August 27, 2011 - 1:19pm
Handling 80% rye dough
Hi All,
I am working to improve my rye skill (baking lots of rye loaves for the last few months).
I am trying to understand how to handle wet (80%) rye dough (e.g. Hamelman's Vollkornbrot rye bread) which is very very sticky and can't find tips or videos for that.
Do you have tips or you know any videos that might help?
(BTW, the results are very good after struggling..)
Thanks a lot,
David Zonsheine
Share
Hi David,
Use water as a medium, is my best tip.
If you can wet your hands sufficiently then the paste will not stick. But, don't over do it.
I work at 85% hydration for these types of breads.
Are you using bread pans, or, bannetons?
Best wishes
Andy
I would endorse Andy's advice to wet your hands. Keep a bowl of water nearby and re-wet your hands as needed.
It also helps to keep your movements fast. I find that, my minimizing the length of time my hands are actually touching the dough for each touch, I don't need to wet my hands.
I do very lightly dust my hands with flour during shaping, as needed. This helps too.
David
You definitely have more coordination than me! If I attempted to do as you say, I better make sure the garbage disposal is turned off, because that dough will find its way into it really really quick! ;-)
For this kind of dough. Don't have the guts to use bannetons.
Thanks for the detailed explaination. I would certainly try them this week.
I would love to pay for a short video that shows the technique (none available on youtube).
Thanks a lot,
David
Don't know if these help David?
There is loads of info on high rye on my blog here:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/blog/ananda
Best wishes
Andy
Hi Andy,
I have a question if I may. I'm still working on my Borodinsky so haven't tried other rye breads yet... but because it's 85% hydration as well, I thought it could be relevant here. The instructions in your blog say, smoothe paste into pan. Until recently, I read this simply as - transfer into pan, which I did with a spoon, bit by bit. However I compared your method with one I found in suave's Russian language blog, it's quite a detailed recipe of a Borodinsky-type bread made from a finer flour (similar to wholemeal but finely ground) and his method says, SHAPE into a (sandwich) loaf and place in tin.
Hence my question, how exactly do you move your Borodinsky dough into a pan? Do you turn it out? Shape it? Spoon it in?
My last week's bake was a disaster and I first put it down to my transferring method (which had worked before though...) but after some reading on TFL I decided it must have been due to overproofing (I left it in the fridge overnight for the final dough stage, so there must have been no rise left in it for the proofing stage...). Hence my other question - how do you tell that a rye dough is overproofed?
Many thanks
Faith
PS here's the link to Suave's blog, I can translate the recipe if anyone's interested
(I left it in the fridge overnight for the final dough stage, so there must have been no rise left in it for the proofing stage...).
I've never had had good luck retarding high rye doughs in the fridge, too cold. The dough seems to stiffen up with the low twmps and no expansion occures after the dough is stiff, gasses just seem to escape and the dough overproofs. If you want to chill the dough, do it in the first stages when increasing (building) the starter and not in the final rise.
I was digging in videos all day looking for something showing a wet technique. Found all kinds of Austrian/German videos in German
(at the end of the video, check out the videos choices strung out underneath!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAnapj8EFCU&feature=player_embedded#!
but most dealt with firmer doughs. The ones I did find, spooned it or scraped the dough from bowl to bread pan. Well that works too, and I've done it time and time again. The dough doesn't seem to care. I like the cleanness us using a water technique and I seem to spend less time with clean up. The bowl sits nearby, but so does the bread pan ready to take the dough if it falls out of my hands. I got better with each attempt and found my skills improving. I like to hold the dough in my hands and it is really easier than it reads. It doesn't take more than a minute if that long.
Andy is right in that when your hands are in the rye, a video is hard to make. Time for the tripod!
If I knew how, I would make one... maybe my son can help.
Mini Oven back in Austria
If my memory serves me right (which very often doesn't these days....but still, :p), I think Dan Lepard said you shouldn't cold retard the dough with high proportion of rye because low gluten level of the dough cannot bear it. I'd printed the post out but I'm afraid I can't find it in my bread-file at the moment, but it should be somewhere in this forum if you have a time to look for.
lumos been to Austria only once a few years ago :p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoIiZer39_I&feature=related
This is one of many rye tutorials. Not too keen on her fancy mixer or super mill she uses. (I could be jealous.) I'm not even keen on the way she spreads her dough flat in the pan. I prefer not to spread dough so flat, I think it increases the chance of a rill or corner mark in the loaf where it existed so I taper my dough round using a wet spatula next to the walls of the form.
