Hi Denise,

< ... >

> After a few other experiments with rye sourdough bread I couldn't help
> but notice that the dough turned out great, the proofing went great,
> the baking went well. The finished bread had a nice crust as well as a
> nice crumb. When I applied pressure to the top of the bread it would
> give in about an inch or so and come right back up when I let go. It
> was neither too firm nor too soft. Just a really nice bread.

So, you scored pretty well on this try.

> Now I expected to take a bite and be totally amazed with the taste as
> well. It tasted great. It was moist, chewy, flavorful - just not sour.
> At all.

Maybe this is a temporary peculiarity of your starter. You said it would
go right off.

My guess is that your starter needs a few more rounds of workout. If you
are using full grain rye to feed your starter, there is no way that it
won't get sour after a while. And - as Kenneth pointed out, LB's which
are mainly responsible for the acid like it a little warmer. However, if
you want to stick with your recipe (thanks Janet for clearing up the
origin of Denise's recipe with the espresso pumpernickel) until it comes
right, how are you going to make adjustments? I'll leave that to your
creativity. I'd forget about the recipe for the moment and focus on
starter growing. With fg rye, you can't do much wrong. This just goes on
forever and gets more tasteful and sour.

When I did your first response post earlier and goofed on reading the
starter recipe part, I outlined how I would run the three stages, if the
DM-3 is too much effort. That was and still is a valid suggestion. I
made bread like this for a long time. Never a problem to get enough
sourness. Quite the opposite. Sourness which makes your mouth shrink!
The difference is just in extending the last stage. With the DM-3, there
is noticeable increase in sourness between the first baking run and the
last one, maybe 4 hours later. Sourness also increases noticeably when
fermenting the loafs longer (7 instead of 4). I experiment with
shortening the loaf fermentation time because it always takes longer
than planned and then it's too much mouth contraction for my taste (the
folks buying my breads love it, though).

> What could be the reason for that? Too little starter? I only used
> about 1/3 of the chef to make the starter (as instructed by the
> recipe).

With rye, the amount of starter is determined by the ratio of starter
rye to full dough rye, in essence what your bread flour mix ratios are.
More total bread rye needs more starter rye. Have a look at the DM-3
calculator and check out the total rye to starter rye, that's always
56.50 %. There is more to it than what I write here, but this should
give you some orientation.

> I would appreciate any input!
> And one more question: The bread I'm aiming for is a little smoother /
> less grainy. Can I substitute fine rye (if I can find it anywhere) for
> the medium rye and bread flour for the wheat? In Germany we call the
> bread I am trying to make "Grey Bread". The bread that I made was
> actually too dark.

> Maybe someone has a recipe that comes closer to what I'm looking for?

The problem with all this in US is that you don't have the flour types
so readily available and need to get by with what's available and go
from there. So, if you ask if you "can do this" - sure, you will
probably need to experiment with what is available to you and see if you
can approach more what you like.

What I do is use the DM-3 calculator and grow the starter from full
grain rye. The additional rye which goes into the recipe is light rye.
The wheat part going in is split by 3, 2/3 is bread flour and 1/3 is
full grain wheat flour. (I got the wheat split from Mike Avery, he had a
great rye mix bread loaf done with the 2/3 - 1/3 split.)

If I want lighter (more gray), I'd use less rye, maybe 40/60 rye/wheat
mix.

One thing I want to remark is that the "full grain" flours one can buy
either off the shelf or bulk are often much coarser than the one I mill
myself.

So, happy fermenting into more sourness!


Samartha

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