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Sam Sam is offline
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Default Ready to try Rye (I think)

Madcat wrote:
> a few months ago I bought a starter from king arthur. Since then I
> have been baking quite a bit with both commercial and sourdough yeast.
> I baked my first rye loaf the other day and while it was very
> flavorfull it was extremely dense with a very tight crumb. the recipe
> is from here http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sourdough-Rye/Detail.aspx .
> When I was mixing the dough was extremely loose so I added flour
> (Bread only) I got the dough to where it was tacky to the touch but
> dough did not come away when I moved my hand. This is normally how I
> make my bread doughs and I am thinking this is much to dry for rye.
>
> Does anyone have a good starting rye recipe preferably using weight.
>
> What texture and feel makes a good rye dough and a good sourdough in
> general?
>
> The starter eats bread flour FYI
>
> Ray
>
>

Ahw well....

Sugar, oil - not required
Thumping to determine baking end is a rumor, meat loaf/turkey/whatever
thermometer from your next supermarket for $ 6 does the trick - 180 F in
loaf center (other's go higher).

Not sure why the starter is fed with white (bread) flour?

Starter "grooming" for rye is essential to have enough acidity to
defeat amylase activity. If that fails, you will get very dense loaf
areas starting on the bottom. The dense areas have no "bubbles"
whatsoever. There is a picture of an excellent "dud" the

http://samartha.net/images/SD/ffandfunnies.html

If your loaf looks anything like that, it's a starter issue. If there
are crumb holes in every part of the bread and they are just small and
this is all causing the density, it's a rye bread characteristic: much
denser bread and ok.

The "tacky" test is useless with rye. Rye is as sticky as it can get.
Handling rye dough is best with wet hand previously dipped in cold water.
Reason for all this is that the "glue" holding the gas for crumb with
rye is pentosans (sugars), not gluten (proteins) and it has some slimy
quality. Maybe a little bit like clay shaping, although way not so
"strong" as clay.

Rising - only once, final loaf shaped after mixing. Dough loaf
structure is fragile, punchdown: no - if you have rise on a loaf, keep
it, bake it before it breaks apart!

Above is for 100 % rye. If you introduce wheat, the characteristic
changes towards wheat/gluten based handling - maybe valid until 40-ish %
rye. Then rye characteristics prevail.


> INGREDIENTS
>
> * 1 cup rye flour
> * 1/2 cup bread flour
> * 2/3 cup water
>

That appears to be the starter step. Do we start with one cup of starter?
So at this point, we have (assumed/guessed) 1/2 cup flour from the
starter and add 1 1/2 cups flour giving 2 cups flour in the starter
after tripling the flour and letting it sit over night (8 hours). This
would make sense with the starter coming out of a fridge.
>
> * 1/4 cup water
> * 1/2 tablespoon salt
> * 1 tablespoon white sugar
> * 1 tablespoon olive oil
> * 1 tablespoon caraway seed
> * 1 cup rye flour
> * 1 cup bread flour
> * 1 cup sourdough starter
> * 1/2 cup water (optional)
> * 1 teaspoon salt (optional)
>
>

here we add another 2 cups of flour and a ratio of rye/wheat is?

starter has maybe 2/3, since he is using bread flour 1/3 of bread flour

starter: 2/3 cups rye 1/3 cups white
dough 1 cup rye 1 cup white
1.666 cups rye, 1.333 cups white so - 55 % rye, 45 % white

The starter flour % looks high at 50 % but should work anyway.

The recipe makes kind of sense IMO. It's not talking much about starter
growing/keeping and I will not try to sort out the hydration with the
goofy cup measurements. Try metric weights - much easier to figure
things out.

Maybe you have a starter issue but it may be also just not being used to
the rye bread density.
If you verify what I wrote about the dud and more denser rye crumb, you
could figure what is wrong/needs improving. Focused (often hard to do)
crumb pictures help.

Sam