disappointing oven spring for sourdough rye
this is my first 'real' sourdough rye.....in that it uses a true sourdough, not ingredients such as yogart and cider vinegar to simulate the acidity of a sourdough. the oven spring is pathetic. so disappointing! i used the rye formuala of peter reinhart's sourdough starter, and refreshed about 7 hours prior to using the sourdough in a recipe; the starter seemed active enough....i mean i just had finished with it a day or so ago and then went ahead and refreshed anyway.....but i don't have experience with real sourdoughs.. i did the recipe in local breads for dark silesian rye. the one thing i did was where he specified unbleached bread flour, preferably high gluten; i did about 1/2 ka whole wheat bread flour and 1/2 first clear flour. was this a mistake? perhaps so. i baked in a cloche; oven preheated for 1 hours at 425 and when i put the bread in the oven and covered with the cloche, i immediately lowered the temperature to 400 and baked for 50 minutes. last ten minutes i uncovered the cloche.....this was my first bread risen in my baskets from sfbi and i liked pattern i got ......but i so wished they rose as high as when i did the laurel's kitchen recipe. the bread smells great and it is so hard to wait to cut into them.......they were also difficult to slash and didn't seem to have the structure to take the slashing very well. they just seemed so soft....not overproofed as i only let them proof for one hour max. it seemed like the dough didn't have enough substance to it....like the sourcorn rye of laurel's kitchen. it seemed like the dough might have been too wet....if that is possible.
i had my dough VERY wet, as everything i've read says that wet dough is the way to go for rye. it was a MESS to knead but i didn't add a drop of flour....i kneaded about 15 minutes by hand, and towards the end i think the bread got a tiny bit less messy but it still was very wet. i floured it well and could barely shape the loafs,,,i just threw them into the batton baskets. i thought these are going to be some really moist great loafs....it's just they are sooo flat. any tips?
i can list the entire recipe if that would help....
on a side note, the hammelman book arrived this evening! i am so pysched! can't wait to read his chapter on ryes!
sourdough rye
here's a pix of the crumb:
i'm actually pleased w/ the open crumbness of it....i've never gotten all those little holes before.....laurel's corn rye is very fine grained....the taste is actually very good, pleasantly sour, but not too much; nice complexity to the taste as well. i suppose it wasn't such a complete failure after all....
sourdough crumb