Monthly Archives: February 2022

The basics of rye bread dough

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The consistensy

I have tried out some rye bread recipes along the way. Some just works in the first try, while others need some adjusting to give good rye breads. In this blog post, I have tried to break down the recipes of some of the successfull recipes I have baked. I will attempt to find the best ratios of ingredients in good rye bread. One of the recipes I most often bake is a modified version of a recipe called “Charlies Ryebread” from Årstiderne. I have also tried out most of the recipes from the book called “Rug” by Rikke Holm. I often ended up adding more water than the recipe suggested. This led me to look at the correlations of rye flour and water across the the recipes that had worked out for me.

Above the ratio between flour, water and seeds are pictured from five good recipes. At first glance, it looks like a ratio of 1:0.5:0.5 (water:flour:seeds) would not be completely off. But the ratios are fluctuating a little. This is due to both rye flour and different types of seeds take up water to varying extents. Looking more closely at the figure the ratio between water, flour, and seeds are more often around 1:0.6:0.4 (water:flour:seeds) or put differently 50% water, 30% rye flour and 20% seeds. You can also assume the 1:0,5:0,5-ratio, but then save some of the water to the end and adjust the consistency. But what is the right consistency to aim for? I go for the consistency of porridge. If you can drag a spoon through the dough and it leaves a dip, then the dough is right.

The other ingredients

So flour, seeds and water doesn’t make a rye bread. The sourdough is of course central to the rye bread. The amounts of sourdough in the recipes are varying. This is also a question of taste, for how long the dough is left to raise, and the condition of the sourdough. If you have an active sourdough and leave your dough out to raise over night, then somewhere between 2-4 dl of sourdough per liter of water will do. Normally, I “feed” my sourdough with an equal amount of rye flour and water and leave it on the kitchen table for 1-2 hours. Then it is most often active and ready to mix in the dough. For two rye breads of 1.5 liter each I use 3 dl of sourdough and save the rest for my next baking.

And finally, salt is needed. By looking at the five recipes the amount of salt is around 2% of the water. So if you use 1 liter of water you’ll add 20 grams of salt. This amounts to approximately 1 table spoon of salt.

The amount of dough

Rye bread is most often baked in bread pans. So often the size of your bread pan decides the amount of dough. Here you need to take into acount that the dough will raise. There is a correlation between the amount of ingredients and the amount of dough after raising even though it can vary. As a rule of thumb you can multiply the amount of water, flour, and seeds (in gram) by 1.5 and this gives you the amount of dough after raising (in milliliter). As an example, if you take 600 grams of water, 400 grams of rye flour, and 250 grams seeds you get 1875 ml of raised dough (600+400+250=1875). The other way around, if you have a bread pan of 3 liters then you divide 3000 ml with 1.5 and distribute the rest to 50% water, 30% rye flour and 20% seeds ((3000/1.5)*0.5 = 1000 grams of water, and 600 grams of rye flour, and 400 grams seeds). That ended up being a lot of numbers, sorry.. I have made a calculator in the end of the post, where you can type the size of your bread pan (in liters) and get a basic list of ingredients for rye bread out.

Baking time and temperature

In general rye breads are baked at low temperature for long time, when compared with wheat breads. But again, the recipes above indicate some rather different temperatures and baking times. The german “pumpernickel” (a type of rye bread) is baked as a temperature as low as 100 oC in at least 16 hours. The aim is the reach a core temperature of 98 oC in the bread, so a thermometer can be a very helpful tool. The size of your bread pan of course influences how fast you reach that core temperature. With my 1.5 liter bread pans I often bake my breads at 160 oC for 2 hours, whereafter I turn off the oven and leave the breads out of the pans in the oven for another 10-15 min.

The figure above shows the relation between baking time and temperature according to the 5 recipes, as well as how far I needed to bake the breads in my oven with my bread pans. So as you can see I otften need to give the breads some more time than indicted in the recipes. Slow baking at low temperatures can give a more caramelized taste. Note down time and temperature so you can adjust the next time you bake if needed.

If you read my post on sourdough, you should be well prepared to bake your own rye breads and even make your own recipes. You can add your favourite seeds, nuts, fruits or even spices as your wishes, as long as you have your basic dough in place. If you don’t succeed in first try, adjust it and try again. Good luck!

Calculator for the basic dough

Size of pan
L
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Sunflower seed rye bread

Not categorized, Recipes
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This is a recipe for a sunflower seed rye bread. It is an experiment in several ways. First of all, the recipe has never been baked before. I have not used this amount of sunflower seeds before. And lastly, I’m trying out a new exciting product, that I have never used before. It’s called Agrain® and is an organic residue from beer brewing. In this recipe I’m using 100 grams of the malt residues from Stout brewing. It is supposed to give the bread a dark chocolate-like aroma.

Ingredients

This recipe gives enough for 2 x 1.5 L bread pans.

Ingredients for the sunflower seed rye bread
  • 400 grams of rye flour
  • 100 grams of Agrain ® Stout
  • 8 dl of water
  • 330 grams of sunflower seeds
  • 60 grams sesame seeds
  • 100 grams of rye seeds
  • 3 dl of active sourdough
  • 1 table spoon of salt
  • 1 table spoon of sugar

As an alternative to the Agrain ® Stout you can use 500 grams of rye flour and 2 table spoons of dark malt flour.

