Tartine Rye Bread

Tartine Rye Bread

This is a mostly white flour bread with a tiny bit of rye, made with sourdough leaven.  People who make 100% rye breads would cringe if you told them this is a rye bread, with only 17% rye in the flour.  But that is the recipe that the Tartine Bread book gives us for rye.

Curious that with all the wonderful crumb shots in the book, there is no crumb shot of their Country Rye Bread.  "Perhaps they were not proud of it," I wondered.  "Or more likely, they were afraid that people just would not understand that rye bread is different."  I wanted to make this bread as the Tartine recipe suggests, so that I could see the crumb for myself.

But I still couldn't resist making a change.

I've put a cupful of rye kernels into the dough with the folds.  The rye kernels had been cooked in a pressure cooker the night before, and then they were soaked in apple cider overnight (Nils Schöner has a 60% Rye Bread recipe that does this, and it is excellent, it is my mother-in-law's favourite.  I was wondering if she would like this rye bread as much.  If not, my wife can eat it, because it is really just a white flour bread, with a smattering of rye).

One thing that was new: I also tossed in 1 TBSP of whole wheat starter into the rye and cider mix, hoping that it might begin to ferment the rye kernels a bit.  I wanted exploded rye kernels, soft rye texture.  There definitely was fermentation happening by morning -- but how much the yeasts were nibbling on rye, and how much they were devouring the cider fructose, I don't know.  I do think that the rye kernels were improved though.

The bread dough is quite wet, and I realized when I was done forming the dough that I have been missing the bench rest stage -- a 20 to 30 minute rest after the dough is divided, and before the final forming.  This could be one of the reasons why my dough is not retaining its form.  I'll have to practice that with the next loaves.

I'm still using casserole dishes, so it is always a 50:50 chance or worse that my loaves will be malformed.  My mother-in-law will get the better looking loaf.

 

The crumb is fine. It is fairly easy to achieve that wide-hole, irregular crumb using all purpose flour.  But, the rye kernels are a bit lost in there -- you really have to look close to see them.  I'm sure my mother-in-law will need a lot more than just 1 cup of the cooked and soaked rye berries.  In fact, this rye bread is probably just not dense enough for my mother-in-law to like.  I'm afraid that I'll have to stick to Nils' 60% Rye Bread for her. 

Unless… What if I take the Tartine Recipe to 60%? ...

Once again the wheels are turning, and experiments multiply in front of me.

Notes to Myself

• Remember to Bench Rest your dough after dividing, for 20-30 minutes. I know you are excited, and you want to form your loaves, but wait, the dough needs to wait.
• I have not been using any flour on my dough during the cutting and forming stages of the bread making process. I find the written description of putting the extra flour onto the dough somewhat confusing, and I just know that I would get some of the flour on the inside of the loaf if I tried. But while looking around at the various videos of Tartine Bread I did find this YouTube movie that shows how ExtremeCooking interpreted the Tartine Bread book's wording of how to form boules.
  I don't think he's got it quite right yet, he seems a bit more liberal with the flour than the recipe reads, but he is still way ahead of me. Also notice his curious counter bread dome to prevent drafts. My wife would no doubt give me an earful if I brought something like that home and tried to put it in the cupboards.
  
• Try the Tartine loaf method, but with 60% rye!