I'm in the final stages of my weekly rye bake at mo... dough proofing in tins to go in the oven in an hour's time!
I shaped it with wet hands this time, I over 1500 kg dough to split amoung 3 tins (two 2 lb and one I think about 1.5 lb). I just cut a piece as big as I could handle with a dough scraper (aiming to fill a tin with one piece every time), then patted it into a sausage shape by quickly moving it from hand to hand and smoothing off seams and irregularities as I went. I tried to be as gentle as I could so as not to collapse the air bubbles. 20 minutes later, they've filled the tins nicely so I'm hoping for a good result tonight (fingers x!)
I'll update you on the outcome.
I didn't know you can't retard rye (I assumed it would be ok because Andy retarded his Borodinsky sponge for 2 hours here) but after my last week's failure I already worked out you can't retard it at the dough stage.. although I'm still toying with the idea of refrigerating it for the sponge stage (Andy qoutes 5 1/2 hours, elsewhere says 3 1/2 - 4 hours, i was hoping to leave it for 6-7 hours) but maybe not a good idea.
I often have problems with retarding wheat, too. My little tike has a tendency of interfering with my plans in such a way that I don't know how long I won't be able to attend to the dough, so when I stick it in the fridge I can never be sure it's not going to overproof. Generally, if I leave it there overnight, it will overproof at least slightly. I sometimes cover it with a glass casserole lid (quite heavy!) and wrap a wet muslin around it, because it's sure to have spilt over by morning. It lifts the lid and if I don't put a wet towel round it it'll have a dry crust round where it spilt. Maybe my fridge is a bit too warm.
Hi Faith,
retarding at either of the 2 preliminary stages is fine; but not at the final dough point.
I only retarded the sponge in order to get some sleep. Remember time will vary depending on all sorts of factors, but particularly temperature, state of leaven and proportion of leaven in dough. As ever, watch the dough, not the clock, or the gospel according to whatever recipe you are following.
If the dough collapses at this stage [and there is a good chance it will] then there is no going back
Best wishes, and I am aware we have just hijacked David's post: very sorry David
Andy
Andy
Yes I've already learnt that the hard way! You see part of the problem of working with rye for me is, I had seen and felt wheat dough, and made things out of it, many times before I first tried making it myself. Still, my ffirst four or five batches weren't very good at all. Rye, I'm much less familiar with, I don't know what it's meant to look like, how it's meant to feel, how much it's meant to rise, etc.etc. So thank you very much to lumos for the guidelines below.
My yesterday's bake came out quite well, I overbaked it by a good half hour (nothing I could do there, had to go out) but overall it's allright. It's tasty and that's the main thing.
I still managed to overproof it a bit even though the bulk rise only took 1 1/4 hr at 20C and I was going to leave it to prove in tins for another 1 1/4 hrs, but only about 40 minutes surface bubbles began to appear so I had to bake straight away. Next time, I'll shorten the bulk rise and go by Dan Lepard's guidelines.
Found the post I printed out from Dan Lepard's forum. The is the reply from Dan to a poster who were having problem with his dough which contained some rye flour in it, so the situation may not be identical to yours, but may be you can adopt the basic idea. Here's the transcript - :
(the post dated 15 Jun 2003)
Would you be so kind as to translate the ingredients she uses, and the seeds she uses to coat the pan?
there is another video with rye but you caught me, she also doesn't use a mixer with this one. She calls it the "easiest bread in the world." The recipe is stirred to combine ingredients and retarded overnight and baked the next day: 1/2 tsp instant yeast, 600g cold water, 660g spelt berries, 120g buckwheat (or oats or barley) 60g sunflower seeds, 1 Tbs breadspice (optional) 3 tsp salt, 20g flax seeds (or poppy) butter & flax seeds for the form. She comments that she combines the grains and mills them together (finds it works very well) and then combines all the dry ingredients well before adding water. If you look up UMWms roggenbrot the rye videos come up with the sourdough, I believe is 400g sourdough starter, 200g rye... and she uses the mixer. I have to comment that I think I would use the mixer for this spelt recipe and hand mix the rye.
