Eating Healthier in Today's World

THE ART OF MAKING HEARTY BREADS- RYE

Since my husband and I will be travelling to and living in Europe for 18 months, my thoughts have turned to making more substantial and much denser peasant-style breads.  We are starting a series of posts on making these popular and very healthy breads.  In recent decades many European people have begun to abandon their traditional local breads in favour of American-style refined wheat products, so that ancient methods are being forgotten.  Baking with rye is an art quite different from, and more demanding than, baking with wheat.  Rye bread is a living tradition--and, except for specialties, maybe an endangered species.

Nutritionally, wheat and rye are remarkably similar, but when rye flour is added to dough, the bread is denser, moister, darker, and better-keeping than an all-wheat bread.  The baker accustomed to high-gluten wheat flour will find that rye offers challenges:  the dough can be sticky, tough--difficult to handle and to bake. 

To start with there are 3 different kinds of rye flours that can be purchased commercially.  "White Rye" flour or Light Rye is the whitest, most powdery-fine and it has more starch and less protein than the dark rye flour.  All but the tiniest bits of bran and germ have been removed from dark rye., though characteristically it is coarse ground.  A Medium rye flour is a blend of light and dark rye flour.  Our recipes use our own milled rye flour which technically is a "Whole Rye flour", don't let that stop you from making the breads from the store-bought flours.  They'll work well anyway. 

Mixing and Kneading Rye Dough--A recipe which contains almost all wheat flour with a little added rye can be mixed in the normal way, but when the proportions 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 bread making, 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 goopy also--brittle, and likely to rip.

To mix rye-wheat dough by hand, slowly stir just enough liquid into the flour to bring a stiff dough together.  Usually about 2/3 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 for 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 min., if possible, but stop when the dough feels sticky even if that happens before the time is up. 

Personally, we much prefer to let the Bosch Universal Mixers do the work of kneading the dough.  The principles, however, are the same.  Place the liquids in the bowl with the dough hook added.  It will be better if you water  is cool because the machine will heat up the dough as it goes around.  You can proof your yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water ahead of time if you wish.  We prefer the Saf yeast which just goes on top of the flour.   Add half the flour called for , with the rye flour first.  Add the dry ingredients like yeast, salt and dough enhancer on top.  After the machine is going on the slowest speed, add part of the wheat flour until it forms a very soft dough.  Continue to SLOWLY add the remaining flour over a period of a couple of minute until the dough is cleaning the bowl sides.  If you get too much flour in it and the dough gets stiff and falls apart you can drizzle is extra water until the softer, smoother dough appears again.   The trick is not to have if get too sticky.  The rye dough will be at their best many revolutions sooner than high-gluten wheat dough.  The larger the proportion of rye flour there is in the dough, the less kneading it will tolerate.  Ten minutes is about right for a normal recipe when approximately the proportions are half wheat and half rye flour, but there is no set rule.

If you think that the dough can take more kneading--if it is more than half wheat flour for example--you can let the Bosch knead it longer.  Always be alert to the condition of the dough so that you can stop as soon as it begins to get sticky.  By hand or by machine, the trick is to get the dough soft and smooth before the dough gets unreasonably sticky.  Rye, like any whole-grain flour, will vary in the amount of liquid it absorbs.  Watch the character of the dough rather than try to keep an exact liquid or flour measurement.  The larger proportion of rye to wheat in a recipe, the more liquid (or less flour with the Bosch) it will take to get the dough to come together.  A 100% rye dough requires most of the recipe's liquid at the outset, asking only a little more water and a short kneading thereafter to make the dough smooth.

We will continue next week with the fermentation and rising period as well as baking the rye breads.