Rye time
Today, wheat is one of the most widely grown cereal crops, and most of the world’s flour is milled from wheat. The bread that most of us are familiar with is made with wheat flour. It wasn’t always this way. While wheat naturally thrived in the warm climate of the Mediterranean basin, further north, in colder and often wetter conditions, it was harder to cultivate the grain. Across the northern parts of Europe and Russia, flour milled from hardier cereals like oats, barley and rye were more common, and wheat flour relatively expensive.
In many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, rye was the most prolific alternative to wheat and rye breads are a major feature of cuisines from Germany and Scandinavia to the vastness of Russia. The gradual homogenisation of tastes in a globalised world is taking its toll on this tradition, and wheat bread is increasingly common in regions where rye was once predominant. Nonetheless, rye remains a staple crop in these northern climes.
Wheat flour contains two different types of proteins, glutenin and gliadin, that combine to form gluten, the rubbery substance whose gas-retaining properties are what gives bread its open, sponge-like texture. Glutenin is a complex form of a protein called glutelin. The glutelin in rye flour has a simpler structure and, although it does combine with gliadin to form gluten, it doesn’t have the extensibility of wheat gluten. As a result, rye breads do not rise as well and have a denser texture. Indeed, rye bread is about as far from Mother’s Pride as it is possible for bread to be and still be called bread. By the same token, anyone raised on Mother’s Pride will find rye an acquired taste. It is, however, a taste worth cultivating.
Rye bread has a stronger flavour than that made with wheat, partly because the flour itself has a stronger flavour, and partly because rye dough has to be acidified in order to make successful bread. Since rye gluten is so weak, the dough relies upon the starch in the flour for its structure. Unfortunately, an enzyme called amylase is highly active in rye flour. Amylase breaks down the starch and, without some way of slowing down its activity, rye dough will produce a loaf as dense as a housebrick. The usual way of slowing down the amylase is to make the dough more acidic, as this interferes with the enzyme’s ability to do its work.
Rye bread was traditionally made using a sourdough starter, which contains bacteria that produce acids. The acidic starter slows down the amylase and preserves enough starch to give the bread a more solid structure within which the carbon dioxide gas from fermentation can be trapped and expand the dough.
Commercial bakers today are as likely to use acidic additives to achieve the same result as they are to use slow-working sourdough starters, but to do so would be anathema to the serious amateur wanting to make honest bread. The good news is that rye bread is easy to make, and in my next post I’ll be showing how…