April 2, 2019 - 4:13pm
A question of rye berry hydration
quick question. I prefer cooked rye berries to soaked berries in my rye bread but am wondering how the hydration would be affected in a recipe calling for overnight soaker of rye berries and me using precooked rye berries instead. Am I to presume I’ll need to add more water in final mix as cooked berries will have already absorbed all the water in the cook.
Thanks in advance
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Whenever I use cooked berries, the extra water has been steamed off (rice cooker) and I only figure them for salt, not the hydration of the dough. Then I add them as nuts into the already mixed dough.
So if I’m replacing cooked whole rye berries for cracked rye berries (cracked rye in recipe) then I’ll have to add less water?
:)
It’s an old Ginsberg rugbrod that uses cracked rye in the second sponge:
Sponge 1
40rye flour
40g water
5g sourdough
sponge 2
85g sponge 1
200g cracked rye
200g water
20g honey
120g seeds
final mix
Sponge 2
270g rye flour
95g wholewheat flour
195g water
15g salt
I’d like to replace the cracked rye with cooked rye berries to give it a different texture - some softer, springier texture. However the second sponge needs nourishment as it ferments and I presume cooked rye berries have no nutritional value to the bacteria and yeast and I also presume that the berries are swollen with water from their cook so I’ll need to add less water.
i was thinking I could add some rye flour from final mix to the second sponge and measure the weight difference between raw and cooked berries and subtract that from water in second sponge.
Am I making sense?
by the way this is a delicious bread
I see what you mean. For sponge 2. You only need to weigh the berries before and after cooking to find out how much water they absorbed. Say they weigh 400g after cooking, no additional water would be needed for sponge 2. Stir in the 85g of starter and see what happens. Then stir in honey and ( a funny thing happens with iPad, I can't see any comments or the recipe when typing up a comment. I may have to add another comment after looking at this posted reply and the recipe again.) After adding the seeds, if it seems too dry, borrow some of the recipe water, perhaps 50 g is enough. When mixing up the dough, you may have to judge the feel to determine if more water is needed. I would give the dough a chance to hydrate before adding too much additional water.
Oh, and the assumptions are off. Cooked berries will still add nutrients and food for the wee beasties and they actually love the stuff. I find fermentation is speeded up a bit and cooked berries taste sweeter.
thats brilliant mini thanks. totally logical. Ill do that. Im on the right track...interesting about the cooked berries though i would have thought boiling water would have killed all yeast and bacteria off but im delighted youve told me otherwise- like the little beasties i prefer rye berries...i think they add another dimension to a rye bread already packed with seeds and as you say the counter balance between sour and sweet berries should give it something extra
Boiling does kill the ones that actually got boiled, but if you let it cool and then add a living culture, the living culture can thrive in the [previously cooked/sterilized-ish*] grain.
* (I say "sterilized-ish" because boiling might not kill everything.)
Makes sense thanks a lot