How to

Day 1:

Preparation: 20 min | Raising: 12 hours & 3 hours | Baking: 1 hours and 30 min at 180°C

Take the sourdough from the fridge and mix in a little water and rye flour. After an hour it should be active and ready. This can be tested by dropping a spoon full into a glass of water. If it floats, it is ready and if it sinks mix in a little more flour and water and wait half an hour. Half of the rye flour, salt, sugar, rye seeds, and 7 dl of water is mixed in a big bowl. Sunflower seeds and sesame seeds are lightly roasted in a dry frying pan before they are added to the dough. Lastly, the sourdough is added. The dough is left to raise for the night on the table.

The floating test. This is how a perfectly active sourdough looks.

Day 2:

Mix in the latter half of the rye flour and the remaining 1 dl of water. The dough should now be somewhat in between fluid and solid, so if you take out some the rest stay put (see the picture below). Fill the dough into two 1.5 L greased bread pans to about 2/3 from the top. The last third of of empty space will fill-up as the two breads are left for raising in the pans for another 3 hours at the kitchen table. Heat up the oven to 180°C. Pinch wholes in through the dough from top to bottom with a knitting needle or anything similar. This is to secure that steam from the center of the bread can escape. Bake them for approximately 2 hours. The aim is to reach a core temperature of 98°C. If you want to be sure, you can check with a cooking thermometer. After baking, take the breads out of the pans and place on an ovengrate to cool down. They are best the day after. Enjoy your homebaked rye bread!

The dough before before the 12 hour raising
The dough should be wet, but not fluid
Only fill 2/3 of the the pans
Poke wholes through the dough before baking

Conclusions on the experiment

The sunflower rye bread is really delicious! The combination of the dark colour from the Agrain ® and the white sunflower seeds gives some beautiful cuts, when you slice it.

The final sunflower rye bread
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Sourdough

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Sourdough is ancient and super hot at the same time. It can be used for all types of bread, but it is essential to the rye bread. It is the sourdough that gives the rye bread its characteristic taste and what makes it rise. You can bake rye bread using baking yeast, but it is not really the same. Despair not sourdough is easy enough – you just have get it started and to get in to the routine of keeping it alive. Here you can read about sourdough and how to bake with it.

My sourdough lives in a jar in the fridge.

The microbiology

It is not necessary to understand everything that goes on in the sourdough, but it is nice to have some basic knowledge. A sourdough is alive. Roughly speaking, a sourdough consists of three elements; lactobacilli, yeasts, and what they eat. The lactobacilli are responsible for making the dough sour or acidic. It is the same type of bacteria used in yoghurt cultures. They create an environment with low pH hostile to many other types of bacteria. In that way they are somewhat conserving the sourdough. And it should be mentioned that they are beneficial to our digestive system. The yeast are single celled fungi. They can withstand the low pH of the sourdough. Both the yeast and the lactobacilli can live without oxygen, but can also use oxygen for their respiration if present. If there is no oxygen the lactobacilli produces lactic acid, while the yeast produces alcohol. This is fermentation, as known from brewing or from the German sauerkraut. When oxygen is present, they produces carbondioxide like we do as we respire. When bread rise it is the carbondioxide from the yeast that makes bubbles inside the dough. In the field of microbiology there is a ground rule saying that it is the microbe or microbes which are best fitted to an environment that takes over the environment. So keeping a sourdough alive is a question of creating an environment to which the lactobacilli and yeast are best suited. They can both live from the starch in the flour, they need water, and they can live both with and without oxygen. Flour and water is the substrate in which we grow lactobacilli and yeast. When the sourdough is put away in a closed jar in the fridge it gets more sour, because the lactobacilli don’t get oxygen and hence produces lactic acid. If the yeast thrives in the closed jar it might produce alkohol and the sourdough smells a little like beer.

Getting a sourdough started

The internet is filled recipes for sourdough. A quick search on YouTube will give you a lot of tricks and tips. But make it easy, remember that a sourdough consists of three elements. Flour and water are both easy to get by. Just make a mixture in the ratio 1:1. Luckily enough, lactobacilli and yeast are also easy to get by. The air is filled with them. So just leave the mixture on the kitchen table and give it a stir from time to time. After a couple of days it starts to bubble, and you got a living sourdough. You can also get the lactobacilli and yeast from other sources. You can simply add a little baking yeast and some yoghurt. In that way you are improving your chances of success and you might speed up the process. Organic fruit peels are also covered in the wild yeast and lactobacilli from the air. Adding apple peels or grapes can also accelerate the process. Lastly, honey contains wild yeasts, which comes along with the pollen collected by the hardworking bees.

Using a sourdough

Everytime I want to bake rye bread, I take my sourdough from the fridge and pour it into a bowl the night before. Then I add a little water and flour (approximately a deciliter of each) and stir it before I go to bed. In the morning the sourdough has raised and is filled with bubbles. Before I mix in the rest of the ingredients I test whether it can float. I simply drop a teaspoon in a glass of water. If it floats the sourdough is active and perfect for baking. If it sinks i blend in a little water and flour and test again in half an hour, then it usually floats. Normally, 2-3 deciliters of sourdough suffices for a portion of rye bread dough. And now comes the most important note: remember to save a deciliter in the fridge for your next rye bread.

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