Another New Challenge / Breads Made from other Grains

After a while with white flour, then with whole wheat, it was time to explore other grains. I’d grown a little bored, and I was also coming to realize that common wheat just didn’t work out well for lots of people. So I wanted to experiment with other grains, and in the process maybe make some bread for folks with sensitivities to common wheat and/or gluten.

I started out with rye, and holy crap, I had no idea what I was in for. Rye does in fact have some gluten in it, but it’s such a small amount that the dough never develops the ability to be stretched and tugged the way wheat dough does. It’s just a slop the whole way through. For the first few months of my rye bread experiments, I baked loaves of bread that had reasonably good flavor, but the texture was waaaay off. It was always very gummy, not to mention that all of the loaves had a “flying roof.”