Today’s experiment was to compare my rye fed starter vs wheat bread flour starter. Then 12hr vs 18hr in banneton in fridge for 4 loaves. The recipe is otherwise identical with 50/50 bread/whole wheat KA flour. I have not cut into them as a couple are gifts. I’m curious about the surface of these loaves after 18hr. They both are ‘craggier’ (my bread making vocabulary is quite limited). The rye starter produced taller, shorter length-wise loaves. The wheat bread flour starter spread out more. Comments welcome as I’m learning as it go.
That is really interesting. Thanks for sharing. I would have predicted the rye loaves would be slightly flatter, due to having some low gluten flour (the rye in the starter) and from maybe proofing faster (rye starters seem to ripen faster).
It’s interesting two that the wheat loaf seem to improve with more time in the refrigerator but the ryes, from what I can tell in the photos, looks similar 12 hours versus 18 hours?
I did a similar experiment here, but I used sprouted whole wheat flour, which is enzymatically active, a bit like rye in that regard.
You are far more thorough in explaining your process. Thanks for sharing your experiment. I especially like the crumb result of all 3 of your loaves. I would like to know what I need to do differently to get the large holes in the crumb. Also, nice reality check seeing your starter ripen. Mine look the same and I’ve thought my bread flour starter looks “pasty” compared to my hearty looking rye flour starter.
My starter is 100% hydration rye or bread flour. I use 50g starter, so 25g rye or bread flour in the recipe. The levain is 80g flour (50/50% whole wheat, bread). The final recipe is 880g flour (50/50% whole wheat, bread). So 25g/960g rye / wheat flours for 2.6% rye flour in the rye starter loaves. My rye starter loaves were taller than wheat starter but also shorter lengthwise, so stiffer dough? Both 18hr fridge loaves were larger than their 12hr siblings. I have no feel for whether 2.6% rye should have any effect on loaf height; doesn’t seem so. I DO know when I tried ~25% rye flour in my last experiment I got flat loaves. I’m posting my crumb pics less the one loaf I gave away. The rye loaf seems to have more dense, less airy sections. I would like larger holes!
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I think the crumb on those breads looks great – such even honeycomb.
You’ll likely get more open holes if you increase the water amount. I don’t think you said how much water you used. You can see my loaves don’t have great structure or height with the amount of water I used. More gluten development would have counteracted that, but then it’s harder to track fermentation and keep it even between experiment loaves.
The breads in my experiment were about 78% hydration if you include the starter in the calculation. I used a lot of starter so it’s probably worth calculating hydration with it.
(I agree that with the small amount of starter you used, the gluten from rye versus wheat is probably not relevant.)
Thanks, Melissa. My recipe is 77% hydration including the 100% hydration levain. I do stretch/folds and 2 coil folds before bulk rise. My dough is very elastic and almost difficult to coil after the 10 minute spaced times two S/Fs.
This is my recipe with notes/video to self with KA bread, whole wheat and rye flours. Credit to Abe for Levain idea that helped my bread baking a lot.
Starter Feed
50g starter
25g wheat bread flour or rye flour
25g water
rise to double size
Levain Build
40g bread flour
40g whole wheat flour
80g water
30-60g starter, for 6-12 hours depending on room T and amount of starter
Dough for 2 Loaves
440 g whole wheat flour
440 g bread flour
660 g water
20 g salt
180-200 g levain
Mix dough. Rest 10 min. SFx8 @ 10 minutes x 2. Coil 2x @ 10 minutes after SF. Rise double size.
Cut dough in half. Fold onto itself to create 2 round boules (see video @ 13:18 minutes). Rest 1 hour.
Coil into loaf (see video @ 14:55 minutes). Add to dusted banneton seam side up. Place in plastic bag. 8-24 hours in fridge.
Oven 500 30 minutes with empty clay baker. Turn dough out onto parchment paper seam side down, rice flour, score. Place dough into hot clay baker with parchment paper. Bake with cover on 30 minutes (at 25 minutes turn down oven to 450).
Cover off and bake additional 10 minutes or until done with browned crust.