Ideally, the mixing of coarse rye bread dough is carried out in L-shaped paddle mixers, double cone kneaders or horizontal kneaders. Spiral mixers are also used in mixed production, although these are rather designed for wheat bread and mixed wheat bread production. During the mixing process, the soft batter including many coarse components should be turned into a cohesive and plastic dough. The mixing time is determined by the granulation of the coarse grain used and the pre-swelling that has already taken place via the hot soaked grain, soaked grain or sourdough. The better the raw materials are pre-swollen, the less mixing time is required. A higher proportion of finely ground grain also enables shorter mixing times.
The dough temperature should be between 29 - 32° C. Larger deviations can lead to bread faults.
Depending on the size of the dough batch and the degree of pre-swelling, you will work with a short bulk fermentation time or none at all. The application of longer bulk fermentation times makes sense when adding unswollen coarse ingredients during dough preparation. If necessary, the dough mixing is divided into two phases.
Compared to wheat or mixed wheat bread production, the processing and shaping of coarse grain bread dough is carried out using less complicated equipment. The plastic and sticky coarse grain bread doughs are pressed through a tube using screw conveyors, cut off and placed in the baking tin either directly or after a further long rolling process. The long rolling technique using fabric tapes running in the opposite direction requires somewhat firmer dough properties.
Dosing directly into baking tins enables comparatively high dough yields, such as they are common in Denmark, for example. Some of the plant bakeries have specially designed systems for portioning and evenly filling the baking tins.
Rhine Coarse Rye Bread is a special case, in this context, with its semi-circular, oven-bottom shape. Comparatively firm doughs are required in this case, which are rolled in potato starch or a mixture of starch and rye flour before the final proof on the setters.
Before being processed, coarse grain bread doughs are often remixed briefly in order to remove any fermentation gas that may have been formed, to enable a higher dosing accuracy. This is not necessary if the coarse grain bread dough is processed without bulk fermentation time.
The various types of coarse grain bread can be visually and qualitatively enhanced with different raw materials by sprinkling the surface with oat flakes, rye flakes, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, coarse buckwheat or finely ground coarse rye, for example.
The final proof for coarse rye bread should be 90 - 100 minutes. This is achieved by a proof performance from the sourdough, combined with a small amount of yeast added. The amount of yeast added to the dough should not exceed 1 % of the grain products. Fermentation-inhibiting additives such as preservatives or acidity regulators require a slightly higher yeast addition. This should correspond to a maximum of 1.5 % altogether. The usual fermentation chamber parameters are 32 - 35° C and 80 % of relative humidity. A higher temperature in the fermentation chamber may lead to bread faults. This may cause the dough in the upper quarter of the baking tin to loosen too much, while the rest of the dough develops slowly. This occurs in particular at lower dough temperatures.