Rye flour is used in Poland for baking bread. Or we should say "was used", because there is a trend, which came to Poland from the west, to bake bread from ready-made mixtures, only from wheat flour, but with addition of various grains, and very often peas, to conceal the lack of rye flour.
Rye flour is heavy and bread with an addition of rye flour has lower yield than wheat bread. Lower yield means that while from 1 kg of wheat flour we get 2.5 kg of wheat bread, , from 1 kg of rye flour we get only 1.2 kg of rye bread. For this reason rye bread or bread with a significant addition of rye flour must cost almost twice as much as wheat bread. If it costs as much as wheat bread, this means that it is coloured bread made of wheat flour.
When we buy bread we look at the colour, and we think that every dark bread is a "wholemeal" bread, because that is what rye bread was called in the past. However, when to take a closer look at the label (if there is any), and you will see that very often bread does not contain any rye flour, and if there is any, it is mentioned only to confuse you.
What is essential when buying rye bread:
Rye flour and bread are of grey and brown colour, not golden brown, brown or chocolate brown,
Rye bread is not fluffy, but dense and quite hard,
The price of rye bread should be significantly higher than wheat bread.
Because rye flour is coarse and heavy, rye bread cannot contain yeast. It must be made with sourdough, so this is a real bread, not a "bread-like" product.
The correct proportions of rye and wheat flour in a bread should be: 1/3 of rye flour, 2/3 of wheat flour.
