Quality and variety of coarse rye bread

Today, consumers perceive coarse rye bread as a healthy food. It is therefore advisable to make coarse rye bread from at least 90 % of wholemeal products. The flavour should be mild and balanced which means that the acid content should not be set so high. 

When producing sliced and packaged coarse rye bread, care should be taken to prevent contamination by mould spores when the bread is cooled and sliced. In the best case scenario, you can do without the use of acidity regulators and/or preservatives. The salt content should also be as low as possible in order to comply with current recommendations. A moist crumb with a long freshkeeping is also important. Coarse rye bread with other attractive ingredients, such as various oilseeds, nuts or raw materials from the region, can attract new customer groups.

This speciality from Westphalia is one of the best-known coarse rye breads. Pumpernickel is a compact, very aromatic, slightly sweet coarse grain bread with a dark crumb. The characteristic properties are created during the baking time of at least 16 hours in special steam ovens. The Maillard reaction leads to the desired flavour and the characteristic browning of the crumb. Pumpernickel is mainly sold as pasteurised sliced bread with a long shelf life. It is almost exclusively produced by plant bakeries specialised in it.

Oldenburg Black Bread is characterised by a high proportion of coarsely ground coarse rye and a lightly browned, moist crumb. It is baked for a long time (3 - 5 hours) and contains sugar beet syrup and malt extract.

Hamburg Black Bread is a hearty rye bread with a light brown to dark crumb. The tin-baked bread often contains wholemeal wheat flour as well as malt extract and malt flour, which are used to round off the taste.

The special feature of Rhine Coarse Rye Bread is its semicircular shape, which is formed during baking as oven bottom bread. This also accounts for the high proportion of a strong, shiny crust with an intense flavour. Visible light-coloured specks of unswollen coarse grain particles in the crumb are considered typical. Since the classic production as oven bottom bread requires special care and expertise, baking is now sometimes done in semi-circular baking tins. The special crust properties are lost in the process.

In Denmark, you can find a wide variety of different types of bread with coarse grain content. These are characterised by particularly good swelling of the raw materials and thus a particularly moist crumb. There are many creative recipes with high-quality raw materials such as oilseeds, nuts, but also carrots and potatoes.