The current content of the "Rye Flour" topic is:

Rye flour: Rye flour contains gluten, but it's not a high-quality gluten. So rye traps air through gums that form, which leavens the bread a bit, but still produces a dense loaf when it makes more than 50% of the flour in the bread. It comes in all sorts of grades, from pumpernickel, which is a coarse grind of the whole rye berry, to dark, medium and light rye, each of which removes a percentage of the bran and germ. Light rye flour is almost entirely made of the endosperm.

Rye flour spoils very quickly, so try to buy the freshest possible and store it in the freezer

I suggest the following additions or modifications:

• Start off with a bit more detail on rye chemistry.
• Differentiate the effects of rye at differing percentages.
• Reference a (to be written) section on mixing/kneading rye dough and how it differs from wheat dough.
• Expand (and correct) the content on different rye flours. Address availability of different rye flours.
• Correct the content on spoilage. (Spoilage has to do with fats becoming rancid, as far as I know. This is not different from whole wheat, as far as I know. It does not apply to white rye, as far as I know.)

Have at it!

David

A signifcant number of dedicated TFL members are also home millers.

Home millers seldom have the time, knowledge, equipment and/or patience to (re)produce commercial grades of rye flour such as...

Most home millers produce flour from the entire rye berry. However, we *may* have equipment that allows us to vary the coarseness of the resulting flour. Even when working with whole grain rye flour, there are differences in the bread when using finely milled rye flour vs (for example) the incorporation of rye grits.

Also, consider the factor of flour freshness. Posts re rye flour on TFL by home millers have consistently emphasized the taste difference of freshly milled rye flour vs purchase of commerical grades (and I've been following this for 3 yrs!).

Baking bread using home milled rye flour is a different topic from using different grades of commercially milled rye flour. However, there will be an audience who simply purchase whole grain and mill at home. Their experiences (or their questions) will, I hope, be addressed.

I don't know very much about rye chemistry, so I'll have to leave that to someone else. The other suggestions are great!

But just because the book is organized one way right now, doesn't mean it can't be changed. Rye baking is significantly different from baking with wheat. I could certainly see justification for a seperate chapter on rye. All the same, I think it's probably best to include some sort of entry on rye in the ingredients section.

One thing I'll do, if it's not been done already, is correct the spoilage issue. I got a bit sloppy there.

As for home milling, I'm wondering if there ought to be a seperate section on that topic specifically. Very few bakers actually do mill their own flour (I'm one of them), so I think it's probably a special case.

Very interesting topic. Thanks to David for opening this thread and everybody else who contributed.

A couple of weeks ago I went looking on the internets for video of mixing, kneading, shaping, scoring, baking rye bread. (I did this after trying, unsuccessfully, to find such visual material on TFL first, of course.) There's precious little, and what is there seems to me to be of minimal value to artisinal bakers, which brings me to a suggestion:

I think we would do a great service for lots of baking folks if we had videos (of the quality of Mark's backhomebakery material) of the various stages of making (various kinds of) rye bread. I especially would direct this to those TFL bakers who are already expert on the subject. I know this isn't easy, but a moving picture is worth a million words.

David

Don't forget these from France:

http://lepetitboulanger.com/

Bob

It looks like it's going to be a good "book"!

Rosalie

For your consideration ...

DRAFT

Baking with Rye Flour

 

Introduction

While wheat flour predominates in the breads of southern Europe and the UK, rye flour plays a more important role in the breads of northern and eastern Europe. This is due to rye's superior ability to grow in the poorer soils and cooler, wetter climates of those regions.

Chemical differences in the proteins and enzymes found in rye present differences in how rye flour behaves when mixed with water to make dough, and these differences impact the use of pre-ferments, mixing, fermentation and baking when there is more rye than wheat flour in the dough.

There are a number of different types of rye products available. They vary in how much of the rye berry is included, just as whole wheat differs from white wheat flour. They also differ in how finely ground the rye is.

There are breads made with 100% rye flour, but many other breads are made with lesser percentages. The influence of rye flour on dough handling and on the resulting taste and texture of the bread varies according to the proportion of rye used.

Chemical differences in rye

Gluten is the primary protein found in wheat, and the methods of mixing dough made with wheat flour center on their impact on gluten development and structure. Gluten forms the framework of cells that trap the carbon dioxide generated by fermentation of sugar by yeast. This trapping generates the expansion of the dough (rising) and ultimately the texture of the bread's crumb.

Rye contains much less gluten than wheat. Consequently, breads made with mostly rye flour do not expand as much as those made with mostly wheat flour. The crumb of breads in which rye predominates tends to be dense with smaller holes. On the other hand, rye has more free sugars than wheat, so rye dough ferments faster.

