Sourdough Rye Rolls Recipe | The Perfect Rye Slider Buns (2024)

FAQs

How sticky should rye bread dough be? ›

Bread doughs made with rye, especially those with a high percentage of rye, tend to be quite sticky and—to most American bakers—harder to work with. (To make up for this, any flour that is added to a rye dough recipe will usually be high gluten bread flour.)

Scoop in 75 grams of the mixture from the jar that fermented overnight, add 50 grams rye flour, 50 grams all-purpose flour, and 115 grams water. Mix thoroughly, cover, and let rest for 12 hours.

Working with Rye Flour

Adding a little rye flour to a sourdough starter can increase its activity. Sourdough bread made with rye will often ferment a little faster because micronutrients in rye flour encourage fermentation. Rye is most often used in combination with wheat flour to get the best benefits of both flours.

Whole wheat and rye flours provide more nutrients for your starter and ferment more actively, but working with rye flour makes starter maintenance easier than whole wheat. Rye provides increased fiber and nutrients similar to whole wheat flour, but because of its lower gluten amount it's much easier to stir.

If you cut into a bread with a high % of rye flour too early, it may be gummy and have an unpleasant texture. Therefore, recipes often recommend letting it rest 1-2 days so the crumb can set up[2] and moisture can distribute within the bread.

Under baking can produce a gummy interior. Try baking for longer. Is your pan big enough for your loaf? If the pan is too small and your loaf doesn't have the space it needs to grow as it bakes it will hinder the bake and prevent it from being fully baked inside.

The colony of wild yeast and bacteria inside your starter jar are fairly resilient, however, like most living things, they can be overfed. When you overfeed a sourdough starter you dilute the natural population of yeast and bacteria, making your sourdough culture weak and inactive.

The most common issue is not kneading enough between rises. The yeast cannot float through the dough, so it has to just eat the flour near it. If it exhausts that supply, it's stuck. Kneading the dough a bit - and it doesn't take much - puts the yeast and bacteria back in touch with fresh food.

The best flour blend for creating a new sourdough starter is 50% whole-meal flour (whole wheat or whole rye) and 50% bread flour or all-purpose flour. I recommend a 50/50 mix of whole wheat flour and bread flour. Why do you need to use these two types of flour?

Rye gluten does not develop into strong and stretchy dough the way wheat gluten does and this means that any time you add rye flour to wheat flour you can expect the dough to be more fragile. It is also stickier and more absorbent. The more rye flour you have, the more pronounced the changes become.

How do you know when rye sourdough starter is ready? ›

You can determine its readiness by conducting a float test: placing a small portion in water—if it floats, it's good to go. An established starter greatly enhances the rise and flavor of your sourdough bread. For sourdough, does the flour mixture in the starter need to match the dough?

Flour Selection

This sourdough rye bread calls for whole dark rye (the same flour you might find in rugbrød, Danish rye bread). This means the flour is not sifted and contains the entire rye berry.

Other natural ingredients can be added but genuine sourdough bread making does not involve the use of baker's yeast, chemical raising agents, so-called processing aids or other additives.

Yes you can feed your sourdough starter a different flour to the bread you are making. For example, if you are making this whole wheat rye sourdough bread, you can use your sourdough starter that has been fed with all purpose flour.

Compared to whole wheat flour, rye flour is said to be the most nutrient- and amylase-dense option for a sourdough starter. Overall, it has a lower gluten protein content than wheat flour, which means it produces slack, sticky, and dense doughs.

Tip 3: Rye dough isn't as supple as wheat dough.

If you've never made rye bread before, you'll be surprised by the dough's consistency, especially if you're making a loaf that's at least 50% rye flour. The dough is more clay-like than elastic (left, above); this is fine.

Generally, while dough should be a little tacky to the touch, it shouldn't cling to your hands (certain types of bread might call for a stickier dough, but unless that's stated in the recipe, sticky dough is a no-go). Most often, the problem is too much water in the dough.

Due to certain inherent characteristics of rye flour, rye bread tends towards excessive moistness, and should be baked to an internal temperature of 205°F to 210°F.

Dough made with rye flour will be wetter and stickier than you're used to. The dough can feel a bit overwhelming if you're not used to it, but rest assured the wet dough will firm up as you perform stretch and folds.