Yesterday I used wholewheat rye flour for the first time to make a loaf of bread. Kneading with this kind of flour was so challenging! I left the dough to prove for about 3 hours, but I am not sure if it proved or not as I didn’t see much difference to the size of the dough. I continued with the process and baked a small loaf for about 30 mins at 190 degrees. The bread is quite crusty and heavy, but I think the inside is not baked enough. The taste is good and a small slice is quite filling.
Has anyone made bread with wholewheat rye flour before?
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Not recently and any I have made in the past via the traditional method have been dense and heavy but I can share something I discovered in the last few years which has been a game changer for all bread - no kneed bread!
You mix quite a wet dough (sorry I don’t do measurements) in a big bowl - I have a washing up bowl I keep for this - and just leave it to prove overnight with a damp cloth over the top. Needs to be a big bowl as it really expands and I’ve had it try to escape over the worktop!.
Convention says this is over proving but it really works and gives you a far less dense and more chewy bread - more like something you’d get from an artisan bakers. You are then supposed to drop it into an oiled cast iron pot you’ve heated up in the oven, put the lid on and bake it like that at a high heat, but my big cast iron pot is lost in the loft somewhere so I just use normal bread tins and baking sheets (hard to get it to keep a shape).
Because the dough is so soft and stretchy - has a life of it’s own, it is really difficult to work with so I found sprinkling some more flour over the top, grabbing some and wrestling it that way was the best approach if you want to make rolls etc and it makes amazing pizza.
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Thanks for the tip! I will definitely try that!
I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother used to leave a dough to prove overnight, but I don’t remember the process and what kind of dough it was.
I recently made pizza bases using rye and wheat flour and I found it difficult to knead. I gather that was because there is less gluten in rye flour. The results didn’t look very pretty but tasted okay.
Did you use ordinary yeast or sourdough starter? It works much better as a sourdough.
Yeah, my bread feels like a giant crouton! I do think it’s because there is not much gluten in it. The same is with spelt, but I found spelt much easier to work with. I made bread rolls and they didn’t rise much, but since they were rather flat, they were perfect for sandwiches.
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I used ordinary yeast…next time I will mix the rye flour with some white bread flour and see how it works out…
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