Rye contains a group of important complex sugars called “pentosans.” These are present in other grains, but rye has more of this substance. Pentosans are important to the baker for several reasons. They compete with the proteins that make gluten for water, and water is the substance that leads the proteins to combine to form gluten. This means that rye doughs often require a higher proportion of water than doughs in which wheat predominates. Pentosans break apart easily during mixing, and their fragments result in a stickier dough. Because of this, rye doughs require gentler and, usually, briefer mixing than wheat doughs.

Rye is higher in the enzymes (amylases) that break down starch into sugars. Starch is needed to form the structure of the crumb, and if too much starch is split up, the texture of the bread suffers and becomes gummy. Traditionally, this is prevented by acidifying the rye dough, which slows down the action of amylases. This is why breads with a high percentage of rye flour are made with rye sour (rye-based sourdough starter), even if commercial yeast is added.

Acidification of rye dough has other nutritional advantages specific to rye bread which may also be of interest to the home baker, as well as the advantages that also apply to wheat-based sourdoughs.

Rye products used in baking bread

Whole rye berries may be used in bread, after soaking, to contribute flavor and texture. Rye berries are also used after breaking them into smaller pieces in the form of rye chops, cracked rye, rye flakes, and so forth.

The rye flours you may find include the following:

 

• Pumpernickel flour – Whole grain, coarsely ground rye meal.
• Dark rye flour - "flour milled from the periphery of the grain, similar to the clear flour produced during the miller (sic.) of the wheat. It tends to be coarse and sandy, to absorb quite a lot of water, and in general is difficult to work with." Hamelman, J.. Bread. pp. 48 ff.
• Rye flour – Generally whole grain rye more finely ground than pumpernickel
• Medium rye flour – Some but not all of the germ and bran have been removed from the whole grain.
• Light or White rye flour – Equivalent to all purpose or patent wheat flour. The bran and germ have been mostly, if not entirely, milled out of the rye berry.

 

In Europe, especially Northern Europe, a much wider range of rye flours is available, encompassing different grinds as well as a variety of percentages of bran and germ.

Rye flour that contains the oily germ (pumpernickel, dark and medium) spoils very quickly, so try to buy the freshest possible and store it in the freezer.

Rye flour used together with wheat flour

A small amount of rye – 5-10% of the total flour by weight – has a definite effect on the flavor of the bread. The distinctive flavor of the rye itself may not be noticed, yet the bread's overall flavor seems better. This may be due to the action of the amylases in rye releasing more sugars. This small addition of rye is what defines a French pain de campagne. These breads are often sourdoughs, but the rye may be added with the rest of the flour rather than as a rye sour. There is so little rye in the dough, that it's behavior during mixing and fermentation and its texture when baked may be indistinguishable from a purely wheat bread.

Breads containing up to 40% rye flour are usually called “rye bread.” Jewish Sour Rye (New York Rye, Deli Rye) is a familiar example. The rye flour is in a large enough proportion so that it is advisable to add all or most of it as a rye sour. There is enough rye so that a distinct rye flavor is tasted. However, there is enough wheat flour to provide gluten to form the kind of crumb we associate with wheat breads.

The dough in these breads will feel different during mixing, tending to be stickier. The temptation is to add more flour, but this should be resisted. When hand kneading sticky rye doughs, using rapid, light strokes - minimizing the time your hands are in contact with the dough - decreases the amount of dough that will stick to your hands. You may also find that wetting your hands with water or lightly oiling them helps.

Breads with over 50% rye flour are another story. All the special considerations due to the chemical differences in rye become more important as the proportion of rye increases.

 

I am now going to heed the wise words of hansjoakim. I am not going to work on this any more this weekend. I am going to bake some bread. And make sourdough waffles!

Comments? Questions? Witty remarks?

David

Addendum: I went ahead and edited the Rye Flour Handbook entry with the above material. I hope that's okay. <ducking in anticipation of thrown objects>

dms

You covered a huge amount of information in a light, concise style. Easy to read, understand and covered all the basics.

Nice job..as always

Betty

You're going to love those waffles. Try the batter for pancakes too!

More could be added to mixing and dough development.  Especially about the relationship of mixing to crumb size, how the mixing influences it.  

Wet mixing adding only half the flour to a recipe.  Making it smooth and then slowly adding the rest of the flour is essential to fine crumb.   It's an old method but still desired.

Mixing eveything together at once and just enough to develop the gluten, creates the large open crumb.