Jeffrey Hamelman's Light Rye Bread
These are pictures of the process beginning after mixing. I made Jeffrey Hammelman’s Light Rye Bread from his book BREAD, A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes (page 197)albeit a slightly modified version. I would have to say that this recipe is wonderful and very easy to make. His recipe ingredients consist of 2 parts. (1) SOURDOUGH, (2) FINAL DOUGH. He makes what I would call a sponge, which he calls “Sourdough” as the first step in his recipe. This takes 14-16 hours to ferment. Then he mixes the SOURDOUGH with the FINAL DOUGH ingredients. That’s it! The 5 basic steps of the process consists of:
SOURDOUGH: (sponge/levain)
MIXING: 7-10 minutes
BULK FERMENTATION: 1 hour
DIVIDING AND SHAPING: 5-10 minutes
FINAL FERMENTATION: 50-60 minutes at 78-80 deg. F
BAKING: 35-40 minutes
I made a couple of minor changes to his recipe:For his SOURDOUGH (sponge) he calls for Medium Rye Flour. Instead I used K.A. First Clear Flour. I did this because K.A. says it works well with sourdough starters. After 16 hours I had a terrific sponge.
In his FINAL DOUGH, He does use some yeast (1 ½ tsp.) For the flour I incorporated 4.8 ounces of medium rye flour (called for in the sponge) with the high gluten flour. I used K.A. Bread Flour with Arrowhead Mills rye flour and added 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten.
Caraway Seeds: He calls for 2 ½ tablespoons. I recently purchased a bottle of McCormack which smelled very fresh and pungent. At first I thought maybe they were a bit too strong. But after my second bite I think they’re fine. My wife really likes this bread very, very much and she’s a very tough critic. Anyway, there you have it, and here are the photos.
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Mixed Dough Photo No. 1
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Folding Photo No. 2
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Folding - Photo No. 3
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Bulk Fermentation - Photo No. 4
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Ready for Final Fermentation - Photo No. 5
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Final Fermentation Complete - Photo No. 6
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Ready for scoring - Photo No. 7
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Scoring complete - Photo No. 8
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Light Rye Loaves - Photo No. 9
Jeffery Hamelman's Light Rye Bread: Light Rye Crumb Photo No. 10
Comments
Looks great!
What is the final proportion of rye to wheat in this bread? And what's the hydration? It looks like a pretty slack dough. Was it hard to work with?
I think I may need to try a rye bread again soon.
Russ
Russ,
In the overall formula (Hamelman's original formula, no modifications):
85% high gluten flour
15% medium rye flour
66% water
Actually it really wasn't too difficult. I did a stretch and fold intially then another at 30 minutes It's only in bulk fermentation for about an hour. Give it a try, I swear it's almost as easy as falling off a log.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Howard,
If you liked Hamelman's Light Rye, you should try his 40% Rye. It has a lot more rye flavor and still maintains the lightness of a good sandwich loaf. I cut back on the caraway seeds from the formula by about one half.
- Steve
Steve,
Very Nice looking loaves you have there. I will try the 40% rye. Thanks for the suggestion. I agree with you on cutting back to 1/2 on the caraway seeds.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
I think I will try a rye this week, will have to pick up some rye flour to do it.
So far, I'm batting 500 on rye breads. My first attempt was a great success, almost completely winging it, I made a 30% rye with beer, (dehydrated, minced) onion, and caraway. Everyone in the household loved it.
Second try I tried to duplicate the previous, making a bigger batch, but misremembered my proportions and did a 50% rye. Not sure what all went wrong since I've heard of others making rye breads with higher percentages of rye than that, but this one came out basically like bricks. That was the last time i tried a rye so far - about a month ago.
Russ
Russ,
Don't know if you have Hamelman's book BREAD but it's an excellent, well written, easy to understand book for recipes/formulas. Hamelman also provides a wealth of useful information directly related to the 11 steps in the baking process in "Ingredients and Techniques" (first 92 pages). Hope your next rye bread is a winner.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Hi, Howard.
Those look really good. I like your step-by-step photos, too.
