Flours Compared for Nutrition
I was browsing "The Rye Baker" looking for high rye % breads to try (I like to get a lot of fiber for health reasons). I started to wonder about the fiber content in whole rye vs medium vs whole wheat vs white flour. A web search turned up https://www.nutritionvalue.org/comparefoods.php which has a lot of detailed information and a great comparison feature. In short, for 100g of flour here are the fiber contents:
White enriched bread flour - 2.4g
Whole wheat flour - 11g
Medium rye flour - 12 g
Whole rye flour - 24g
Full nutrition details at Nutritionvalue.org download
Based on this, Hamelman's 70% rye with a rye soaker and whole wheat has about 80% of the fiber in the 80% sourdough rye with a rye soaker, which is pretty good. If the rye/whole wheat tasted better I would be happy with a little less fiber.
Any suggestions for formulas high in whole rye?
Thanks
here are 3 high-percentage ryes that are among my faves.
--hans joakim's favorite 70% rye: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13552/hansjoakim039s-favorite-70-sourdough-rye (This is a fantastic bread. Tho this recipe calls for medium rye, I've always made it with whole rye and I've sometimes swapped the 30% all purpose for Swiss ruchmehl -- which is kind-of halfway between bread flour and whole wheat -- and it always comes out delicious, with a wonderfully cracked caramelized crust.)
--Berliner Landbrot: http://theryebaker.com/berlin-ryeberliner-landbrot/ (this one's a 90% rye. Tho the formula specifies medium and white rye, I've always made it with whole rye, and it's always tasted fantastic. Perhaps because of the yeast injection in addition to sourdough, this one's always gotten lofty oven spring for a high %age rye.)
--Saara's hapanleipä: https://myvintagecooking.com/finnish-rye-sourdough/ (a 100% whole rye bread with great flavor. Unlike the landbrot, which features a 57% hydration sponge, this one's got a 166% hydration preferment. I made it last week, mixing 30g of rye starter with 180 g flour and 300 g water to create the levain, and it was a hit with my Swiss relatives.)
Rob
Thanks for the suggestions, these look great.
and get some "Colon Blow."
Famous commercial here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ku42Iszh9KM
I rarely bother using anything but home-ground rye, but I am mostly baking 50% rye/first clear flour ( first clear is around 4.7% fiber.
This produces a much lighter crumb than you'll ever get with a 70% rye. The key is acidity, not overworking the dough and an overnight ferment in the fridge.
Another alternative is using 100 sprouted whole wheat flour. Again required much less dough handling and a light touch.
Good point, use up the medium rye I have then stick with whole rye.
At 39 F / 4 C it looks as if fermentation just stops in our fridge. Commercial yeast works fine with a retarded fermentation overnight but the wild yeast quickly goes dormant at that temp.
I'm OK with a denser bread, for health reasons and so I don't feel lousy comparing my results with photos here / YouTube videos.
is more about reducing phytic acid and convenience. I use something similar to a clas sour with commercial yeast. I don't get a lot of rising in my home fridge either. That happens in the AM when it thaws in my proofer (85 degrees). I take it out around 6 AM and have bread ready for lunch.
I don't give a fig about phytate - perhaps I've been lucky enough to metabolize enough of the minerals that are affected by it.
The convenience could be a factor.
Current Schedule:
Day 1 AM: feed starter
Day 1 PM mix sourdough
Day 2 AM mix/ferment/shape/proof/bake
Alternative:
Day 1 PM Feed starter
Day 2 AM mix sourdough
Day 2 PM mix final dough and retard
Day 3 AM Finish fermentation in the proofer/shape/proof/bake
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67054/100-whole-grain-rye-sourdough-bread
Simple to make, and tasty enough that I baked it 7 times so far. She has an excellent video tutorial for it.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/search/node/idaveindy%20denisa%27s
Bake it as soon as you see two pinholes on top during proof.
The hard part is waiting 48 hours after baking before cutting into it. I really does taste better if you wait that long.
Thanks for the link, that looks simple and good.
It is tough enough waiting 24 hrs after the bake; 48 hrs would be a real struggle.
48 hours before your previous loaf (of whatever) runs out. ;-)
I'm not too concerned with phytates, either, and I like whole grain as much as possible. That's why I've found little use for most of Hamelman's book (1st ed.); most are less than 50% WG, except for many of the ryes.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
I did experiments with all the options. There is no substitute for solod. Easily found Ebay by searching for rye malt fermented rye. At least one Ukrainian source with good prices (under $4). You'll understand as soon as you open the package and smell it.
This looks pretty good, but I'll need to find coarse rye meal online, and find some place in the pantry to put it
I purchased my last coarse rye meal from Ginsberg's NYBakers before he discontinued the retail outlet. Here is a source I found for when I run out:
https://www.thedutchstore.com/webstore/productinfo.aspx?itemno=02311&&topseq=2&key=rye
I haven't yet purchased any from here, so I can't compare the two.
Another possibility is to use some rye chops. The cracked rye/rye chops I bought from Janie's Mill (here) are fairly coarse and would probably work in the recipe.
