May 23, 2024 - 12:13am
Rye bread gummy
I baked a rye bread with 40% sourdough,white rye starter. Formula called for high gluten floyr (400 gr)4 gr instant yeast,60% hydration. BF only took 1 hr to 2.5 x mixed dough,baked at 425 F 40 min lid on, after misting, 15 lid off. It was skightly gummy. Cooled completely before slicing…any ideas?
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Two possibilities come to mind.
First, most recipes call for a shorter covered baking time followed by a longer uncovered baking time. You might want to try reversing the durations for your next bake, so 15 minutes covered and 40 minutes uncovered.
Second, rye breads tend to take a while for the moisture to stabilize after baking. That's why a lot of recipes recommend waiting 24-48 hours after baking before slicing into the loaf. I suspect that waiting for it to cool (which would work well for a wheat bread) wasn't enough time for the rye bread.
Paul
ok..thanks for that. I was trying not to get the crust so hard…do you think if I wrapped in linen while cooling for a bit it would help with crust but not create interior gumminess?
One trick I’ve learned is to brush the loaf with boiling water just as soon as the bread comes out if the oven. Then cover with a towel and allow it to cool.
Or, after the bread has cooled, place it in a plastic bag. As the internal moisture redistributes, the crust will soften.
I suppose wrapping it in linen may have a similar effect.
Paul
"I baked a rye bread with 40% sourdough, white rye starter. Formula called for high gluten flour (400 gr), 4 gr instant yeast, 60% hydration".
Did the formula call for 40% white rye starter? You only say that the recipe calls for 500g high gluten flour, 4g IDY and 60% hydration. Did you stray from the recipe?
The formula called for 40% white rye starter and 60 % high gluten flour, which I did.
Rye is a different animal than wheat.
Gummy means uncooked. Try reducing the baking temp and baking for a longer time. When you decide the loaf has received enough baking, turn the oven off and leave the bread in the oven as the oven cools. I bake a 6.5lb loaf at 415F for about 1 hour. I really should bake it at 405F for 1.25 hrs or 1.5 hrs.
Also you can try bagging the bread in plastic (e.g. ziplock) and put the room temperature bread in the refrigerator overnight.
The suggestions are meant to drive off excess moisture and to redistribute the moisture that remains. I bake 60% rye almost exclusively and most bakes are on the edge of gumminess.
I've baked 40-45 percent ryes many times and, unless there's been an amylase attack -- which I've found results from overfermenting finely ground flour -- I've never gotten a gummy crumb.
So, I'd like to ask a few questions:
1. are you saying you've created a preferment of 260 g of white rye flour (perhaps 240 g of white rye flour plus 40 g of starter -- 20 g flour, 20 g water). If so, how long did you let that levain ferment? I would expect white rye to be finely ground and to ferment quickly so the timing might be important.
2. Was your bulk ferment 1 hr or 2.5 hours or something in-between? Again, timing here is important.
3. I concur with Paul: when you bake, probably do 15 to 20 min with the lid on and then the rest of the bake with the lid off. I bake my go-to 40% rye loaf (about 70% hydration) at somewhere between 450F and 475F for 20 min lid on, 20 min lid off. With this timing, I generally get a delightful crisp thin crust.
4. I'd expect a 60% hydration loaf baked 55 minutes at 425F would develop a thick crust.
Rob
My levain fermented 10 hrs because previous feed was very sluggish. It was active and bubbly and had not dropped. Fed 50gr starter,100 gr white rye and 100 gr water. Bulk ferment was 1 hr and it rose to 2.5 x orig volume as recipe called for. (Maybe too long) I baked at 425 F covered for 40 min. So that may be my prob, but at 425 15 min lid off it was taking on too much color. Do you think I should lower lid off temp? I laid foil over it gently so it wouldn’t burn…
thanks, Sitka. Here are few quick thoughts.
1. expressed as a percentage of total flour, this makes your loaf approx 23% rye (your total flour is 125g rye + 400 g high gluten flour.)
2. though it makes some sense since your starter was sluggish, a ten-hour fermentation at a ratio of 1:2:2 -- 50 g starter to 100 g flour to 100 g water -- seems long to me and this could affect the crumb of the final loaf.
3. a 1 hr bulk ferment and volume increase of 2.5x seems to indicate that the combo of sourdough and yeast was nice and active. Did you shape it after that and give it a proof? How long was the proof?
4. it's common strategy for some rye recipes to call for dropping the oven temperature the longer a loaf bakes. Scorching could also depend on how close your heat source is to the top of the bread.
5. I don't know if you were obsessive enough to take pictures of the final loaf -- both crust and crumb -- but if you did, posting them here would help.
