- Season
- Available all year; rye is harvested in summer, but the flour is stocked continuously
- Price
- Low
- Nutrition per 100 g
- 349 kcal
- 10.9 g protein
- 1.5 g fat
- 75.4 g carbs
Rye Bread Flour
Pantry staples
Rye Bread Flour
Mouka žitná chlebová is the Czech dark rye flour for bread, usually sold as T 960, and it is the rye flour in the everyday Czech rye-wheat sourdough loaf. Czech food law (vyhláška 18/2020 Sb.) divides rye flour into two milled types.
In practice
How to store
- On the counter
Keep it in a cool, dry, dark place away from strong-smelling foods, because flour picks up odours. Once open, move it to an airtight container to keep out moisture and pantry moths. Use it by the best-before date.
- In the fridge
Not necessary. In a warm kitchen, or if you use the flour slowly, an airtight container in the fridge helps it stay fresh longer.
- In the freezer
It freezes well in an airtight bag for several months, and freezing also kills any insect eggs. Let it come back to room temperature before opening, so condensation does not form.
How to choose
Look for 'žitná chlebová', 'žitná tmavá' or 'T 960' on the pack. 'Žitná světlá' or 'výražková' is the light rye type, and 'žitná celozrnná' is wholegrain rye. Both behave differently and are not the same product. Check the best-before date. Rye bread flour keeps for less time than white wheat flour, and Czech packs usually allow about four to six months from milling. Buy from a shop with good turnover or straight from a mill shop. The flour should be fine, dry and free-flowing, grey-white with a slight greenish-blue cast. It should smell of clean flour, not musty or rancid.
What to swap in
Best swap
Wholegrain rye flour (žitná celozrnná), which tastes even stronger and absorbs a little more water
In a pinch
Light rye flour (žitná světlá / výražková) for a milder, paler loaf; adding some wholemeal wheat flour brings back a little colour and depth
Preparation
Rye flour cannot be kneaded into a stretchy dough like wheat, so the method differs. For the classic Czech loaf, mix it with wheat bread flour (pšeničná chlebová) and acidify it, usually with rye sourdough (žitný kvas). The dough is sticky, so work it with wet hands or a dough scraper rather than adding lots of extra flour. To start a sourdough, mix the flour with water in equal weights and feed it daily until it is lively. Raw flour is not a ready-to-eat food: do not eat raw dough or batter, and wash your hands and surfaces after handling it.
Don't toss it
Keep a little of each sourdough batch as the starter for the next loaf, so nothing has to be made from scratch. Use stale rye bread for croutons, breadcrumbs or a Czech bread soup.
In the kitchen
Cooking
Rye bread flour is used mainly in baked bread. The best-known use is the Czech rye-wheat loaf (konzumní chléb), leavened with rye sourdough and usually flavoured with caraway. It is also used for darker rolls and mixed-grain loaves. Home bakers use it to start and feed rye sourdough, and add it to gingerbread and other spiced baking for colour and flavour. Rye doughs need longer, gentler baking than wheat: a hot start followed by a lower oven temperature. Leave rye bread to cool and set for several hours before slicing, because the crumb is sticky while warm.
Goes well with
- Caraway
- Wheat Bread Flour
- Rye Sourdough
- Fennel Seed
- Coriander Seed
- Salt
- Butter
- Lard
- Onion
- Sauerkraut
- Smoked Meat
- Cheese
What it is
Mouka žitná chlebová is the Czech dark rye flour for bread, usually sold as T 960, and it is the rye flour in the everyday Czech rye-wheat sourdough loaf. Czech food law (vyhláška 18/2020 Sb.) divides rye flour into two milled types. The light type is žitná světlá, also called výražková. The dark type is žitná tmavá, also called chlebová. The dark type may contain at most 1.10 % mineral matter (ash) in dry matter and at most 15 % moisture. It has a set colour: grey-white with a greenish-blue tint. The number on the pack, T 960, means about 0.96 g of ash (960 mg) remains when 100 g of flour dry matter is burned. It is milled fine and smooth (hladká). Czech guild standards require at least 96 % of it to pass a 257 µm sieve. It is sold in 1 kg packs by mills such as Babiččina volba, by organic brands such as Probio, and in larger sacks for home bakers.
How it tastes
Raw, it smells of grain and is faintly sweet. Baked, it gives a deeper, earthy, slightly bitter flavour than wheat. A sourdough loaf made with it tastes pleasantly sour, and caraway goes with it naturally. The crumb is denser, moister and darker than a wheat crumb.
Common questions
What does T 960 mean on Czech rye flour?
Is žitná chlebová the same as wholegrain rye flour?
Can I bake bread from rye bread flour alone?
Is rye flour gluten-free?
How long does rye bread flour keep?
Can I eat raw dough made with rye flour?
Deep dive
2 min read
Varieties
Žitná chlebová / tmavá (T 960)
: the subject of this entry. It is the dark legal type, with no more than 1.10 % ash in dry matter, and is used for everyday bread.
Žitná světlá / výražková
: the light legal type, with no more than 0.65 % ash in dry matter. It is white and milder, and is used for lighter rye baking.
Žitná celozrnná
: wholegrain rye flour milled from the whole kernel. It is darker, coarser and stronger in flavour, and is a separate product from chlebová.
Organic rye bread flour (BIO)
: the same flour type, made from organically farmed rye and labelled with the EU organic logo.
Foreign relatives (different products)
: German Type 997 or 1150 rye flours and the American categories light, medium and dark rye and pumpernickel are graded on their own national systems. Their numbers do not match the Czech legal types exactly.
History
Rye has long been a staple bread grain in Central Europe, and the sour rye-wheat loaf is still Czechia's standard everyday bread. Today, Czech regulation vyhláška 18/2020 Sb. sets the two rye flour types and their limits. It replaced the earlier regulation 333/1997 Sb.
Science
Rye behaves differently from wheat in dough. Its proteins do not build a strong, elastic gluten network. Instead, rye holds its structure through pentosans (arabinoxylans), which bind a lot of water and make the dough sticky. Rye also has high natural amylase activity, which breaks down starch during baking. Without acid, this can give a gummy, collapsed crumb. Acidifying the dough with sourdough slows the enzymes and sets a sliceable crumb. It also produces the lactic and acetic acids behind the sour flavour. The T number tells you how much of the grain's outer layers ended up in the flour. A higher number means more ash, a darker colour and a stronger flavour.
Sourcing and ethics
Most rye bread flour on Czech shelves is milled by domestic mills, both large industrial ones and small regional ones. Many of the small mills sell directly from shops at the mill. Organic versions carry the EU organic logo. Rye can be infected by ergot, a fungus that replaces grains with dark sclerotia. Under EU law, mills must clean the grain and keep ergot sclerotia and ergot alkaloids below legal limits. Rye contains gluten-type proteins, so this flour is not suitable for people with coeliac disease. It must be declared as a gluten-containing cereal under EU allergen labelling rules.