Rye Sourdoughs Splitting Open
Hi there,
I'm hoping someone can help me troubleshoot a problem I'm having with my rye sourdoughs! Almost every time I make lower-hydration rye sourdoughs (that proof freestanding or in a basket as opposed to in a loaf pan), they come out with a deep split along the side near the bottom of the loaf. I would usually (especially with breads made of wheat) take this as a sign of underproofed or somehow badly shaped dough, but often the dough won't have any other signs of underproofing (at least, that I can recognize)- it's perfectly as intended, just with this big split. And because it's always doughs that are near 80 or 90% rye flour, I can't really shape them like I would a wheat bread- I think of it more as molding clay- so I'm not really sure how to correct my technique here if that is the issue. I've tried to research this to no avail, so hopefully someone can help me figure out what may be going wrong!
Rus Brot is an excellent source of information on rye bread baking, and he has a whole article about avoiding cracks. But unfortunately in Russian. https://brotgost.blogspot.com/2016/02/bezpodrivov.html?m=1
What he says specifically about the causes of splits near the bottom, is it's either wrong baking setup, in particular not using a hot baking stone, or not being careful with the loaf before baking, for example when loading into the oven. Does this help?
The Microsoft Edge browser translated the Russian site very well. It is a good article and now I understand your rye passion and previous advice/comments.
Cheers,
Gavin.
Hope you enjoy his advice and recipes Gavin! Rye is a tricky grain to work with if you aim for perfect results, and his website and YouTube videos are super helpful.
Interesting website Ilya. The Safari browser’s native translation worked perfectly. Thanks for sharing that link, it was quite interesting to read.
Benny
Glad you liked it Benny. If you want to experiment with high % rye, highly recommend to study his recommendations.
He has a lot more info on his Youtube channel, and some videos have English subtitles (but for those that don't would be trickier to translate than with text). Also recently he uses CLAS almost exclusively.
This is really helpful! Thank you!
Baking a perfect hearth rye is a tricky business. Everything must be just right - hydration, fermentation times, shaping, proof, baking temperature, steaming. Sometimes one imperceptible change in the procedure is enough to get from this:
to this: