August 20, 2011 - 4:52pm
Rye flour?
I am working on a formula that calls for medium rye flour. I have some dark rye and white rye flour on hand. Is it faulty logic to assume that I can combine the two to get an approximation of medium rye?
Alan
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dark rye flour is what's left of the medium (i.e., whole grain) rye flour after the starchy endosperm (i.e., white flour) is sifted out. half and half by volume should give you a fair approximation.
alternatively, you can buy medium rye flour, aka pumpernickel flour, whole-grain rye flour, etc. from King Arthur, Bob's Red Mill, New York Bakers (my website), or any number of others.
Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com
I actually ordered dark, white and medium rye flours from you. The medium rye ran out first and I was just trying to make things stretch until I got my next order. Thanks again.
Alan
I think the only manufacturer who calls its flour dark is Bob's RM, and that flour is very much whole rye.
We (nybakers.com) sell Bay State Wingold Dark Rye, which is labeled and marketed as such. If Bob's is selling medium rye as dark, they're doing both themselves and their customers a disservice.
I use splatter fine mesh screen to sift out bran from whole rye. Mix that with wholegrain Rye in 50%, as Stan said, and you'll have a hoome made medium Rye flour.
Sounds like a good idea, I will give that a try.
Mebake, I have done the same thing, only on a small scale. After sifting out the bran from the whole rye, I thought that what remained was medium rye. If I understand what you said, you are mixing the "white" flour that's had the bran sifted out with wholegrain rye, 50-50. So if you buy "white" rye flour, can you mix that with the wholegrain as well to create medium rye, again 50-50?
Thanks,
Joy
There's no diff between medium rye and whole rye. The white rye is the endosperm that's been sifted out and dark rye is what's left after sifting. Everything else is marketing :)
Stan
Stan, I agree with you to a degree - I've seen medium ryes that were next to impossible to distinguish from whole ryes. Or, if you look at it from the other side, whole ryes so light, that they behaved much like mediums. I would not say that it works in 100% of the cases though.
Medium rye IS whole rye and vice versa. White rye, the sifted endosperm is lighter in colore and denser, while dark rye, which contains a larger percentage of bran, is darker and much less dense. Because the color of the whole rye kernels can range from dark to light, the whole rye flours may vary in color, but they won't vary much in makeup.
that Suave is missing the point. Medium Rye has a lower extraction rate than Whole Rye which is 100% extraction. Certainly as Suave says different mills call different things Medium Rye, but that's just a matter of the fineness of the milling and the particular extraction rate. -Varda
Interesting, Varda!
It seems that in Stan's store light as in light rye flour is reflection of the degree of flour extraction, whereas medium and whole are terms of the color of the rye bran, but the extraction in both cases is the same 95-100%!
I have never seen rye flour millers use the term light and medium as one being for extraction and another for the color of the bran particles. Medium rye flour is flour of special extraction, different from white rye, light rye, whole rye and pumpernickel rye.
Apparently Stan relabels his flours before selling them. When he notices that two bags of 100% extraction whole rye flour from his miller differ in color, he labels the lighter one as medium rye and sells it as such.
In a store, where I shop for rye flour, they do carry rye flour that ranges in color, even though it is of correct extraction rate. Some light rye flours are so dark that look like regular medium rye flour to me. The same is with whole rye. Some of it is indeed of very light color, more like medium extraction.
With wheat flour it is different . There are two words in the name so it is easier. White whole wheat flour is 95-100% extraction with white bran particles. Regular (red or darker brownish yellow) whole wheat flour is the same extraction with red or yellow bran particles. Nobody calls one light (or white) wheat flour and another - medium or dark.
They are labeled exactly as they come from,the mill, which we also identify.
Then they are probably not both whole grain ryes of different colors.
Medium rye flour has 11.8% fiber and 1.52% fat, whereas
whole rye flour has 23.4% fiber and 2.22% fat
according to the US Department of Agriculture. These are different extractions, one with whole kernel, another with some bran and germ sifted out.
No. Medium rye is ~85% extraction rye with ~1.25% ash. If you still buy GM Medium - check the bag. There are manufacturers who mill whole rye to several levels of coarseness and call finer grind "medium rye" but it's a terrible practice.
that medium rye had that clear a specification. So for instance, King Arthur medium rye would follow the 85% extraction, 1.25% ash? I thought only European flours had such definite specs.