My rye dough is about the same consistancy as the above spelt dough, so I thought it was rye and mixed up the videos. Where she scrapes the dough from the bowl, a wet handling technique would make a neater loaf, but it works. I was looking more at the handling of the dough than the specifics of the recipe.
Mini
I can't find the roggenbrot video, but this video does help with handling wet pastes and there are plenty of rye recipes on TFL. I rather liked her grain mill, managing as I do with an antique that sounds like a jet engine at take-off!
Patsy
Sauerteigbrot/Schwarzebrot or Sourdough bread/ Black bread she takes a "half" recipe from the book "Brot backen: Vollkornbrote und Aufstriche aus der eigenen Küche" by Ilse Gutjahr u. Erika Richter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOjwDKUSzx0
Roggen = Rye Dinkel = Spelt stunden = hours wasser = water
First it is important to make a starter of 400g using starter / 200g rye flour/ 200g water. With the 400g starter she adds 500g rye flour/500g spelt flour (milled middle setting 4-5) mixes 4 minutes and covers for 12 hours until it is good and ripe. Then adds more ingredients (wet to dry): 180 water, 110g sunflower seeds, 1 level Tbs salt, 1 Tbs bread spice (mix of caraway, anis, fennel) 2 Tbs olive oil, 1 generous tsp honey. Grain: 150g rye / 150g spelt milled at "8" or "9" coarse, and finally 150g spelt finely milled. Shoots for an overnight rise of 7-8 hours. She doesn't mention the room temperature but it can't be over 22°C. Bakes in pre-heated 175° (350°F) hot fan oven for 2 hours. One can also start higher and reduce the temp to 150°C (300°F) after the first 20 minutes. I notice she uses a glass bowl of water, this is for use with a fan, no under and upper heat.
You can see similarities in the videos. Here she spoons the sourdough rye mixture (paste) into the bread form.
As a Scot, I love this woman's economy; she doesn't waste a crumb of yeast or dough and uses the water for the next step to wash all the product of the previous step from the bowl, which also really helps with washing up!
So far I haven't gone further than Hamelman's 40% rye, but I have a yen to try this.
Patsy
Hi Faith,
If I'm scaling pieces which I can hold and mould in my hands, then I scale the piece to size, mould it with my wet hands, and then drop it carefully into the pan.
For the Pullman Pan, I weigh off the full piece rquired, then drop handful portions into the pan, and smooth them off as I go. It usually needs 3 pieces, but care is needed to ensure these meld into one. Any folds or gaps are likely to remain and make for weak points in the finished loaf. Smoothing off the top is a good idea, and best to use the plastic scraper. Back of a wet hand tends to form grooves as each finger forms a small trench!
I'm realising, as I write this, that David's idea for a video is really good.
I'll try and arrange to do one in the near future.
Many thanks for the links
Very best wishes
Andy
thanks Andy,
I think I'm getting the idea BUT a video would certainly be very helpful! With anything else, step-by-step photoes might be good enough, but with rye dough taking photoes as you go seems like an impossible task! unless you get someone to stand by with a camera that can take several shots per second...
Hi Faith,
I'm very much with Mini here.
No, I don't do retards. I only use a relatively short bulk ferment too.
However, I tend to use a relatively high amount of rye sour in the first place, and ferment that through a full 18 hours.
If you over prove rye paste...you've had it, sorry; no going back!
BW
Andy
I use rubber gloves (pardon the silly picture).
Rye (and other doughs) stick a lot less to these "dish washing" rubber latex gloves than they do to my skin. Makes it much, much easier to handle rye dough. Also, like others have said, having a big bowl of ice water works wonders.
I'm in the same boat, in that I love rye breads, but don't love manipulating the wet, super-sticky dough. I found that wetting, rather than flouring my hands, makes a lot of difference. I also use a dough scraper instead of one of my hands. That lets me maintain some semblance of shape to the dough, and to get all that sticky mess off my countertop. Actually, I use a $1.50 plastic putty knife that's 6" wide but it does the job effectively.
Oh, and, whatever the clumsiness as I learn my way around this dough, it's been worth it. The ryes I've made have been interesting - never quite what I shot for - but spectacular every time. I spent this week with rye toast every day for breakfast, and couldn't have been happier. Good luck!
That's the beauty of working with wet hands in the air above a sink or the dough bowl. No counter top to clean up! I haven't made a loaf in about a month and I miss that dear slimy stuff! Lol! :)