Rye Bread Recipe (Baking with Rye Flour Explained) (2024)

FAQs

What are some of the challenges when baking with rye flour? ›

Rye gluten does not develop into strong and stretchy dough the way wheat gluten does and this means that any time you add rye flour to wheat flour you can expect the dough to be more fragile. It is also stickier and more absorbent. The more rye flour you have, the more pronounced the changes become.

Bread has a moist, chewy texture that you can't achieve with whole wheat. Because of rye's ability to absorb and keep much of it's moisture, the inside of a sourdough loaf made with rye flour will have a more moist texture.

Pentosans are important to the baker for several reasons. They compete with the proteins that make gluten for water, and water is the substance that leads the proteins to combine to form gluten. This means that rye doughs often require a higher proportion of water than doughs in which wheat predominates.

Rye bread can be baked at a range of temperatures, though 400-425°F (210°C) is preferred by many bakers. Expect loaves to take much longer than an all-wheat bread. To check for doneness, tip the bread out of the pan and thump the bottom.

Rye flour is low in gluten and high in carbohydrates called pentosans (aka arabinoxylans), which readily absorb water to produce a very sticky dough. Pentosans, unlike starch, remain moist after baking, yielding a dense loaf.

If you cut into a bread with a high % of rye flour too early, it may be gummy and have an unpleasant texture. Therefore, recipes often recommend letting it rest 1-2 days so the crumb can set up[2] and moisture can distribute within the bread.

Still, if you want to use rye in your favorite yeast bread recipe, start small: replace 25% of the all-purpose or bread flour with rye and assess the results. If you're pleased, try a bit higher percentage next time.

The more white flour in the loaf, the higher it'll rise and the lighter its texture will be. So this is entirely up to you and your tastes. Experiment with different percentages of white flour/rye flour until you find the bread texture you like the most.

All rye breads need some wheat flour in order to properly rise, because rye is low in air-trapping gluten, so the real question comes down to the ratio of rye to white all-purpose flour.

While you can make a loaf that is made 100% rye, those tend to be quite dense and heavy.

Does rye flour need to be refrigerated? ›

Store whole grain flour in the freezer or refrigerator, as far from the freezer/fridge door as possible. Un-milled whole grains (e.g., wheat berries, rye flakes, rolled oats) have a longer shelf life than whole grain flours. Store them either airtight at cool room temperature, or in the freezer or refrigerator.

In areas where high-gluten hard wheat is readily available, the need for a complex polyculture of bacteria and yeast can often be reduced or removed by adding a large proportion of hard wheat flour to the rye flour.

Due to certain inherent characteristics of rye flour, rye bread tends towards excessive moistness, and should be baked to an internal temperature of 205°F to 210°F.

It's hard to tell with rye sometimes. The very best thing to do is get a probe thermometer. Bread is around 98 degrees C on the inside when it is done.

This dough is indeed very sticky because of the large amount of rye flour, the sticky molasses, and the water. The best ingredient to reduce if you'd like the dough to be more manageable is probably the water. Start by holding back 60g water or 1/4 cup. Sometimes stickiness comes from the dough being overproofed.

Some disadvantages of rye bread

Causes flatulence: In rye bread contains high fiber content and a certain amount of gluten. These two substances can lead to bloating in people who are sensitive to them.

Bread doughs made with rye, especially those with a high percentage of rye, tend to be quite sticky and—to most American bakers—harder to work with. (To make up for this, any flour that is added to a rye dough recipe will usually be high gluten bread flour.)

Soft wheat has less protein and makes the best pastries and cakes, while hard wheat has more protein and is perfect for producing yeasted bread. The more protein in the flour, the stronger the gluten production. Gluten forms when the dough or batter is stirred or kneaded.

Gluten-free batters need a longer bake time.

Because gluten-free batters contain more liquid than traditional versions, they typically take longer to bake. If you remove them from the oven too soon, you may develop a gummy, mushy texture.