054 - Wholemeal Rye Bread

Wholemeal Rye Loaf

December 29, 2011

[350WM - 150RY - 10Y - 350WA] autolyse 1 hr (1600-1700)

[7SA - 100WA] mix, bulk ferment 3 hours; stretch/fold every 30 min (1700-2000)

initial shaping, bench rest 30 minutes (2000-2030)

final shaping, retard 14:00 (2030-1230)

At both first and second foldings the dough showed a healthy expansion of about 40% but completely fell apart when trying to stretch. The combintion of wholemeal and rye doughs didn't make for ideal gluten development, and I'm not sure that the water helped any, though the flour didn't seem to have any problems holding it in. By the third folding the dough started to expand less and hold together more. It still broke rather easily but was slightly stretchy. Fourth and fifth foldings were a bit more promising, though the dough failed to expand as much.

After a 3 hour bulk ferment I shaped the dough into a round with much difficulty due to the wetness and stickiness of the dough. I used tons of flour to dust the counter and my hands to no avail. The dough drooped and cracked quite a bit after a 30 minute bench rest but not to the point that it completely pancaked. Using quite a lot of flour again to handle the dough, I roughly folded it and shaped it into a round to rest in a bowl to retard in the fridge.

There was almost no oven spring and the loaf was a depressingly deflated, forming a shape that wasn't entirely pleasing to the eye and made for narrow slices of bread that would work well for a bruschetta or canapes. The bread's saving grace as that the crumb was nice and moist throughout. We sliced the bread open while it was still warm and ate it with some butter and a few types of cheese. The crust was just slightly crunchy without being too thick or hard. The structure of the crumb was consistent and quite nice but I'm still bothered by the loaf's failure to rise.

I'm convinced that the lack of gluten in wholemeal flours makes it hard for the dough to contain the gases properly and that water content needs to go down rather than up; contrary to my intution that since wholemeal flours will absorb more liquid they can take in more water. There wasn't any water seeping out of the dough at the end of fermentation or retardation, but there wasn't a huge amount of expansion and the dough didn't hold together very well. I may try a similar loaf with much less water to see whether there's a huge difference in the quality of expansion/oven spring. It probably spent too much time in the fridge as well. I think after almost 20 hours after being mixed, the yeast was a bit exhaused.

As a bonus.. here's a photo of two Nut Loaves from Jane Grigson's "The Greens Cookbook." Possibly the most delicious vegetarian dish I've ever eaten. It's a mixture of different nuts, cheese, herbs, onions, mushrooms, and brown rice baked in a loaf tin. Hard to go wrong with a mix of so many big flavors. The aroma of it is amazing.