3 ryes that are the same but different
inspired by Lin's recent 'rye madness' experiment -- https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/74892/rye-madness -- I did my own.
left to right: bread made with a rye sour & a yeast spike, jailbreak bread with a yeast spike, jailbreak bread with no added yeast.
these are all 45% ryes, made with identical ingredients -- same bags of flour, same amounts of starter, salt, water and, for the 2 that had added yeast, identical amounts of IDY. To make the comparison purer, I left out caraway seeds, which are traditional for this bread, because they may obscure other flavors.
crumb shots, same positioning:
notes:
- the traditional rye sour bread has a notably more distinct lightly tangy flavor, with a tighter crumb and thinner, crispier crust.
- the jaibread bread with the yeast spike is the sweetest of the 3
- the jailbreak bread without added yeast is a bit more balanced (less sweet) than the one with yeast -- but still offers no hint of sourness. It has the most open crumb and thickest crust of the bunch.
Conclusion?
the levain method of fermenting all the rye flour separately & adding a yeast spike best produces the delicate sour flavor of the deli ryes I grew up with in NYC ... but all 3 make for fine eating.
Rob
You keep mentioning "jailbreak"" bread but I don't know what you mean.
TomP
sorry for the obscure nomenclature, Tom.
jailbreak = no levain. all ingredients mixed at once and fermented together. no division of bulk v. proof. I took the term from Another Girl's post on this site: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/71540/jail-break-bake
Rob
Thanks, Rob. It's the way I usually make bread. I should try a levain more often.
depends what you're baking.
for wheat & spelt breads, I have found that levains make little diff -- and sometimes can impede flavor development.
for ryes -- or at least for this deli-style bread -- creating a sour levain of all the rye flour pushes the flavor in a good direction that the no-levain jailbreak approach doesn't achieve.
Rob
Looks like your results re crumb openness and bite are the same as mine. But in terms of taste, we had different results - the sourness of your jailbreak bread was less than the levain bread, but for mine they were almost the same.
You mentioned they had the same amount of starter. Was total fermentation time of both loaves the same?
yes: 13 hours total, tho the non-yeasted loaf got 20 minutes more fermentation because, tho I reduced the size by 2/3, I still couldn't fit all 3 of these pint size boules into my dutch oven at the same time.
One day later, the difference in flavor and texture remains strong -- tho I must admit, if I baked the straight starter/jailbreak bread without the others, I'd likely be reveling in how good it is.
Rob
Just given this some thought, Rob. The use of the levain allows us to ferment the rye over the point of acidity and gluten degradation than we can afford in the jailbreak dough. Even though the rye was fermented for the same amount of time in both doughs, in the levain dough it was actually fermented to ripeness (or possibly past ripeness in the levain) twice.
I think this means that we can manipulate sourness really well with the use of a levain. In my rye madness experiment, my levain - which used a little less starter than the jailbreak loaf - was used at doubled when it was time to mix the final dough. Perhaps in future experiments I should use the levain at x3, and even past peak, to see what would happen in terms of crumb and taste. In all these cases, fermentation time would be kept the same; it would just be the starter ratios that have to be adjusted when mixing the levain. And I think with 55% white mixed into the final dough, the loaf would still rise just fine in all cases.
P.s.@ Tom - you mentioned wanting to be able to produce very sour bread in another thread; I wonder if playing with levains might be interesting in this context?
It's worth a try. As to whether an over-fermented levain might mess up the gluten structure, I once took some starter that had gotten soupy and added it to a dough to see whether it would act as water in terms of how it affected the dough. Just going by the consistency of the dough, I thought that it acted as if 2/3 but not all of its flour weight were water. That was a long time ago and by now I don't remember any more details. The dough didn't involve rye flour, though.
So if your over-ripe levain becomes *really* over-ripe, try compensating by reducing the added water to get a normal consistency.
great point, Lin -- though my experience is that an overfermented rye levain can seriously degrade gluten even when using strong bread flour.
This is what I've been mulling:
I used to think I had perfected the 45% rye. I mean, I once left a levain for 23 hours and still got a great loaf. Then I went through a period of having overfermented rye levains & loaves. No matter how much attention I paid to kneading, folding, and reducing water, my ryes were coming out underwhelming. They still tasted great... but spread horizontally, not vertically.
Ultimately, I determined that the company I buy rye flour from was milling with a new stone, producing a finer grind, and the new flour was fermenting way quicker than I was used to. I cut back on fermentation time and the problem went away.
Then, reading a post here by The Roadside Pie King, I tried spiking my final dough with yeast and discovered that that made it taste far better and more sour -- but also made the bread denser, with less loft, and with a thinner & less caramelized crust. Now I have discovered this holds true against the straight sourdough/jailbreak method, even when I add yeast to the jailbreak bread.
I previously did two tests of the single levain v. jailbreak method. The first was on a pain de campagne -- 62% bread flour/28% ww/10% rye -- and the results were subtly different: the levain offered a more grain-forward flavor, while the jailbreak had less rise & produced a more complex flavor that was muted at first but emerged as you chewed. Then I did a similar side-by-side with a 1/3 spelt loaf where the result was spectacular: the levain loaf was dull, while the jailbreak loaf, again lower & flatter, positively burst with flavor.
Now, what to make of all this?
Rob
So it seems that without yeast, a jailbreak bread is likely to give a more flavourful bread than the levain bread, fermentation time and amounts of starter held constant. All good.
But when spiked with yeast, the levain bread produces more complex and more sour bread than the yeast-spiked jailbreak bread. I'm so confused. Why would adding yeast, in the first place, result in more sourness, and secondly why should the yeast-spiked jailbreak bread not have that increased complexity and sourness too, compared to the yeast-spiked levain bread? Clearly the yeast is doing something to the more-fermented rye component of the dough in the levain loaf - but how does adding baker's yeast encourage more acid production??
The ingredient we might be missing is texture and its role in taste. The flavour of sourdough with the texture that comes with yeast might be a good combo for rye.
interesting idea
Exactly! That's the enigma. The only thing I can think of is, after prefermenting all the rye, maybe the wild yeasts & acids begin to break down into sugars during the 2 hours after wheat flour is mixed in, while a commercial yeast spike interrupts that process and preserves the sour flavor. But ... could that be chemically possible?
Rob
The apparent dryness of the crumb can affect the perceived flavor and mouth feel. And that in turn is affected by the openness of the crumb. These effects are one reason I don't like breads that are too open and dry. I wonder if these effects could be in play here, in more subtle ways.
Interesting comparison, so I take it the one you preferred eating the most was with the levain and yeast spike then?
All this talk of deli ryes and pastrami has got me very hungry! Hope you had something nice to go with these breads.
-Jon
yes, the levain loaf wins for flavor -- tho the straight sourdough jailbreak boule has an appealingly open crumb, almost like a pain de campagne. I have not had anything with the ryes -- thanks for the reminder! -- so perhaps I will splurge on some pastrami tonight.
Are you writing from Vietnam? I hope your travels are fabulous.
Rob
No, back home already in Cape Town, and catching up with my favourite bread site and reviving the starter.
I feel like these breads deserve the pastrami and pickle.
-Jon
ok, Jon, ok
image0.jpeg
Why I'm not vegetarian, explained by one photo!
Brought me smiles. Thanks Rob
-Jon