Terrible rise - wholewheat bread w/ rye starter
Hi All 🙌
I am making a Pullman tin wholewheat loaf using a rye starter. I cannot get it to rise enough in bulk. I have made it successfully many times using a starter that is a mix or rye and wheat/wholewheat and without the autolyse step. What do you think the issue is?
Process:
500g wholewheat flour
450g water
10g salt
50g rye starter (1:2:2) (mature, fed 12 hours prior to using)Â
Â
Mix flour & Water - Autolyse 20 mins.
Add starter - mix a couple mins low speed
Add salt - mix 1 min low speed
Mix on medium for 7 mins
Rest for 10
Mix for 5 mins until window pane
Â
For this bread, I did a bulk RTF at 24c. After 12 hours of monitoring there were a lot of small / medium bubbles but it did not rise a lot.
I did a few coil folds at this stage, shaped it and put it in the Pullman tin.
It is now in my fridge overnight. It usually is a lot bigger at this stage.Â
What could be wrong ?
Hi sourpickle,
My rye starter tends to have as much or more activity than my rye/wheat starter, but it reaches peak faster, and sometimes might not rise a wholegrain loaf as well, especially if % pre-fermented flour is very low, final dough contains more fragile grain types, and temperatures are high (have to watch out for high acidity). Perhaps some questions to further diagnose your problem:
1) Is this rye starter an offshoot of your successful starter, or an entirely new starter?
2) Has it risen other loaves as well as you want it to? What kind of loaves?
3) When you use the starter, has it just reached peak or is it past its peak?Â
There are many rye starter experts here so I'm sure they'll also be able to pin the problem down further.Â
-LinÂ
Hi Lin,
Thanks for taking the time. To answer:
1. Original starter
2. Mainly use for dense rye breads like rugbrød using rye flour only also.
3. It still hasn't collapsed but not at optimal peak (tried a new batch today ensuring that I caught the peak, we'll see if that is the cause)
When you say temperatures are high, are you referring to my room temp ? Cause funnily enough the loaf came out very very sour.Â
It came out like a full rye loaf would. Tight, dense and gummy (baked to 95c internal temp).
20241010_153422.jpg
Â
20241010_153616.jpg
Thanks for the info, sourpickle.
Given that a lot of variables in your set up has changed, perhaps let's go with a couple of small adjustments first? Some thoughts:
1) Make sure that your rye starter has good activity. If you're using a full rye starter, at low inoculation, to rise whole grain bread, it's got to have good lifting power. :) Perhaps catch it at peak or just before to ensure optimal yeast populations. If you suspect your starter is a little acidic, it might be worth giving it more regular feeds, at peaks, to strengthen it.Â
2) If your starter is well established, maybe first try it out with a standard 1/2/3 recipe with less wholegrain, say 50% AP, to see how it behaves?
3) Once that's fine, try this recipe again, but maybe increasing starter % so that you are sure to observe the full process of bulk fermentation in the day?
It's also worth experimenting, at the same time, with the same recipe using your rye/wheat starter to see how it behaves with this new flour. How finely the berries are ground, how fresh the flour is, the kind of water you use... all these will require adjusting to.Â
Rye starters can rise wholewheat loaves very well too without them being dense and gummy.Â
-LinÂ
Your profile doesn't mention where you live, so I'll offer a guess: if you are in the northern hemisphere, the 24C bulk ferment temperature might be cooler than when you made the bread on prior occasions. If so, that would slow down the fermentation which, in turn, would result in less expansion over the same timespan.
Paul
Hi Paul,
I live in Dubai, UAE. The kitchen is air conditioned and stays between 24 and 25 Celsius.
All my previous baking was in London UK, temps in the kitchen would fluctuate from 18 to 26 Celsius. However, I did use a mixed wholewheat rye starter when I was having success.
Just wandering if using a rye starter, at the amounts I am in the recipe generally contribute to a more rye like bread?Â
If you are using a different source for rye flour since when it worked in London, that could be the difference.
TomP
Different wholewheat flour as per my reply below, but exact same brand rye flour!
hi sour -- given that you're in Dubai now and all your previous baking was in London (ah, globalization!), has the flour you are using changed?
Rob
ps: i didn't see TomP's comment before I posted mine, but I'd ask the same question about the ww flour you are using.
Yes the flour has changed for sure. It is an organic, good quality 13% flour though.
I need to test:
1 - Leaving it out much longer at RT (left a small sample outside when I moved the loaf to CF and by the morning it had very actively risen. However, does this make it extremely sour ? If so, will the same apply if I did a 48hr CF ?
2 - Using a wholewheat starter rather than rye. Does anyone who has experience using rye starters have the same results when using it to bake bread? Dense, gummy, rugbrød crumb, when using wholegrain flour..
Any other ideas or input very welcome! Enjoying this journey!
Â
regarding 2: I only have a rye starter. I have never had a problem using it to make other breads. In fact, I made a sourdough pan cristal the other day--and it came out wonderful.
Another concern I might raise is how fresh the flour is. I've made this point on several other recent threads, but I've had whole grain flours from high qual organic brands go stale long before their 'best before' dates. Whenever I've run into this problem with whole wheat, the bread becomes dense and the crust tough. If the oils in the flour have truly turned, the loaf will have a bitter undertone as well. And if it's the rye flour that has gone flat, my starter gets sluggish and lame.
For my starter, the solution has been to buy local rye. And even then, I throw away my flour when it gets too close to the 'best by' date.
An additional factor might be if the water you are using has changed. I've read that Dubai's tap water is desalinated & I don't know whether it's also treated. I use NYC tap water in my breads, so I know that chlorine is not a real problem, though it may slow fermentation somewhat (I've tried bottled water, however, and there was no change in my results).
In any event, enjoy the voyage.
Rob
As to the rye starter, it only amounts to about 5% of the total flour (in terms of its flour component), so it won’t make the dough or bread rye-like.  I’m actually wondering if doubling the starter quantity might be beneficial, just for the extra yeast it would contribute.Â
You might want to try taking an offshoot of the rye starter and converting it to a wheat starter over several feeds. Â If it winds up working better in the bread, it would be an easy fix.Â
Paul
Since everything is different - expect differences. It's a new learning experience. Enjoy!
Thanks ! Will keep testing and posting results
Go on the weaker/shorter side and see what happens. Go from there. Enjoy!