6. For your next attempt, I would adopt Paul's suggestion of flipping the bake times to 15 min with the lid on, 40 minutes with the lid off combined with turning the heat down to prevent scorching if the loaf seems to be getting too dark.
7. There's always the possibility that using white rye rather than whole rye is part of the issue. White rye is a much more refined flour than whole grain. In wheat terms, it might be equivalent to all-purpose or even pastry flour, and will tend to give your bread a noticeably different texture.
Rob
Thank you for your considerate reply. I did shape after bulk and it too rose quickly. Final prood was an hour. The levain after feeding was indeed a very pasty consistency,very different from a whole grain rye starter I maintain. I converted the whole grain rye starter to this levain by feeding it a 1:1:1: ratio initially 2 times and then did the big initial inoculation of 50 gr., feeding at 1:2:2 which finally gave me some activity. I did take pics but am unable to post because of size. The formula from Dan Leaders Local Bread book,a polish rye . I will try your suggestion. I may just go back to whole rye starter..
can you tell me how I can post photo to make it smaller than 2MB..
here's the easiest work-around: if you took the photos with a phone, you can email them to yourself as medium-sized and you should be able to post those copies here.
Rob
PS -- I have Dan Leader's Local Breads & I'll take a look at his write-up of the formula later
It’s the Light Silesian Rye..thanks for all your help.
Hey Sitka:
So I have compared what you have reported with Leader's formula -- and there are some differences:
1. you're using more white rye flour in your mix than he calls for. He uses 100 g of rye (25 g whole rye from the starter added to 75 g white rye in the levain) mixed with 500 g bread flour. That's less than 17% of total flour, whereas, by my calculation, your mix was about 23%. This could be a factor in the gummyness you have identified.
2. Leader's bulk and proofing times are a bit longer -- 2 to 2 1/2 hours for bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 for the proof.
3. He calls for baking the bread at 400F for 30 to 40 minutes total, with some ice cubes thrown in a preheated cast iron pan at the beginning for steaming.
So he suggests less time and a lower temperature than you have used.
He also suggests brushing the fully baked loaves with water immediately after you pull them from the oven.
Rob
Thank you for looking at formula.I see now that the rye flour used in the starter may be a factor. I converted my whole rye starter to white rye over a few feedings so more white rye used. withe the BF I measured in volume where it needed to be for the recommended 1.5 x rise and it got there in an hr. so I proceeded to shape. Same thing happened with final proof…it all was moving very fast. I did put it in oven with light on and door open but I did monitor dough temp and it was a little warmer at 77 F, which may have caused the quicker rises. I do wish he had a DDT for formula. I had baked a previous loaf with same gummy texture and thicker crust so I modified bake time and left it covered longer,which I see now exacerbated the gummy outcome. I thought that longer covered would give me softer crust. I use an enamal roaster which is not preheated so may start cooler.I’ll try again with all these modifications in mind. Thanks so much.
trying to upload photos
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Although the loaf spread out sideways it looks like a good crumb. I would not expect a dough with only 23% rye to work much differently than an all- wheat flour dough except for being a little stickier and softer to work with. The starter being all rye might exaggerate that tendency a little. I've made breads with two sponges - a white and a rye one -, and 30 - 40% sifted stone-ground rye. They weren't all that hard to handle, and they rose more and spread sideways less than your pictures show.
Of course, all ryes aren't equal, especially in the US, and that might have something to do with it. Still, you might try more gluten development next time, and maybe lower the hydration a little to counteract a spreading tendency.
I agree with some of the other comments about letting the loaf sit for a day or more before slicing. I don't think you can be sure about gumminess unless you do.
TomP
Tom,thanks for your thoughts. I am going to make some adjustments in the rye starter,which I converted to an all white rye rather than just 1 feed for levain. I won’t give up,but will work more with rye to get a better feel for it. I am using a rye from a small producer in CA.Glad to find this place with bakers who know rye!
I concur with TomP. In fact, except for the slight sideways spread, your crumb photo is almost the equal of the photo Dan Leader included in Local Breads.
Rob
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You can see the gummy line at the bottom crust on mine. Do you think I can do a couple of SF to build structure? I don’t usually use yeast so how would that affect the yeast rise?
I would work on evening out the temp. Enjoy!
Sure. Anything to develop gluten strength would probably be fine -- and this could include attention to tight shaping after the bulk fermentation is complete.
Rob
I use the Irfanview program (free, Windows only). It's an excellent photo viewer and you can save to a smaller size.
If you use Microsoft Office you can do it there. There are various programs and online services that will compress an image for you - an internet search should help find them.
I edit my photos with the Microsoft Photos app on my laptop. I usually crop the photo and then edit the size down to ≈500 kb for posting and sending in email.