Advice on Ginsberg Provençal Rye
In my slow journey through Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker, I started with some lower rye percentage loaves to get familiar with the quirks of rye with the plan to move on to more difficult recipes. My latest effort is a loaf of Provençal Rye (Pain de Seigle Sisteron). I was mostly pleased with this bread but I am looking for any advice for possible shortcomings in the bread.
Here is the recipe:
Sponge:
- 150 g AP flour
- 150 g 105 °F water
- 100 g rye sour culture
- Combine and ferment for 12 hours at 73–78 °F (because of schedule, after 12 hours I stored at 37 °F for 4 hours then warmed back up for 2 hours)
Final dough:
- Sponge
- 370 g Fine rye meal or medium rye flour (I used the meal)
- 125 g AP flour
- 300 g Warm water
- 10 g Salt
- Mix ingredients for 8–10 minutes (I used manual mixing, no KA). Ferment for 60–75 minutes (90 min in my example). Knead back to original size, form into a loaf, and proof for 45 minutes. Bake with steam at 390 °F for 10 minutes and w/o steam for another 35 minutes to 198 °F internal (I hit 203 °F).
Crumb: 
I don’t yet own a banneton that might have helped with flattened loaf. The flavor was not quite what I expected. It did not seem to have a distinctive rye flavor that I note with other ryes I have made, even those with lesser amounts of rye. An independent taster thought it was a whole wheat bread. The bread was slightly sour but I expected a more pronounced sour with the large amount (for Ginsberg) of rye sour culture. I also was surprised by the lack of deeper browning of the crust—too much steam? The crumb was moist but did not seem gooey. It did start to show mold quicker than I expected with the amount of rye and sour culture.
Any advice or comments will be most welcome. Thanks!
hi alcophile!
In one of the comments on Ginsberg's blog -- http://theryebaker.com/thoughts-on-how-to-sell-a-cookbook/ -- an alert reader pointed out that the 100 grams of sourdough in the sponge didn't jive with the baker's percentage listed and that the true amount should be 20 grams. Ginsberg conceded that 100g is a misprint.
This might explain your experience and the odd flavor profile you report.
I haven't baked this bread -- but I've done a number of other ryes he's posted on his blog. To me 390F sounds too low to get a nice crust. You might consider starting at a higher temp with the steam and backing off to 390 in stages later in the bake.
Cheers & enjoy the next attempt.
Rob
Rob,
Thanks for the reply. I thought this was an error when I read the recipe. I had searched for any errata for this recipe and had did not come across that blog post on The Rye Baker. I posed this question on TFL and the conclusion was to try it based on the stage amounts instead of the bakers' percentage table. I guess the table has the correct amounts after all. I may come back to this one, but I'm going to try a different recipe from The Rye Baker on my next rye bake.
this yesterday -- http://theryebaker.com/berlin-ryeberliner-landbrot/ -- and it's fantastic.
So many ryes…so little time!
Thanks! I'll add it to my list.
Provencal Rye is the first recipe I am trying from Ginsberg's book which comes with great recommendations. The change from 100g starter to 20g in the Bakers %s has been commented on.
The AP flour is 150g + 125g (=275g) in the recipe but 315g in the Bakers %s
The water total is 150g + 300g (=450g) in the recipe but 490g in the Bakers %s
The total flour prefermented is 190 g but I'm unsure where that figure comes from?
Any insigts most welcome.
Also is this a one-off in the book or does it happen with other recipes? Keen to learn before I try more.
Cheers
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Provencal Rye is the first recipe I am trying from Ginsberg's book which comes with great recommendations. The change from 100g starter to 20g in the Bakers %s has been commented on.
The AP flour is 150g + 125g (=275g) in the recipe but 315g in the Bakers %s
The water total is 150g + 300g (=450g) in the recipe but 490g in the Bakers %s
The total flour prefermented is 190 g but I'm unsure where that figure comes from?
Any insigts most welcome.
