Читать книгу Bread Matters: The sorry state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own - Andrew Whitley - Страница 72

Of the other flours of interest to bakers, rye is probably the most important. Once widely grown in Britain, its use declined from the seventeenth century as agricultural improvements made wheat growing easier and the public love affair with white wheat bread took hold. Rye prospers in poorer soils and colder climates than wheat and is still widely grown in northeastern Europe and northern Russia. With the recent emergence of wheat intolerances, rye bread has gained some popularity in the UK but it is still very much a minority taste. Rye flour does contain gluten, so it is unsuitable for people with coeliac disease, but there is less of it than in wheat flour. Rye gluten can trap fermentation gases but it is much weaker than wheat gluten, so pure rye bread will not rise so much. Rye is rich in pentosans, components of non-starch polysaccharides or dietary fibre; they are mainly soluble and have a blood-cholesterol-lowering effect.

From the baker’s point of view, pentosans contribute to rye flour’s ability to absorb a great deal of water. Indeed, a pure rye dough must be made wet or the resulting bread will be like concrete. Rye flour is alkaline and bland-tasting, so if you use it to make ordinary bread you are likely to get an insipid brick. This is why rye and sourdough are so often linked. Sourdough – a spontaneous fermentation of yeasts and bacteria found in the flour itself, which produces lactic and acetic acids – is essential for rye bread because:

 It creates flavour from a bland flour.

 The acids counteract excessive enzyme activity in the dough, which can make it collapse during baking.

 Acidity in the baked loaf helps it to keep for longer.

The acid flavour of sourdough rye bread can be a bit of a shock to the English palate, but it grows on you. It is an essential accompaniment to strong flavours, such as smoked fish or ripe cheese.