Homemade Rye Bread Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the ratio of rye flour to bread flour? ›

This recipe calls for 1 cup of rye flour and 3 cups of bread flour, and while you could play around with increasing the proportion of rye in this recipe (which is roughly 20% by weight), keep in mind that the more rye flour you use, the denser your bread will be.

Rye flour is low in gluten and high in carbohydrates called pentosans (aka arabinoxylans), which readily absorb water to produce a very sticky dough. Pentosans, unlike starch, remain moist after baking, yielding a dense loaf.

How To Make Rye Bread. Proof the yeast: Add the lukewarm water and yeast to the bowl of your mixer. Give it a quick stir, and leave the mixture for 5-10 minutes to foam up. Form the dough: Add the brown sugar, salt, caraway seeds, oil, rye flour, and 2 1/2 cups of the all-purpose flour.

This means that rye doughs often require a higher proportion of water than doughs in which wheat predominates. Pentosans break apart easily during mixing, and their fragments result in a stickier dough. Because of this, rye doughs require gentler and, usually, briefer mixing than wheat doughs.

While you can make a loaf that is made 100% rye, those tend to be quite dense and heavy.

(Rye flour can't be directly substituted for all-purpose or bread flour because it has different gluten-forming properties.)

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.

As with most grain products (e.g. breads and pastas), whole-grain varieties of rye bread will provide the most impressive nutritional benefits. Whole grain rye contains plenty of fiber, iron, calcium, zinc, potassium, selenium, manganese, copper, plant compounds, and B vitamins, including riboflavin, niacin, and B6.

The more white flour in the loaf, the higher it'll rise and the lighter its texture will be. So this is entirely up to you and your tastes. Experiment with different percentages of white flour/rye flour until you find the bread texture you like the most.

It's hard to tell with rye sometimes. The very best thing to do is get a probe thermometer. Bread is around 98 degrees C on the inside when it is done.

Should rye bread dough be sticky? ›

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.)

All rye breads need some wheat flour in order to properly rise, because rye is low in air-trapping gluten, so the real question comes down to the ratio of rye to white all-purpose flour.

If you have a choice, we recommend using medium or dark rye for the best balance of flavor and texture. COLOR DOES MATTER: Darker flours deliver stronger rye flavor and a denser texture.

“Light rye” is the equivalent of white flour and “dark rye” is the equivalent of whole meal (whole wheat/spelt) flour – that is to say, “dark rye” has all the bran and the germ in the flour and “light rye” does not.

Similar to wheat flour, different rye flours are determined by how much of the rye kernel — i.e., the endosperm, bran, and germ — is present. The more rye kernel there is, the darker the flour. This also means a more intense rye flavor and often a denser texture in your final baked goods.

With gluten playing such a vital role in yeast bread's structure, substituting rye at too high a percentage can lead to lower-rising, dense breads. Still, if you want to use rye in your favorite yeast bread recipe, start small: replace 25% of the all-purpose or bread flour with rye and assess the results.

Rye Helps Keep Sourdough Softer For Longer- Sometimes sourdough bread can have a slightly drier texture, but Rye flour can bring back some of that moistness. This is because Rye contains a higher level of a complex sugar called pentosans, which absorb larger amounts of water and retain it after baking.

Rye contains much less gluten than wheat, and the gluten rye contains is of poor quality when it comes to trapping air bubbles. Consequently, breads made with mostly rye flour do not expand as much as those made with mostly wheat flour. The crumb of breads in which rye predominates tends to be dense with smaller holes.

To turn all-purpose flour into bread flour you just need vital wheat gluten. Measure out 1 cup of AP flour, remove 1 1/2 teaspoons of the flour, replace with 1 1/2 teaspoons of vital wheat gluten, whisk to combine.