Also is this a one-off in the book or does it happen with other recipes? Keen to learn before I try more.
Cheers
My best guess is that the sponge should be:
= 400 g sponge
Final dough quantities are unchanged. The water, AP flour, and total pre-fermented flour quantities now makes sense in the Baker's% table. The % culture inoculation is now more in line with his usual 10% amount in a sponge.
There are a few more errors in the book. The Polish Yogurt Rye is probably under-hydrated (I posted here on that). I will have to look at my records to see which other ones have errors.
But many of his recipes produce delicious breads. I liked the Valais Rye, Caraway Beer Bread, Pumpkinseed Bread, Paderborn Rye, Normandy Apple Cider Rye, and the Polish-Ukrainian Rye. From his website, I especially liked the Black Rye Bread. I still haven't had a chance to try them all.
Good luck and please post your result; I'm curious how it turns out.
Very swift and helpful response - thank you. The loaf I've made with the "wrong" weights looks average - I used a banneton and a Lodge Cast-iron pot to create the steam but otherwise stuck to the instrctions. I'll now repeat with the "correct" weights and see what happens. I'll then post the results. My approach had been to try an 'easy' recipe first before moving on to the attractive other recipes - of which your list is very helpful. Cheers
Well both recipes produced tasty bricks that wont really make it to the dinner table.... not much difference between the two. I'm in New Zealand and the Ryemeal flour available has a protein % of 8.2% so that could be an issue (as could my technique of course). However I did have success with Breadtopia's Artisan Sourdough Rye which I will try to improve on. I did use a Dutch Oven (Lodge pot) and not sure if using that means I should have adjusted the temps. Any thoughts welcome.
I love the Rye Baker, although I’ve had a couple failures from the website. I’ll try the Provençal Rye next weekend and see how it goes.
I'm definitely no expert on rye baking, but I don't think the protein content of the rye flour will be a factor. However, the protein content of the AP flour could be. It's possible the N. American flour used in the recipe will have a greater %protein than your NZ flour. I used King Arthur Baking AP flour with 11.7% gluten forming protein. It could also be that this recipe needs some tweaking because of the errors in the ingredient tables.
I'm curious to see pictures of your breads to see how they compare with my loaf.
I recommend trying one of the recipes I mentioned in my previous response. Those seemed to work OK.
The Breadtopia recipe also looks good. The combination of spices used in the recipe is similar to the brotgewürz used in some of The Rye Baker recipes. I think the higher hydration in this recipe probably helps to give a more acceptable loaf.
I used 20g starter but kept the other weights the same. I had to add a little more water during mixing. Aside from a cosmetic defect, it seems about right as far as I can tell (the recipe does say it is supposed to be close-crumbed). Just baked this morning so I can’t really assess flavor yet—it should be more developed in a day or two.
I have no idea why there is so much white space every time I post a photo. Have tried several ways to get rid of it but it remains.
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Very nice! That loaf looks a lot better than what I got. I think less starter and the greater hydration make for a much better loaf.
Both of your loaves look very nice! I would be very happy if I could get my loaves to look as good. Do you have photos of the crumb for each loaf? I would be curious to see if the changes made any difference in the outcome (that's the experimental chemist side of me talking).
What aspect(s) of the bread was not appealing? Was it the flavor or texture of crumb or crust? I did not find that this recipe was one of my favorites in the book. I have liked others I have mentioned previously much more. Some of them have a higher rye percentage, some not.
Good luck with other recipes. Happy baking!
Cheers Alcophile. Thanks for the kind words. I didnt take any images of the crumb. They were dense and too moist and too dense to be enjoyable. I'm going to try some of the recipes that you recommended and see how I get on (might not be for a few weeks though). I'll let you know. Go well.
Those are quite pretty! Maybe this loaf just wasn’t what you were looking for. It does seem to behave more like a high percentage rye.
That may well be the case - it certainly wasnt very appealing to eat but maybe I need to adjust expectations - thanks for your support