November 10, 2021 - 8:10am
Using "solod" in Ginsberg's "The Rye Baker"?
Hi!
I procured some "solod" (fermented rye malt) and thought about using it in place of rye malt (1:1 substitution) in Ginsberg's recipes. I chose the "Slow-Baked Finnish Rye". The bread came out fine but a little bitter. I wonder if it could've been due to using the fermented rye malt? It also looks like this recipe calls for more rye malt than other recipes.
Before I use it again, does anybody know if any recipes from this book that call for any rye malt could work with solod? I'm thinking possibly breads from Russia or Belarus but I don't know enough to be sure. Can anyone more familiar with this chime in?
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The addition rate of "proper" Solod red rye malt is only about 5% in most Borodinsky recipes, and that's a big flavoured bread.
I would imagine using it at higher rates in that, or other recipes, might give an unbalanced flavour.
Lance
For anyone curious about solod, here's a backgrounder
https://www.beetsandbones.com/russian-red-rye-malt-solod/
@happycat:
That's a cool page! Thanks!
@albacore:
5%? This particular recipe, Slow-Baked Finnish Rye, calls for 18.5% red rye malt. So that's a substantial amount. I'll get the proper malt for this recipe and make the bread with it to see what differences I notice. Do you have a proper recipe that uses solod?
I think Stanley Ginsberg used to frequent these forums. Does anyone know if he's still active here? Maybe he could shed some light on my question.
Bitcat, here is a link to a Borodinsky I baked earlier this year. There's also a long thread on red rye malt here. I link to a lot of Russian rye bread recipes in it, mainly different versions of Borodinsky - they might be worth a look.
Lance
18.5% red rye malt is a lot! Have a little taste of the malt - it has some bitter flavour, so adding too much will make the bread a little bitter probably. (btw if you try it and it's very bitter, it's probably not very good quality)
I'm not sure whether they use a similar fermented rye malt in Finland really, but wouldn't be surprised if they did. Then my guess would be that Ginsberg's recipe might have an increased amount of malt to account for not using real red rye malt, but just roasted rye malt, and to still achieve strong flavour. Regardless, if you want to use red rye malt, I wouldn't go above 5% suggested above, unless you really know what you are doing. You can balance it a little with some malt extract or another sweetener. Scald also improves rye bread a lot, as suggested above, but if it's not part of the recipe you want to follow, don't just add it.
@ albacore:
Thanks for the links! They look very interesting. I have some reading to do...
@ Ilya Flyamer
I'll make this bread again and I'll try 5% solod and then the called for 18.5% red rye malt to see how they differ.
Thanks all for the suggestions!
I noticed one source for Borodinsky bread insisted solod was necessary vs unfermented red rye malt.
https://blog.benchandbowl.com/2020/08/07/borodinsky-1934/
So I made my own quickie solod... wow... what an amazing aroma from the fermentation plus sweetness and rye. Smelled great during baking to finish it off and during grinding to make the powder.
Can't wait to try.
Awesome! That web page has the look of a long-lost recipe! I've never made a Borodinsky and there seem to be a lot of recipes floating around. But this one is legit and I'll make this one eventually.
Looking at the page from the book, one question comes to mind: do you know if there is a repository of these old books? I'm thinking in the Soviet Union and the Soviet Block countries everything was centrally managed. Bakeries were no different and there were manuals with approved recipes and I think it would be great if those recipes could be found and preserved. Such as this Borodinsky.
I don't know anything helpful about books. I'm just working from web sites of enthusiasts.
The name for the "centrally approved" recipes you are looking for is GOST - ГОСТ in Russian (which means "State Standard").
Potentially a more useful source than GOST, is the foundational book "350 varieties of bread and baked goods" by Plotnikov and Kolesnikov (1940). It has actual recipes, not just "standards" for the result, and afaik a lot of GOSTs were based on this book. But to my knowledge it hasn't been translated into English. If you can read Russian, it's easy to find online for free.
Similarly, the book where the recipe above is from, is also easily available online if you search in Russian...
A lot of bread recipes from GOST and the book are available on Rus Brot's youtube channel, which I highly recommend. He also has a recipe for the real Red Rye Malt / "solod", by the way. Some of his recipes are in English (with English subtitles), he has a separate playlist for those: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrSg5cYpPtU-8Nd_ljnhXHLpaXe9oH5jN
Thank you for this great info! I’ll see if I can track those down. My Russian is quite rusty but I should be able to pick it up at least from the baking perspective. I won’t let language to stand in the way of delicious results! Speaking of which, maybe I’ll take another crack at German…
Let me know if you need any help translating from Russian! German is another useful language for this kind of rye recipes, some very nice German-language bread baking websites/blogs have been shared somewhere here... I remember https://www.ploetzblog.de/ and http://www.homebaking.at/ (oh looks like the latter has an English version too!)