Rye is a comparatively new grain. It seems to be traceable back about two-thousand years. Rye thrives in cool climates and is thus the bread grain of Europe’s high mountains, and its far North. While we currently associate rye bread primarily with the Northern-most countries of Europe — the Scandinavian countries, Russia, the Baltic Republics, Poland, and parts of Germany — it was the dominant grain in France well into the nineteenth century. As a rule, wealth has displaced rye with wheat. French travelers to England in the late eighteenth-century were amazed at the amount of wheat being grown. The process of switching from rye to wheat continues today in the countries of the former Soviet Union and its northern satellite states.

Even when breads were not made entirely of rye, rye was an important component of most country breads. As insurance against total crop failure farmers in the Northern regions of Europe, like Northern France, planted a mix of wheat and rye that was called “maslin.” In a wet year the rye would thrive. In a hot year the wheat would thrive. The grains grew intermixed, were harvested together, and thus obviously ground and baked together. Rye adds sweetness and moistness to bread. Many writers in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries wrote about the wonderful taste of maslin breads. You might start with a 15% or 20% mix of rye to wheat and see how you like it.

Rye flour differs from wheat flour in that it does not have the same kind of web-like structure to hold air generated by the fermentation process. Rye will form little eyes if the bran is sifted out — but rye breads, though leavened, are often exceedingly dense. Rye leavening requires an acidic environment. Acid enables elements in rye flour to form a gelatin that is strong enough to retain some of the gasses generated by the fermentation. Rye bread requires a sour leaven. As rye is easy to sour many traditional recipes simply call for adding water and salt to the flour and letting it sit. When you read the ingredients on a modern rye bread, even one made with 100% rye flour, you will often see yeast as an ingredient. You might also sometimes see vinegar. The modern industrial method is to sour the dough with a sourdough starter — and also sometimes with an acid — and then as soon as the dough has reached the level of acidity required to trigger the gelatin formation — yeast is added to speed up fermentation.

The rye breads I discuss here don’t include any yeast. Freshly ground rye flour always produces a sweeter tasting bread.