Coarse rye meal not softening
Many of the recipes in Stanley Ginsberg’s book The Rye Baker and on his blog use coarse rye meal (Roggenschrot grob). Some of the recipes use a soaker or sponge to soften the meal, but in others, the coarse meal is added to the final dough. In these recipes he relies on the mechanical action of prolonged (10–12 minutes) low-speed mixing of a Kitchen Aid flat paddle to break down the meal.
I have made some the recipes that use coarse rye meal and occasionally the coarse meal is still hard in the bread and I don’t want to break a tooth. I don’t have a KA and I don’t plan on buying one. I can (sort of) manage the long mixing by hand but I don’t think I can impart the same mechanical action on the meal with a spoon. I have thought of some solutions to this problem:
- Use a soaker in those recipes that call for adding the meal to the final dough.
- Mash the coarse rye meal with a potato masher with some of the water and add to final dough.
- Grind the coarse rye meal further to make smaller particles.
- Use medium rye meal (Roggenschrot mittel) instead of coarse rye meal.
Any suggestions for this issue will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Presoak it for 2.5hrs in 60C water. For each 100g of coarse rye meal use 100g hot water.
Thanks, mariana. I assume this means combine the meal with 60 °C water and soak for 2.5 h; the mixture does not need to be held at 60 °C for 2.5 h.
Yes. Sometimes two hours is enough, some people leave it overnight, soaking for 8-12hrs. But 2.5hrs at room temperature is the rule: enough both for soaking and to prevent spontaneous fermentation of the schrot.