craving for sourdough rye bread.  I had dark rye flour and some starter I made from the same flour a couple weeks back, the first time I made my own starter instead of using commercial stuff from sourdo.com.

Also, I was looking for something to do with the bag of semolina I got at the bulk foods section of the local Winco Foods market, the same place I got the rye flour.  Found a post on TFL about a sandwich loaf made with semolina that got huge oven spring and decided to throw some in the mix.

Anyway, sometime past midnight and suffering from caffien-induced sleeplessness I whipped up a batch of dough as follows:

Ingredients:

50g Semolina (yellowish stuff, coarser than bread flour)

200g unbleached bread flour

250g dark rye flour

333g water (I suppose I could just use ml but I don't have a graduate like I used to use in chemistry class once upon a time)

1.5 teaspoon salt

~1 tablespoon of my homebrew rye starter from the fridge - sorta neglected, sour and hungry stuff

Procedure:

Mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl, the water and starter in another bowl, added the liquid to the dry stuff, and tried to make dough with my recently purchased Danish dough whisk that was actually made in Poland.  Found the dough was too thick to mix with the whisk so turned it out on the counter and kneaded it into submission - sticky stuff, but not as sticky as I recall similar dough with no semolina being. Made a log of the dough and plopped it in a breadpan lightly greased with olive oil, spritzed the top with oil, and covered it with plastic wrap.

Results (so far):

Got up around noon, found the stuff hadn't begun to rise noticeably.  At this hour (9PM my time) it has risen some but not enough to fill the bread pan.  More later, time to watch Hawaii 5 OH.

ingredients:

600gm unbleached bread flour

150gm dark rye flour

2.25 (14gm) teaspoon salt

2.25 (8gm) teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1.5 tablespoon each of brown sugar(19gm), dill seed(8gm), and dehydrated onion flakes(11gm)

500 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

NOTE: increased quantities by 50% and switched from dill weed to dill seed.

procedure:

Mixed dry flours,salt and yeast in kitchenaid mixer, added boiling water to sugar+dill+onion in separate bowl and let soak and cool, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured(rye flour this time), linen-lined brotform bowl to rise and covered with tea towel.  Let it rise 3  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 15 minutes again and checked browning when it went off.  Browned it a bit more and removed from oven.  Painted hot loaf top and bottom with cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in 1 cup cold water, nuked in microwave until it just boiled) and set on wire rack to cool.

Result:  Dough rose to fill the 10-inch brotform bowl.  Got some decent oven spring.  The glaze dried nice and shiny; using rye flour in the brotform and shaking out the excess prevented recurrance of the caked-white-flour problem.  I like the dill/onion flavor balance in this loaf better   The loaf is still not as tall/spherical as I wish, and this larger loaf lost a bit of crust when it stuck to my cover bowl, but it's great with corned beef.

Now let's see if I can upload some pictures.

^raw dough in brotform

risen dough in brotform^

slashed loaf on parchment^

raw loaf on pizza stone^

cover on pizza stone^

cover removed after 15 minutes^

loaf cooled and glazed^

time for corned beef^

Actually, I liked it with corned beef with or without mustard!  Had three sandwiches!

ingredients:

400gm unbleached bread flour

100gm dark rye flour

1.5 teaspoon salt

1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1 tablespoon each of brown sugar, dill weed, and dehydrated onion flakes

333 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

procedure:

Mixed dry ingredients in kitchenaid mixer, added the very warm water, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured, linen-lined brotform bowl to rise covered with tea towel.  Worked on income tax return for 3 or 4  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 10 minutes and checked browning when it went off.  Decided to brown 5 more minutes and set timer again.  Whipped up cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in ~1/4 cup cold water, added hot water fill coffeecup, nuked in microwave until it just boiled).  Pulled loaf out of oven at about the 30-minute mark and glazed the top of the hot loaf with the thickened cornstarch soup using a basting brush.

Result:  Got some decent oven spring using the bowl-on-a-pizza-stone trick (at least it didn't shrink!).  The glaze dried nice and shiny on top but the bottom is caked with un-appetizing white flour from the brotform.  Bottom crust seems thicker than top, presumably from direct contact with preheated pizza stone.  I think I need a smaller brotform bowl to try to get a taller, more spherical loaf (any excuse to buy more toys). This loaf is pretty (on top, at least), a bit dense, and tastes pretty good although the onion dominates and masks the nuttiness of the rye.

I took pictures and will try to post them later.  Never played with this blogging interface before.