The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [47]
When one of our dedicated bread testers was getting ready to bake rye, she went to the store and selected “medium rye flour,” thinking that a medium grind would be quite nice. As it happens this is a term for one of three commercial varieties of “white” rye flour, the other two being “light” and “dark.” The terms lead you to think that you are buying refined, less refined, and whole-grain flours, but actually they are all refined flours. Light rye flour is the whitest, most powdery-fine, and it has more starch and less protein than dark rye flour, which is the white rye flour left over after the light rye has been extracted. All but the tiniest bits of bran and germ have been removed from dark rye, though characteristically it is coarser. Our friend’s medium rye flour was a blend of light and dark. Although we tested our recipes with stone-ground whole rye flour, if you can’t get it, don’t let that stop you from making the breads. They’ll work well anyway.
RYE SOURS & ACID INGREDIENTS
Rye has a talent for fermentation. Rye sours have a long tradition: not only do they impart unequaled fragrance and a savory tang to the finished bread but they also condition the dough. Without them, rye dough, particularly whole-grain rye dough, tends to be alkaline. The acid quality of a sour, and also its fermenting organisms, keep the bread from being wet and gummy. Rye recipes without sourdoughs usually include some acid ingredient to achieve the same effect.
MIXING & KNEADING RYE DOUGHS
A recipe which contains almost all wheat flour with a little added rye can be mixed in the usual way, but when the proportion of rye increases beyond about one-sixth, the bread will be better if the dough has special handling. Slow, gentle mixing, with a more gradual addition of liquid ingredients, gives rye the best chance of success. The dough should be soft and smooth, and not sticky.
The main character in the drama of wheat breadmaking is clearly the gluten protein, which determines wheat’s baking quality: resilient, flexible, structure-building—definitely hero material. Rye contains some proteins that could make gluten, but more significant are the cereal gums called pentosans: slimy characters, with a tendency to viscosity. If you give them a chance they will greedily slurp up the water before the potential gluten can form, making the dough sticky and weak. If the mixing is too rough as well as too fast, they will make the dough bucky also—brittle, and likely to rip.
To mix a rye-wheat dough, slowly stir just enough liquid into the flour to bring a stiff dough together. In our experience, it takes about two-thirds of the recipe’s wet ingredients. Keep the remaining water in a separate bowl and wet your hands and the table from it as you work. Use the water more generously the first ten minutes because during this period the dough should get soft (but not sticky). Use it more cautiously the last ten minutes. Knead 15 to 20 minutes, if possible, but stop when the dough feels sticky even if that happens before the time is up.
Mixing rye with a food processor is not impossible. One good friend of ours makes his staff of life every week in his Cuisinart, and his only problem has been to keep the bread from being too light. He has perfected his method, tailoring his bread to suit his taste. So can you. Allow yourself a little room for experimentation, though, while you learn to control the development of rye dough in your food processor, because with rye especially, the terrific speed of the machine requires extra alertness to avoid overmixing.
The principles, however, are the same: first add enough of the wet ingredients to bring the dough together. (Make sure your liquids are cool—except the water for dissolving the yeast—because the machine heats up the dough so much.) Add additional water as needed to make a soft dough. Needless to say, rye doughs will be at their best many revolutions sooner than high-gluten wheat doughs.
By hand or by machine,