Did you have a particular reason for not feeding your starter rye flour? I do agree that first clear does nice things as starter food.
I like useing all or nearly all the rye in the sour. If you have never worked with a rye sour, I recommend it. Just be aware that a rye sour looks and acts different from a wheat-fed starter. (If you want more details, please ask.)
Comparing Hamelman's light rye formula to Greenstein's and to the one Norm shared on TFL, Hamelman calls for the sour to be about 16% of the total dough by weight, whereas Greenstein and Norm call for 30-40%, as I recall. So, Hamelman's recipe would have half as much rye proportionately.
I often substitute First Clear flour for bread flour when making rye breads. It introduces some wheat bran and germ, and it makes a more extensible dough than bread flour. It tastes better, too.
Anyway, bottom line, how did you like the bread?
David
David,
Appreciate your kind words. Re: not using rye flour to feed my starter. I mistakenly grabbed the K.A.. First Clear Flour out of the garage refrigerator instead of Arrowhead Mills rye flour. Both the K.A. First Clear and Arrowhead Mills' bags are the same size (3lb.). Didn't realize my mistake until I looked at the K.A. First Clear bag the next morning. At that point I didn't want to toss the sponge so I included (in total flour weight for the Final Dough) the same amount of rye Hamelman calls for mixed with the K.A. bread flour. I didn't have any high gluten flour. Hamelman doesn't say but I presume he's looking for around 14% protein so I added a tablespoon of gluten to the final dough mixture. Next time I'll read the bag carefully and use rye flour for the starter like I was supposed to do. Now that I understand the process a bit better and how the flour works with the other ingredients I'll increase the rye flour content and cut back a bit on the amount of caraway seeds. Don't know if you've made this bread but it reminds me of some of the Miami Jewish rye breads they use for stacked corned beef and pastrami sandwiches in the delis.
That's good to know about, substituting First Clear flour for bread flour. Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely do that next time.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
David,
You mentioned Greenstein's and Norm's formulas (30% to 40%) rye flour. In addition to the Light Rye, Hamelman has formulas for 70%, 80% and 90% rye breads (using the Detmolder method of rye bread production...new to me). In future baking projects I'll give them a try. They look challenging and interesting.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Looks great Howard!
I often use T110 for my starter. I don't know if that is sort of the same as First Clear. I find that it makes a good starter for rye bread.
I can't put the caraway seeds in my rye bread because it is not family approved. They don't like it! I did it once and it was a very nostalgic moment for me, but everyone else said, never again!
Jane
Jane,
Sorry, I don't know about the T110 flour. One of the TFL'ers; David, Bill Wraith or Mike Avery might know that answer. Caraway seeds are sort of like anchovies, you either like them or don't. I like them, but not to the point where they the predominate flavor. I think I will cut back to half the amount of caraway seeds next go round and see how that tastes.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
The loaves look beautiful and tasty. I like the simplicity of the recipe and knowing how many rye recipes I want to try this might be the one to start with. I love making rye bread but it sure is hard keeping up with David (dmsnyder)!! :) Great job Howard
SteveB has a nice rye there too. There must be more rye bread makers on this site than we think there are. weavershouse
No queston about it, David Snyder is extremely good at the craft. I use his postings as a benchmark. This Hamelman recipe is about as straight forward as it gets for rye bread and, as I said, produces terrific bread. Consider reducing the caraway seeds to half the amount Hamelman calls for, unless you really like them.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL
Where did you get those bannettons?I have been looking for that size/shape.
Thanks for the photos, I keep meaning to make Hammelmans light rye.
Thanks!
I bought mine about 15 years ago and can't recall where I bought them. Somewhere in Washington, D.C. Mine were made in Germany and are unlined willow. I have 2 of each of the unlined type; oval and round. I also have 2 large 2 1/2 - 3 lb round, lined bannetons that I use for large loaves. The smaller ones can each handle 1 1/2 lb. of dough. I saw some on the San Francisco Baking Institutes (SFBI) website. SFBI folks are great to deal with. Check out this link and/or you can call them and discuss your needs.
http://www.sfbi.com/baking_supplies.html
Good luck.
Howard - St. Augustine, FL