I've been making various white wheat flour breads for a while now and decided to try making a rye bread for the first time. What I didn't notice at the grocery store though is that the flour I bought was the whole grain variety. Ok, no problem I figured, can't be that different, the store bought whole grain breads here all pretty much taste the same as ones made of regular flour, maybe a bit drier and more boring.
The recipe I followed was pretty basic, 50% wheat flour, 50% rye flour, 65% hydration, yeast, salt, caraway seeds, 2 rises overnight.
Now having grown up eating rye bread, any rye bread with less than 100% rye is usually something I scoff at but I figured I'd ease into it and transition from something I know. Anyway, the dough preparation and baking all went nicely, the end result however was pretty damn awful.
For one, it just tastes like sadness, a mere shadow of the rye bread I'm used to. The worse part though - texture, its like I had added a handful of actual sand in the dough. You have to chew it for 10 minutes before swallowing so it doesn't feel like swallowing sandpaper. After eating a couple of slices, I could feel my throat scratchy for hours. Worst bread ever.
Anyway, am I missing something here? People can't actually be eating that stuff as is, why is it so coarse?