I haven't made this, but the DIY instructions seem clear, and it has plenty of photos.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27954/making-red-rye-malt
---
If you don't have a source of rye berries, this thread speaks of starting with diastatic whole-berry (ie, not crushed) pale rye malt from a brewing supply store, and picking up the process from that point, saving 2 or 3 days:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69700/fermented-red-rye-malt-rye-baker-recipes
But before someone takes the time (days) and puts in the effort (controlled temperatures and monitoring) I think they would be well served to spend the $7 or $8 bucks it would cost them to buy a pound on ebay to:
#1. have a reference so they know if they were successful or not,
#2. to see if they like it enough to bother with making it themselves.
Of the two reasons, I think the first is the most compelling.
The first link to red rye malt does not include a fermentation step. What is described is crystal rye malt. The process to prepare solod is more involved.
However, the solids from the sourwort can be dried to make solod:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/502951#comment-502951
That process seems a lot easier and less finicky on temperatures.
i thought that the process of letting the shoots grow out so long was "fermentation." That's not?
The longer shoot development is part of the germination phase in the malting process:
https://www.brewingwithbriess.com/malting-101/malting-process/
I do not doubt that some exotic ingredients and elaborate processes can make great bread. I'm willing to spend 3 days making a loaf of bread with ingredients I can get at local stores. But that's about it. A 3-stage Detmolder rye or red rye malt (even everyday malt) are steps too far for me. Maintaining a starter is right on the margin.
I can see a bakery doing this stuff as part of the regular daily workflow. Or a serious skilled home baker. But I'm not prepared to do anything more elaborate than:
And I need to improve my skills a lot before more elaborate processes of ingredients make a difference.
My suggestion required nothing more than an eBay search and purchase. Using Solod (fermented red rye malt) doesn't require much additional work at all. You only need about 1 to 3 oz of the stuff to radically change the flavor of your bread.
There are those here that seem allergic to the idea of buying solod online. I don't know why; it is relatively cheap (especially considering how little is used per loaf of bread), and even the guys online who make their own often admit it is not quite as good at the professionally made stuff (something about the quantity of rye being fermented and the natural progression of the temperature caused by that fermentation process-which sounds a lot like a compost pile) being different than what you can reproduce at home.
If you are exploring high-percentage rye bread, you will be doing yourself a disservice, not putting this on your shopping list. I add it to my 50% rye, and it is my wife and neighbors favorite bread.
Maybe I'll give it a try in the future. For now I'm going to try to keep it simple.
I understand your reluctance. I resisted making a sourdough starter for months because it seemed like too much work. And I think the ones that have daily feeding regimens would be non-starters (🤣) for me.
That's why I'm glad I made the rye culture in The Rye Baker. I've gone as long as six weeks without feeding and it seems none the worse for wear.
I will say though, that if you ever find yourself in an eastern European specialty food store, look for the fermented red rye malt (solod). The bread I made with it was really amazing.
I'll be leaving for 3 weeks in a few days. I did the TRB 7 g 1:10:10 with 2 separate jars rather than the usual one, plus one with 20g in a bigger container. After a couple of days, I dried out the 420g of starter, which I'll save in a jar as well.
When I get back, I'll refresh both the small jars and half of the dried starter. If they all come back more or less the same, I'll put them all together; I'll leave some dried just in case of a future contingency.
Mini's Favorite 100% Rye Ratio | The Fresh Loaf
Take a look at any of Mini's posts as she is a "Queen" of rye.
Hanseata is another poster who is great with rye.
This is one of my favorite 100% ryes but it is meant to be a substitute (in my opinion) for pumpernickel-a thick chewy loaf rather than a sandwich-type loaf . You can fine A LOT of different rye loaves on Stan's site.
The "Juicy One"/Das Saftige (Germany) - THE RYE BAKER
Here is a GREAT explanation of the different rye flours:
RyeFlourBLOG.gif (1600×1234) (theryebaker.com)
Rye is completely different from making wheat bread but those things are gleaned from Mini's posts and others. It caan be a batter bread or a dough but whichever form you use, do NOT let rye dough dry on anything (bowls,spoons,sink,etc) as then you will find where the concept of concrete came from? :)
Have fun!
If you really want a lot of rye bran, try to find some dark rye flour, not whole rye flour. These terms tend to be used interchangeably, but there is a difference. The dark rye flour is equivalent to Austrian Type 2500 flour. Bay State Milling has a dark rye flour that Ginsberg sold through NYBakers.
Most German/Austrian sites state that it can only be used up to 20% in rye recipes because of the high bran/ash content, but there are a couple out there that use a higher amount.
Can you explain what the difference is? Are they both 100% extraction but one is sifted?
Do you know any brand names available in the USA online?
Thanks
Dark rye starts out as whole rye, but has some endosperm ("white rye") removed.
Per Stan Ginsberg:
"... while Bay State’s dark rye, at a stated 2.4% ash, is the rye equivalent of first clear flour – that is, what’s left after the lighter grades are sifted out."
from: http://theryebaker.com/rye-flour/
Bay State is the brand.
Stan explained it in more detail on the Dark Rye product page at www.nybakers.com but the product pages have been taken down, as they are now closed.
