So, as some right here might bear in mind, I’ve had a wide range of inconsistencies with my rye starter and my rye breads over the previous 12 months or so … and, among the many ideas that the type folks on this web site advised was that I modify up my routine and check out some totally different rye flours. Although I am not typically good at taking recommendation, I made a decision to have some enjoyable with this. So I lined up 3 ryes:

• Janie’s Mill darkish rye flour, aka natural complete grain rye (thx, alcophile, for the heads up about their sale)
• Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia T-2000 — from Poland
• Farmer Floor Flour‘s natural complete grain rye (my previous standby)

Over the previous 3 days, I used every to bake a deli rye: 45% rye (all prefermented)/55% King Arthur Natural bread flour, 1% caraway, 1% salt. Listed here are the outcomes:

Janie’s: 

Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia:

Farmer Floor Flour:

Particulars:

Janie’s is extra finely floor than the others and proved to be a really thirsty flour. For making the preferment, I needed to increase the hydration to 86% to get all of the flour totally moistened.

To my eye, the Młynomag Maka Razowa żytnia and the Farmer Floor Flour had been fairly comparable grinds. Each include numerous giant tan particles and each flours acquired totally moistened at someplace round 75% hydration.

Resulting from scheduling quirks, I let the Janie’s levain ferment for 8 hours. Each the Polish and the Farmer Floor levains fermented for about 6 hours. All three of them had been inoculated at about 10%.

I baked the Janie’s bread full-sized — about 900 g — by itself in a big dutch oven.

With the Polish and Farmer Floor flours, I baked 2 mini-batards of maybe 600 g every, which I baked side-by-side in the identical giant dutch oven.

Look:

Janie’s produced a beautiful-looking bread, with nice oven spring, a brown and toasty crust, and a properly open crumb for a deli rye.

For some purpose (perhaps as a result of I did not ferment the levain as lengthy), the crusts did not totally caramelize on the Polish and Farmer Floor loaves. The breads additionally did not rise as a lot within the oven (maybe as a result of they’d much less water within the combine) and the crumb in each loaves was uneven — massive holes subsequent to little holes. 

Style:

The Janie’s bread seems unbelievable however, oddly, is type of uninteresting to eat.

Each the Młynomag model and the Farmer Floor supply extra assertive sweetness from the crust (farmer floor even smells candy whenever you first add water earlier than fermenting it.) They produced very comparable breads, however — to me — the Farmer Floor Flour mini batard edged the prize because it extra totally showcased the interesting combo of crispy, toasty, barely candy crust with a lightweight and evenly bitter crumb.

Sadly, my “unbiased rye tasters™” aren’t accessible this week. So, for now, you will simply must take my phrase for it. 

Rob