With apologies to Tom Jones, I continue my search for great
rye bread. Three different attempts today. First, a rye starter and a 2/3
+ 1/3 wheat/rye flour mix. Then a rye firm starter and all wheat flour.
Lastly a wheat firm starter and a 2/3 + 1/3 wheat flour mix.
This is the rye barm bread. I fed my new barm with dark rye flour for two days. It was nice and active and had the chocolate mousse qualities of a good rye starter. I mixed the dough directly from the barm. I did not use a firm starter. The dough was mixed with 2/3 wheat bread flour and 1/3 white rye flour.
The crumb was "tight" without being dense and it was very moist. The crust darkened nicely and was good and crackly when I bit into it. The best part of this bread was the flavor. Nice sour with plenty of rye flavor. This is close!
Here is the rye firm starter. I built the firm starter bye adding dark rye flour into the wheat barm. I built the dough from the firm starter and wheat bread flour.
The crumb was slightly more open than the first bread and the crust had the good crackle. The bread had a nice strong sour but the rye flavor was not nearly as pronounced.
Lastly, I used a wheat firm starter and a 2/3 + 1/3 wheat rye mix. I forgot to mention that I added less than 1/16th of a tsp. of ascorbic acid in the 2 firm starter breads. I think the ascorbic acid helps.
Of the 3, this last bread had the most open crumb. It had a nice sour flavor but again, the rye flavor was mild at best. The crust was as it had been with the first 2, good and crunchy.
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This is the rye barm bread. I fed my new barm with dark rye flour for two days. It was nice and active and had the chocolate mousse qualities of a good rye starter. I mixed the dough directly from the barm. I did not use a firm starter. The dough was mixed with 2/3 wheat bread flour and 1/3 white rye flour.
For rye flavor, the rye barm seems to be the way to go. I also think the
ascorbic acid helps provide stability to the dough. Rye doughs can be fragile
but these seemed "stronger". Next time I will add it to the rye barm bread and
see what happens. I have also been baking at 500º +. I use 1 cup of water into a
pan when I load the bread and then leave it alone; no spritzing. I think this is
helping with the crusts, which have been getting much better.
