So, as some right here could bear in mind, I’ve had quite a lot of inconsistencies with my rye starter and my rye breads over the previous yr or so … and, among the many ideas that the type individuals on this web site urged was that I alter up my routine and take a look at some completely different rye flours. Although I am not usually good at taking recommendation, I made a decision to have some enjoyable with this. So I lined up 3 ryes:
- Janie’s Mill darkish rye flour, aka natural entire grain rye (thx, alcophile, for the heads up about their sale)
- Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia T-2000 — from Poland
- Farmer Floor Flour‘s natural entire grain rye (my outdated standby)
Over the previous 3 days, I used every to bake a deli rye: 45% rye (all prefermented)/55% King Arthur Natural bread flour, 1% caraway, 1% salt. Listed below are the outcomes:
Janie’s:
Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia:
Farmer Floor Flour:
Particulars:
Janie’s is extra finely floor than the others and proved to be a really thirsty flour. For making the preferment, I needed to elevate the hydration to 86% to get all of the flour totally moistened.
To my eye, the Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia and the Farmer Floor Flour have been fairly comparable grinds. Each include a lot of massive tan particles and each flours received totally moistened at someplace round 75% hydration.
Because of scheduling quirks, I let the Janie’s levain ferment for 8 hours. Each the Polish and the Farmer Floor levains fermented for about 6 hours. All three of them have been inoculated at about 15%.
I baked the Janie’s bread full-sized — about 900 g — by itself in a big dutch oven.
With the Polish and Farmer Floor flours, I baked 2 mini-batards of maybe 600 g every, which I baked side-by-side in the identical massive dutch oven.
Look:
Janie’s produced a beautiful-looking bread, with nice oven spring, a brown and toasty crust, and a properly open crumb for a deli rye.
For some purpose (possibly as a result of I did not ferment the levain as lengthy), the crusts did not totally caramelize on the Polish and Farmer Floor loaves. The breads additionally did not rise as a lot within the oven (maybe as a result of they’d much less water within the combine) and the crumb in each loaves was uneven — massive holes subsequent to little holes.
Style:
The Janie’s bread seems to be implausible however, oddly, is sort of boring to eat.
Each the Młynomag model and the Farmer Floor supply extra assertive sweetness from the crust (farmer floor even smells candy while you first add water earlier than fermenting it.) They produced very comparable breads, however — to me — the Farmer Floor Flour mini batard edged the prize because it extra totally showcased the interesting combo of crispy, toasty, barely candy crust with a light-weight and calmly bitter crumb.
Sadly, my “unbiased rye tasters™” aren’t out there this week. So, for now, you will simply should take my phrase for it.
Rob
