Nils' 60% Rye with Applejuice Soaked Rye Grains Third Attempt

Third try with Nils' 60% Rye with Applejuice Soaked Rye Grains

I was pretty much told by my wife that I had to make this again for my mother-in-law, who is visiting tomorrow.

I dunno, though.  Every time I make it, it turns out just a little bit different.  This time, the boiled rye grains, soaked in our home-made apple-peach-kiwi juice, turned a lovely russet or wine-coloured during the long, 90-minute baking.  I'm hopeful that once again, it tastes just as nice.

This time, it seemed like I was adding quite a bit of salt.  Perhaps the sea salt I'm using is a much finer grain than the other salt I've been using.

Making the bread takes a bit of organization, so that the soaker of boiled grains in apple juice, and the sourdough build of rye flour arrive at the final dough in the correct time.  This time, I once again boiled the grains for a full hour before draining it and putting them in the juice.  Some of the rye kernels popped open nicely, and this leaves one with quite a nice variety of textured grains to add to the bread.  I wonder what other juices (or teas, or wines) one might soak grains in that might provide the most interesting flavours, and pH, and enzymes, for a successful loaf.

 The rye kernels are boiled and drained,

  then juice is poured over them

 Just before adding to the dough, the rye kernels are drained again

But once again, one of the loaves seems quite tiny.  I probably need to add another 10-15% of ingredients to my already-slightly increased amounts.

 Mis en place

 Yeast has a chance to thrive in the high starch of the AP Flour for 30 min

The loaves do not seem to rise all that much while proofing, although they do have a bit of oven spring.  The dough is very wet, and it probably requires this long baking period to ensure that everything is properly baked through.

 Start of Bulk Fermentation

 End of Bulk Fermentation

Because the kitchen was often in use today, I had to take my turn with the oven.  So the time of the bulk fermentation and final fermentation was a bit longer than suggested by the recipe.  But it didn't seem to make all that much difference.  The loaves turned out fine.

Check out the earlier attempts at making this bread:

1st try
2nd try


Here is a look at the crumb of today's baking:

A Fair Trade: I give my mother-in-law a loaf of this bread, 

she gives me some of her Christmas Stollen

Very nice crust, chunky textures

Notes to Myself

• Julia Child says to lay your loaves on their side when cooling on racks.  I'm trying that here.
• Today I was reading more about the potentially cancerous acrylamides, in Skog and Alexander's book.  It turns out that rye breads are implicated in imparting more acrylamides to the diet than wheat (a close second); other grains like oats and corn and rice give substantially less.  A high temperature baking like we have here is bad for adding more acrylamides.  Better is to have long fermentation times, so the yeast can help break down some of the amino acids that are responsible for the dangerous substance.  Another idea that some food producers have tried is to add asparaginase (an enzyme that breaks down asparagine, the amino acid responsible for the creation of acrylamides during the Maillard Reaction when carbohydrates are heated) to the flour.  But it turns out that there is going to be some opposition to this move to put aparaginase into our food (e.g. see "Canadians Against Asparaginase" petition).  I personally am undecided, and feel that there ought to be more science done before we add this to our food (or before we leave it out).  I mean, I am aware that there have been benefits in the past of adding vitamins to our flour: untold millions of people have been spared the problems of Vitamin B deficiency, just by a fairly simple government move to enforce the enrichment of flour.  But there is a big emotional component to those who fear the additive, because asparaginase is also given to patients with Leukemia to fight cancer, and this has some people scared that our food is being drugged.  They also don't like that the source of the enzyme is probably going to be e.coli, a bacteria which can create it.  I for one would like to reduce acrylamides in my diet, but I want to do it safely.  We need to know what the risk of ingesting it is.  We need to know how to reduce the amount we eat.  Unfortunately, this science appears to be still in the early stages.  We may have to make a decision based on guesswork, or wait until we have more proof.
  
• Next time you make this bread, add another 15% of ingredients to this 2-loaf recipe; so:
• What I used this time:
• Sourdough
• 300g Rye Flour
• 250g Water
• 25g Rye Starter @100% hydration
• Soaker
• 250g Rye Grains
• Boiling Water to Cover
• Apple Juice to Cover (use what you have, even if it is Apple-Peach-Kiwi)
• Dough
• 500g Warm Water
• 300g Rye Flour
• 400g All Purpose Flour
• 25g Sea Salt
• 3g Yeast
• What I'll use next time:
• Sourdough
• 345g Rye Flour
• 287g Water
• 29g Rye Starter @100% hydration
  
• Soaker
• 287g Rye Grains
• Boiling Water to Cover
• Apple Juice to Cover (use what you have, even if it is Apple-Peach-Kiwi)
  
• Dough
• 575g Warm Water
• 345g Rye Flour
• 460g All Purpose Flour
• 29g Sea Salt
• 4g Yeast