Hello,
If I replace wheat flour with rye flour in a cake dough recipe, will the dough be stickier?
I have a recipe with wheat flour, water, spices, sugar, and raising agents.
If I replace wheat flour with rye flour and leave everything else unchanged, will the dough be stickier?
Regards
Rye flour will make a batter or dough stickier, and if used in large amounts, it will produce a dense, heavy cake that is unlikely to be edible. Rye contains significantly less gluten-forming protein than wheat. Wheat has glutenin and gliadin, which form a strong, elastic dough. Rye has secalins, which do not form a cohesive gluten network. Instead, rye’s structure comes largely from pentosans, water-absorbing carbohydrates that form a gel when hydrated. This gel gives rye dough its sticky, pasty texture, rather than the elasticity seen in wheat dough. Rye is so sticky that I recently changed my sourdough starter from a 50/50 rye and medium-protein white flour blend to 50/50 whole wheat and higher-protein white flour.
To incorporate rye into a cake while keeping it tender and edible, replace no more than 10–20% of the wheat flour with light rye flour. Avoid medium or dark rye flours. And since pentosans absorb a lot of water, you will also need to increase the liquid slightly for proper batter consistency.
There’s nothing wrong with experimenting in baking, and I always encourage it. However, some outcomes are predictable based on known baking science. In the case of cake, an all-rye cake will be dense, gummy, and inedible, making the effort and ingredients likely to go to waste. By working within known parameters, such as a small substitution of light rye, you can explore rye’s flavor without sacrificing the very characteristics that define a good cake.
