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 folks on this website advised 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 complete grain rye (thx, alcophile, for the heads up about their sale)
- Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia T-2000 — from Poland
- Farmer Floor Flour‘s natural complete grain rye (my outdated standby)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 absolutely moistened.
To my eye, the Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia and the Farmer Floor Flour have been fairly related grinds. Each include numerous massive tan particles and each flours bought absolutely 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 10%.
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 motive (possibly as a result of I did not ferment the levain as lengthy), the crusts did not absolutely 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 — large holes subsequent to little holes.
Style:
The Janie’s bread seems to be incredible however, oddly, is form of uninteresting to eat.
Each the Młynomag model and the Farmer Floor provide extra assertive sweetness from the crust (farmer floor even smells candy whenever you first add water earlier than fermenting it.) They produced very related breads, however — to me — the Farmer Floor Flour mini batard edged the prize because it extra absolutely showcased the interesting combo of crispy, toasty, barely candy crust with a lightweight and calmly bitter crumb.
Sadly, my “unbiased rye tasters™” aren’t accessible this week. So, for now, you may simply must take my phrase for it.
Rob