You would have to ask KA people to what specs they have their flour milled, but I would imagine it'll be in the vicinity of 85%.
Are you familiar with "Light Rye" from Heartland Mill? If so, would it be similar to what we assume the conventional Medium Rye is?
Light Rye Flour
We mill our Light Rye flour from the same high quality grain as we do our Whole Rye flour. As with Golden Buffalo wheat flour, we remove only the coarsest bran to create a flour with finer texture and lighter flavor and color. We recommend this as the primary rye flour in lighter rye breads. While Heartland’s Light Rye is lighter than our Whole Rye, it is best used to replace conventional “medium rye flour.”
Appreciate the information very much. On the BRM website, they sell either "organic white" or "organic dark" rye flour. Here's the link: http://www.bobsredmill.com/search.php?mode=search&page=1. The question is whether the "dark" is actually medium/whole rye. My guess is that it is. Otherwise, why would they sell rye bran (or flour that has a large percentage of bran)? They also sell a rye bread mix, which contains "dark" and "light" rye flour, plus a host of other flours and additives. No mention of "white" and no mention at all of "medium." It does get confusing.
Joy
I buy much of my rye flour in an Amish market, and they have 4 different kinds of rye, that definitely look different. The white, which I never have bought, the slightly darker medium, which looks like the Pillsbury medium I got many years ago (only rye available back then!), the whole rye (what I usually get), which is much darker, and has a better flavor, and the pumpernickel, which looks like a bunch of bran, cracked rye, and rolled grains, added to medium rye (never bought this). These are Germans (Pennsylvania Dutch, or actually Deutsch) running these places, so I figure they have to have good rye, and I have always liked it. Still, pumpernickel is one of those misused terms, for bread and flour, so I doubt that is what you would find in Germany labeled pumpernickel.
Dave
Great to have this information from the miller! Much more complex than I (and no doubt many other bakers) ever knew. Thank you!
Joy
Having recently bought Stan's new book "The Rye Baker", I too, like many have questioned what is Medium Rye Flour. Sourdough has been my passion for more than 15 years and I wanted to take it to the next level. Lived in Austria for about three years and I got used to the breads. This has started me on the quest of making a bread very similar to those breads that I enjoyed. I have decided that the best thing to do with the debate on what exactly is Medium Rye flour is to just try and experiment. After all, the end result is what is important. I have a Retsel Mill and grind my own grain, as well as buy from a mill (Lindley Mills, NC). It appears they do not sell a Medium Rye flour, but a Light and Dark Rye flour. So, I will do as Stan mentions in this thread and to treat my flour as Medium Rye and if I don't like the result, I will substitute a percentage of my flour with the Light Rye from Lindley Mills (a cream colored flour that looks like AP). Looking forward to the journey and by the way I love your book Stan! I like the fact that you did your research and explain the historic journey of Rye!
For better or for worse, there seems to be little consistency in the use of many key terms in baking (except for the lack of consistency). Although you can easily find folks who make absolute declarations ('a REAL baguette is scaled at 350g's!!!'; 'there NEVER any salt in an autolyse!!!'), I find those declarations are not only difficult to definitively support, they tend to simplify complex things, and can also cut short the process of learning about and from that complexity (even though it can also be a frustrating PITA). I just wish there was more/more useful information provided in many cases (like what Farmer Brown helpfully provides), to help me interpret the frequently vague and ambiguous terms that get tossed around.
I appreciate all the comments and as bikeprof says there is little consistency with using the terms related to milling. I called Lindley Mills in Graham, NC and spoke to Joe, since that is where I get most of my grains/flours (through KDL Foods however). And from our discussion, he agrees pretty much with Stan Ginsberg. His Mill equates Medium Rye flour with using the whole grain and nothing removed. Dark rye has some of the endosperm taken out and Light Rye is the what is left after the germ, bran are taken out leaving behind the endosperm. It boils down to one thing, know your Mill and speak to someone there. Farmer Brown is an excellent example as they label their flours differently than Lindley's. For me this was a great thread and I want to thank all those that responded to Alan's original post! Input was informative!
Lawrence