A Bit About Rye

As you all know, I’m a proud member of the board of directors of the Bread Bakers Guild of America. One of the best things we do is put out Bread Lines, our quarterly newsletter full of technical information and news about the artisan baking world.

Earlier this year, Jeffrey Hamelman (author of Bread, Bakery Director at King Arthur Flour, and the #1 rye guy in the States) taught a class about rye breads. I’ve had many students curious about rye and it’s one of the crazier grains to work with so I usually steer the beginners away from anything with more than 20% rye flour. I always mumble something about how rye breads are set with starch gelatinizing and how there needs to be some sourdough in the mix. High-rye breads have are very weak and fragile, have very low fermentation tolerance, and stand a good chance of being gummy after baking. But it’s one of those things I’ve never been able to explain very well.

Thankfully, in the June 2010 issue of Bread Lines one of the students wrote the best summary of what’s up with rye and I’ve received permission to re-print it here. Jim Williams is the author, he is the Co-owner of Seven Stars Bakery in Providence, RI:

Rye flour has a large amount of the enzyme amylase. The job of enzymes is to convert starch to sugar. In certain quantities, this is good. We need sugar for healthy fermentation. However, if all the starch is converted too quickly, it leads to a gummy crumb. In the heat of the oven, it is the starch that absorbs water, swells and sets. If all the starch is converted, what we’re left with is sugar, which when heated up, liquifies. In breads containing a healthy percentage of rye, this leads to a gummy crumb. The crumb of a rye bread will begin to set at and internal temperature of 122-140F. Amylase is not killed off until the mid 170s, which gives it plenty of time to wreak havoc on the crumb.

How do we slow down the dreaded “starch attack”? By adding a large percentage of sourdough, the process of converting starch to sugar is retarded, and the crumb is allowed to set. This is the reason virtually all breads containing large amounts of rye are also sourdough based. The high pH of a sourdough starter is required in rye bread to retard the starch to sugar conversion, thereby allowing the crumb to set. Adding sourdough is such a simple solution for a complex problem, but one we can all employ.

The starch attack is not a problem in wheat breads because there is less amylase in wheat than rye. Wheat also gelatinizes at a much higher temperature, so there is never a danger of the crumb getting gummy. There is always sufficient starch to set the crumb.

I hope this is somewhat helpful for aspiring rye bakers – for those of you wanting to bake hard-core rye breads this seems like a really great thing to think about. I highly suggest picking up Jeffrey’s book (if you order from Amazon, us Bread Bakers Guild people would love it if you’d go here and click through to Amazon – we get some money from your purchase!), it has excellent rye formulas and pretty much every other kind of bread you could want.