I've made bread before with good result but yesterday I wanted to make bread using rye (because it's supposed to be so healthy) and it ended up a complete failure. The recipe used 1/3 quantity wholemeal flour, 1/3 white flour, 1/3 rye flour, yeast + lukewarm water. The problem that I encountered is that the dough just wouldn't turn into a nice ball like other times. Even after kneeding for more than half an hour it kept sticking to my hands (and everything else) Adding more flour(I used the rye for this) didn't help.
Did i do something wrong, or is working with rye flour just different than 'ordinary' flour?
Rye is different from wheat flour... (which is what I assume you mean when you say "ordinary.")
Many folks new to using rye keep adding flour to prevent it from being so sticky. But no amount of flour will prevent the problem it seems. It is far better to learn how to work with rye flour while it is moist. One approach is to shape it with a tool rather than with the hands. Another is to frequently dip your hands into cold water. Surprisingly, that will make the dough much less sticky for the few moments necessary to shape it.
You hardly can bake rye flour (even the 33% you used) without the acidity of a sourdough because the enzymes of the flour will attack the starch while you bake the bread - it will become a soft sticky goo, but never a decent bread. Look at the FAQs and find some good recipe to start with.
You hardly can bake rye flour (even the 33% you used) without the acidity of a sourdough because the enzymes of the flour will attack the starch while you bake the bread - it will become a soft sticky goo, but never a decent bread. Look at the FAQs of rec.food.sourdough and find some good recipe to start with.
Check some common brfead recipe books, or bread machine books. While caled "rey bread," they only use about 25% rye flour to 75 white flour. Some add a touch of molasses for color.
Stickiness is typical for rye flour. It's a property of the flour itself. Still, you want to keep a rye bread at fairly low hydration or else it simply becomes a leaden lump. What were your actual amounts of flour and water?
Other things with rye: It doesn't yield as much gluten as wheat flour. This leaves you with 2 options. One is to knead for less time (and more gently). The other is to add some wheat gluten (sometimes called vital wheat gluten and also sometimes called gluten flour) which will give it more structure. You don't need much. A tbsp or so per cup of flour is probably more than enough. That "nice ball" is the result of strong gluten formation. Typically you'll only get that with wheat breads. What you're looking for in rye bread is a subtle smoothing of the dough, not a perfect ball.
Bake at a slightly lower temperature. High temperature baking tends to harden the crust of rye bread into iron.
Let it rise for a longer time. A good rye bread will take and can use a really long ferment. I usually let my rye breads rise at least twice as long. To some extent that depends on how much wheat flour is in the recipe you use.
It's possible in fact to make rye bread with 100% rye flour, if you take advantage of all these techniques. Whole rye bread is dense and hearty, very dark - a bread from Northern Europe. Usually in Europe they use some coarsely ground rye meal in addition to rye flour and this improves the texture quite a bit. It also makes it much easier to work with because it helps to mitigate the stickiness.
I used a recipe from Nigella Lawsons book (domestic goddess) called 'my brown bread' 200 grams wholemeal, 200 grams flour, 200 grams rye (I'm in a metric zone:-)), can't remember how much water. I used a foodprocessor for the 'creating a ball'-stage but I think I have added too much water to begin with. I'm just going to have another go at this, but I'll use less rye and not the foodprocessor. Thanks
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