The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Is 100% Rye without Sourdough Possible?

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

Is 100% Rye without Sourdough Possible?

I tried this question before but am not sure I got a direct answer.  So here goes.  I just made the recipe listed below but want to make a 100% Rye.  Can I just substitute all rye flour for the whole wheat flour and proceed?  (Flour is getting costly and I don't like messing up) Thanks.

Rye Hearth Transitional Meteil of Peter Reinhart, p. 178, of  PR, WGB;

 

Soaker

Single Loaf

Triple

Whole  Rye Flour

1 1/3  cups

4 cups

Whole wheat flour

7 T

21 T

Salt

1/2 tsps

1 ½  tsps

Yogurt or Butt. Milk

¾ cup+2 T

2 ¼ cups+ 6 T

Biga

Single

Triple

Unbleached bread flour

1 ¾  cup

5 ¼  cups

Instant yeast

¼ tsp

¾ tsp

Water

½ +2 Tcups

1 ½  cups +6 T

Final Dough

Single

Triple

Soaker

Use all

Use all

Biga

Use all

Use all

Whole wheat or whole rye or a combo of both

7 T

21 T or 1 ¾ cups

Salt

5/8 tsps

3 tsps

Instant Yeast

2 ¼ tsp

6 ¾ tsp

Honey

 1 ½ T

4 ½ T

sphealey's picture
sphealey

=== Can I just substitute all rye flour for the whole wheat flour and proceed? ===

In short, no. 100% rye doughs are very different from wheat-based doughs. Even 20% wheat/80% rye behaves very differently from 100% rye. Read Reinhart's Volkornbrot recipe for details. If you are really into high-fraction ryes you should look for Hamelman's _Bread_ at the bookstore or library; he has a long and very detailed chapter on them.

You can make high-fraction rye breads with just yeast; I used to do it before I got a starter going. And the taste is decent. But after I started using sourdough in ryes I realized why it is recommended to do so, the flavor and texture are much better than straight yeast doughs. By all means give it a try while you are waiting for your starter starter to arrive from King Arthur ;-)

sPh

Just a general comment for those trying Reinhart's _WGB_: I would strongly suggest making the receipes 2-3 times exactly as written. Scale them up exactly if you want more loaves, but other than that do not change or substitute the first few times. Reading the accounts of the testers, including Floyd, it took over a year to get those formulas working right and small changes caused big variations in the results. So give the process a try as written a few times before you start experimenting. My 0.02 cents (now equal to 0.005 eurocent)

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

Thanks sphealey.  Will proceed as you suggest. I have Hamelman's Bread and will re-read that as well.

ehanner's picture
ehanner

Countryboy,
When you get your starter going and convert a bit to rye starter for this project, you are going to love 100% rye. The flavor is amazing and not like anything I have tasted.

 

Shaping the loaf is like making a meat loaf out of the pan only sloppier lol.

Eric 

staff of life's picture
staff of life

The acidity of the culture keeps the pentosans in rye from turning to sugar, which would mean a collapsed loaf with a gummy crumb.  In Local Breads at the beginning of the section on German breads, there is a discussion about this.

SOL

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

But found no recipes for 100% rye.  So I will go with your answer to my question of No.

What adjustments did you do when you used just regular yeast and 100% rye?

sphealey's picture
sphealey

Hamelman and Reinhart both have 100% rye recipes; see Vollkornbrot on page 217 of the US edition of _Bread_. Reinhart's receipe uses a mashing technique; Hamelman's does not. But when you get past 80% rye, and especially to 100% rye, IMHO you are not dealing with "bread" so much as a grain-based food. Tastes good, healthy, etc but not bread as one would normally think of it.

sPh

Kuret's picture
Kuret

Just make a rye poolish that you let ferment for approx 24-48 hours. This will then be a very acidic mixture wich will help the rye keep shape. Use a large porprtion of yeast in the poolish and consider all that yeast dead by baking day.

This is a quite standard procedure for making "sourdough" in Swedish cook books.

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

Many thanks for the information re rye poolish and that all yeast will be dead by baking day.  That is Totally New Information to me.

There is no mention of this technique in the P.Reinhart, D.Leader, or Hamelman books.

Do I feed the rye additionally while within the "24-48 hours" time frame? If so, with what type of flour rye?

Strange that no one on this forum or in any book has suggested this.  Will definitely give it a try.  Do you have a source for this?

 Many thanks again. 

CountryBoy's picture
CountryBoy

sPh, many thanks for your correction; you are absolutely correct.

So, from what you say the final results of such a bread are not that good tasting.

I appreciate your feed back and corrections.

Kuret's picture
Kuret

In the cook books they tell you to add in some rye flour and water after 24 hours. I cant say for sure that the yeast is dead but the rye allows for such an acidic dough that commercial yeast living after a 48 hour ferment whould strike me as odd. However this doesnt mean that there is batcterial activity etc, remenicent of a real sourdough.

 100% ryes are great although a bit hard to get used to, you know how a great WW or white loaf should turn out and no matter what you do a rye wont be the same.

My rye tips are: Work with over aged preferments including over sour sourdoughs and overmature poolishes. Try to make the dough as wet as you are comfortable with, the steam from inside the loaf will lift it somewhat during baking. Avoid flouring your counter or hands, it wont help, WATER is the key. Shape with wet hands and knead with wet hands. Aim for a short bulk ferment and proof, the rye taste is already there and it is super tasty so no need to. Good steaming and hot oven when the loaf enters the oven to prevent skin formation during the minimal oven spring, and then a long bake at low temperature to cook the dense loaf through.

 Ive heard of 12hour bakes at 270F!?