The definition of "dark rye" varies from mill to mill. Some use it to mean whole rye (Bob's Red Mill), others mean some endosperm has been removed (Bay State).
HTH.
I’d read this link before buying rye flour, especially in America.
http://theryebaker.com/rye-flour/
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/64905/borodinsky-rye-bay-state-wingold-dark-rye-flour
Most of the time, I grind my own rye flour (mock mill/messerschmitt) If I ever wanted dark rye, I would sift out some of the white rye for another purpose and start from there.
If dark rye was like first clear flour, it would have less, not more bran. Having almost finished a 50# bag of first clear flour I can guarantee you it has less bran than whole wheat.
Ron, I feel some kinship with you. Your OCD-ness about word-usage is similar to mine. I'm guessing you're also Asperger's/on-the-spectrum as I am, and a few others here at TFL.
Your quest to understand things in spite of the squishiness of how most people use English is admirable. I often feel the same frustrations because extremely few are the people who can say exactly what they mean. It took me until later in life to realize that I had to stop parsing other people's words in a literal and exacting way, and had to consider what they meant, not what they said. I had to learn to ask "How do you mean that? Do you mean 'A' or 'B' ?"
Most people speak and write, not with literal precision, but with allusion and implication. And that is very irritating and frustrating, sometimes even insulting, to us "Aspies."
Back to the squishy subject of "dark rye."
Stan's point was not that it is _exactly_ like first clear. Rather, Stan's point was that endosperm has been removed.
Yes, technically, to us OCD/Asperger's types, Stan misspoke in saying it was the "equivalent" to first-clear. Perhaps "analogous" or "somewhat like" would have been better.
So rather than concluding Stan's wrong, it's more conducive to understanding to ask "In what way is it correct? What is the nugget of truth he's trying to get across?" Find the nugget of truth, and then it is mentally easier to dismiss the untrue parts as artefacts of the inherent imprecision of how most humans process speech.
If you look at the process, there is some analogy. Just upstream of first-clear-wheat-flour in the roller milling process, the grain already had bran (and maybe germ too) removed. That stream is separated --> into patent flour (inner endosperm) and the rest is first-clear . If the milling process with rye is similar, in that bran and germ are removed first, then dark-rye would be a reconstitution of the bran/germ stream with the first-clear-rye-flour stream.
Regardless of how it "gets there", the description on the now-removed dark-rye page (at nybakers.com) which Alcophile and I had the good fortune to read before it was taken down, explained it better.
Hence I concur with Alcophile's recapitulation: Stan's and Bay State's definition of "dark rye" is essentially:
whole rye that has had some portion of the endosperm removed, thereby consisting of a higher percentage of bran and aleurone than what exists in 100% whole-grain rye. (I'm going to ignore the question of if any germ has been removed, as roller mills are capable of handling it separately.)
Based on the ash %, it looks like Bob's Red Mill and Ardent Mills (sold at Baker's Authority) definition of dark-rye is the same as whole-rye.
So please accept the fact there is no standard industry-wide definition. "dark rye" means different things to different people and companies.
Yes, it is confusing. When seking to buy "dark rye", the knowlegeable buyer will need to ask the seller "By 'dark rye' do you mean 'whole rye' at approx 1.7% ash, or do you mean 2.4% ash?"
And then because most retail sales people don't know what ash% is, they will respond "huh?" (I once contacted a mill directly, and the person answering the email couldn't or wouldn't answer my direct question about ash% or extraction rate.)
There was a thread a couple years ago, where a new user had trouble with a formula that called for dark-rye. It turned out that the recipe author meant whole-rye, and was just using the Bob's Red Mill and Ardent Mills meaning. But the user had purchased Bay State Milling's dark-rye from NY Bakers. And the bread did not come out as expected.
In the link I provided the author warns that there are no standards in the USA governing what you get when you buy Rye Flour. He gave examples of flours with the same identification, "Dark Rye," that were materially different in composition, which affected the outcome of his baking. He went on to provide a recommendation for naming conventions that he thought would clarify things for consumers. In the meantime, it is buyer beware, as there is no way to know what the manufacturer means when they use any description especially "Dark Rye".
That is and was the context of my comment. I provided the link so I wouldn't have to repeat what was in the link and to provide clarity.
Thought that would be helpful to those attempting to buy rye flour.
Sure, if you ignore that first clear starts with sifted flour and dark rye starts with the whole grain they are both discards.
Dark rye is what remains after white rye has been sifted from the flour. It could be jokingly considered "138% extraction" as the ash content is ≈1.38× the amount in whole rye. The flour I have from NYBakers is definitely darker and thirstier than whole rye I've used.
I think Bay State Milling may be the only miller that produces it.There are other producers that label their whole rye flour as dark rye, but I'm not sure they're the same.
NYBakers is no longer selling retail, so when my supply is gone, I don't know where to find it. It does have a strong rye flavor that might make it worth looking for. But I do think it's true that using more than 35% dark rye of the total flour in a recipe may be trouble.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/64905/borodinsky-rye-bay-state-wingold-dark-rye-flour
Your previous comments are here.