Altus & formula

Hi Ron.

Altus is “old” rye bread cut into small pieces, soaked in water until saturated and wrung out. It was originally a way for bakers to re-use bread they hadn’t sold. "Waste not. Want not." However, it does make for a more tender and flavorful bread and has become traditional. It is optional. I keep hunks of leftover rye bread in a plastic bag in my freezer to use as altus.

Most recipes that I've seen (all for rye breads) that call for altus use about 1 cup of altus per 1 lb loaf.

David

Altus, Barm, and Cooked Cereals

Barm has yet to join (or maybe it already has) my long list of bread ingredients.  Barm and Cooked cereals are similar only barm has the addition of yeast and time allowing it to ferment.  (I suspect someone was tired of porridge and tried to turn it into ale but discovered "barm."  Those of you adding leftover cooked oatmeal or mush may now be temped to "Barm it."  Anyway...)  These ingredients are known to add moisture and flavor as pre-gelantanized grain products.  Adding boiled water to flour?  Similar effect.   Altus or old bread is also gelantanized, and I believe has a similar influence on the dough.   The phrase "waste not want not" does not in my mind pay proper tribute to what altus really contributes to a dough.  

I think it is important to add that altus cubes & bread crumbs,  should be in good condition and free of mold or foreign growth, void of "off" smells and have a pleasing aroma to be used in cooking and baking.

I was cleaning out my fridge (off smells...  how many times has that led to discoveries?) and found amoung other things half a two week old sourdough rye loaf.  It must have gone in one day after baking.... accidently.  It was perfectly good, wraped tightly but a bit dry.  So I cut it up thinking I'd push the limits of altus.  I cut up the loaf into small cubes and crumbed them soft in the blender.  When I was done, I had half a bowl of wonderfully aromatic, fantastic soft sour crumbs that bless my rye loving soul, just must have reached out and touched heaven.  I felt like crawling into the bowl breathing crumbs all day long.   Well fine, I could do that, really I could, shrink myself down, bla bla bla, but... the room was already fragrant and...   I needed bread.   You know, stuff to bite into for lunches.

So... I added about a cup of water one tablespoon bread spices and stirred, letting the crumbs sit half an hour.  Then I added more water (about 400g) 100g rye flour, 100g left over starter and let it sit another half hour.  Stirred in 1 teaspoon instant yeast (I already had the sourdough flavor)  1 teaspoon salt,  and high gluten flour utill it pulled together and made a soft dough.  Covered and left it another half an hour.  (I'd say the finished dough was my standard 1-2-3 only I skewed the "1")  I turned out a very wet dough and added flour as I kneaded.  I figured the high gluten flour needed some work to distribute the flour mass thru the crumb mass.  I planned on using a form to bake.  

I treated the dough like a straight one, letting it double in a bowl.  Then knocking it down ( I wanted a fine crumb) and adding a little AP flour to control the dough (darn sticky stuff) and shape into a "round" and placed in a round form.   Because of the crumbs and my eager tightening of the the skin using flour, the dough had a small 1/4" deep rip in the final proof.  I scored with a wet scissors and baked it for 45 minutes.  Cooled down it had a soft outer crust -- got bagged overnight.

The loaf came out "medium"  not as firm as the old rye loaf but closer to fluffy, soft crust, medium to fine uniform crumb, no big holes.   I managed to get an end for breakfast before the loaf went off to the office.  Very tasty nutty lightly chewy.

Mini O Crumbs

they make kvass, which is a mild rye-wheat beer. break up the old bread and put it in a large pot filled with water. bring the whole thing to a boil, let it cool to blood temperature and add some yeast, then cover it and keep it in a warm place for 2-3 days. Strain out the old bread, store it in the fridge (if it lasts that long) and enjoy a glass every now and again.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

Back in 2007 I took a rye bread class given by Jeff Hamelman.  I won't get into quantities, but one bread we made was a flax seed rye bread that had a good bit of altus in it.  He soaked chunks of old bread in water overnight,along with the flax seeds.

Chunks?  Yes.  About an inch on a side cubes.  They were intact, but soft, the next morning.  He didn't bother cutting off the crust or turning them into crumbs.  He told us we could use just about any bread, but a dark bread is better than a light bread and a rye bread is better than a wheat bread for this.

The water, chopped up bread and flax seed all went into the mixer.  A few seconds later, there was no trace of the old bread.

While I have your attention, barm is an often misused word.  With the exception of Spillar and Reinhart, every use of the term I've seen in the professional  press has indicated barm was the process of using fresh and active beer yeast from a brewery to raise bread.  It is not, as some people have suggested, a sourdough practice.  It is the anti-sourdough.   It was the process that probably led to the development of cultivated yeast.  The most recent widespread use of barm was in England.  This makes sense, since they use top fermenting ale yeast which will raise bread more quickly than a bottom fermenting lager yeast which is more commonly used on the continent.  There's nothing wrong with barm, but it ain't sourdough, it ain't porridge, it's beer yeast.

Mike

The confusion might come from the German word:  Bärm, plural Bärme, that is translated as: barm, yeast, leaven in the New Cassel's German Dictionary.  English has a klepto vocabulary, and the spoken language at home for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was German.  No surprise that the word crept in.  I've heard it used in England to mean both beer yeast and leavening agent of just about any sort.  Wonder if it matters much?  Starter works just fine for me.  In some parts of Italy, I've heard the term madre acido to refer to the mother culture.

CJ

Altus amount is much higher in bread dumplings. 

There is an Austrian dumpling recipe that asks for cut up white bread.  Then sprinkled with a mixture of water & egg to moisten the outside of the bread cubes.  Flour is then tossed in until the cubes have a little bit of dough around them.  This mixture is pressed together with wet hands to form baseball size balls and then boiled in salt water.  The resulting bread is called Semmelknödel  and served mainly with roasts. 

The cold bread balls are served with roast left overs, cold cuts or recut and browned with onions and scrambled eggs.  This goes to show that altus levels can be quite high, the technique changes a little as size changes.  Sort of like french toast where the larger structure and size of the altus plays a larger role.  The outside surface bakes/fries/steams to set and holds in the steam refreshing the old bread with heat and moisture.

Mini

Hi all,  In addition to adding to the flavor profile, I believe pouring boiling water over the altus cubes gelatinizes the starch, which when added to a final dough will soften the crumb in the finished bread.  It may also make the dough more extensible, thin the matrix walls around the gas bubbles and add volume.  On the effect of using gelatinized starches in wheat bread, I came across this article the other day.  https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/fstr/11/2/11_2_194/_pdf/-char/en

Happy experimenting.

bread crumbs 15%, flour 85%

But I never have any left over bread and can’t bring myself to bake a loaf and leave it sit for that purpose. I tried once, but my wife saw the extra loaf and gave it to our neighbor.