So, I screwed this up in all sorts of ways. And the great thing is: it's still delicious.
I set out to bake a Riga rye -- which, done right, should be sleek, dark-crusted, & high-rise (here's Ilya's fantastic bake for comparison.) So what went wrong?
Well, just about everything:
- I was worried about leaving my pale malt scald in the oven at 65C while I was at work. So two hours after scalding, I mixed everything together (scald and sourdough sponge) and left it on the counter as I went about my day. This probably meant that the pale rye malt didn't activate. Fourteen hours later, when I got back to the bread, the mix had relaxed and grown and had a strange but enticing sweet n sour flavor. So I moved forward.
- I decided to add yeast to the final dough -- but all I found were some dirty packets of active dry in the fridge. Though they were well within their use-by dates, the bloom on the packet I opened was awfully feeble -- so the yeast spike likely accomplished little, if anything. Also, I found I had underestimated the hydration of my sponge -- and needed to add maybe 50g of water to get the final dough to come together. Indeed, in hindsight, it feels like it might have been useful to add even more water.
- I preheated the oven to 260C (Rus Brot calls for an initial blast at 300C but this was as high as I felt comfortable pushing the oven) but I worried about baking it straight on a sheet plan because I feared the pan would warp. Instead, I kept the sheet pan over the Dutch Oven I baked in (because the handle on the Dutch Oven was one of those old plastic tops that would melt at that temp) ... This no doubt impeded the airflow and meant that the DO never got up to temp.
- I baked it for 10 minutes in that underheated DO, with the sheet pan over it (the recipe didn't call for steam...so why did I do this? I have no idea), then removed the pan, turned the heat down to 190C and baked it for an additional 30 minutes.
So: this rye awry is definitely not a Riga rye ... yet, in spite of my best efforts to make it a total failure, it's super-flavorful and I'm enjoying eating it.
Rob
Every story with its twists and turns brings out a different character of rye. I, too, make all sorts of adjustments to recipes as I go; it's meant to be fun. Glad it turned out delicious.
-Lin
thx, Lin. baking bread is a story you can eat ... how great is that
If you are making scalds on a regular basis you really should invest in a temperature controller. Not that they are expensive.
"If you are making scalds on a regular basis you really should invest in a temperature controller."
You raise an interesting point, Suave; I think you are impying that the scald should have a holding time at maybe 150F or so, after making it. How long would you suggest?
I imagine many bakers would just pour boiling water on the flour, mix and leave to cool (as I have often done!) - but perhaps this isn't the right way to do it. I guess in a bakery, things would be different, because the bulk of the scald would keep it hotter for longer.
Lance
Indeed, Lance, most of the recipes (Rus Brot/The Rye Baker, etc) call for keeping a pale rye malt scald in a steady 65C/150F environment for the entire time.
Rob
I used to do boiling water, and advocated it, and actually gotten good enough at it that the scald would convert more often that it would cook into a porridge. However some 10 years ago I saw the light and switched to exact temperature control, and ever since I mix the scald at ~40-50 °C, pop it into water bath and hold for whatever the recipe the recipe calls for + a bit more to account for the time it takes the scald to warm up. So maybe up to 2.5 hours if the recipe call for 2. With a bread like this, where the original chart calls for 3-5 hours hold and 5-8 hours cooling I tend to take longer holding time and extend by about half of cooling time, resulting in 5 + 3-4, 8-9 hours of hold at 65 °C.
A bit of an aside, as I know Rob's recipe is for Riga rye, but just to muse on the subject of scalds, I get the impression that scalds in Germany & Austria, usually called Brühstück, are of the simple boiling water version; not the same as the Eastern European/Russian (and maybe Scandinavian?) type with malt sugar creation stand. However the Germans also have the Aromastück, often with added malt, that does have the "mashing" stand.
Lance
interesting, Lance. Do you think Brühstück/Aromastück corresponds to the non-diastatic/diastatic uses of malt?
Rob
Certainly I can't see much starch conversion going on in the Brühstück - the time spent at "mashing" temperature must be pretty minimal. Plus the boiling water hitting the flour (or some of it) will tend to denature the enzymes.
Regarding the Aromastück, yes, diastatic malt and lots of starch conversion, but I think it might work to some extent without malt because rye has a lot of enzymes.
Lance
I would not be so sure about that. Rye is not what it used to be 50-60 years go - there've been significant attempts to breed varieties with lower enzyme content, and falling numbers are reaching the wheat range. I see that in practice - I have book from the 50-ies that says that rye will self-convert to the tune of 35-40%, and these days I simply don't scald American flour without white malt, because I've seen flour not convert no matter how well I control the temperature.
re: cooking rye flour into a porridge - it exists outside of the German technique you describe, but where I've seen it it was used for feeding starters.
interesting, suave, what would be the point of less enzymatic rye? Why would breeders want it?
Rob
My understanding is that enzyme content and propensity to sprout go hand in hand, so less enzymatic rye grain may keep better. Also the higher the falling number the less is the need to acidify the dough, so where in the olden times a baker needed to stick to convoluted multi-step procedures, newer varieties can be used with much simpler procedures, and I imagine you can use much higher percentages of rye without needing any sour at all.
that'd be so boring...I like it that rye need wrangling.
Rye isn't really all that complicated. Not unless you decide to make it so.
I agree. But retail bakers in NY must think it is. I haven't found a single good rye bread here, even in artisan bakeries.
Not even if you venture into Russian/Ukranian/Polish stores?
honestly, yes. Obviously, I haven't been everywhere. But what I've found is pretty depressing. Please, if anyone knows a good NYC rye bakery, let me know.
Perhaps a difference between European and American ryes?
Regarding cooked flour pastes, in the UK, especially Scotland, a product called Parisian barm was created. It was a mixture of a barley malt sweet wort, hop liquor and a cooked wheatflour paste, then seeded with some stock ferment. So a similar use to the "cooked porridge" you mention.
Lance
I think it has less to do with US vs European rye varieties as growers on the both sides of the ocean have access to the same seeds, and more with the manufacturing, as in milling and baking, culture. On one side we have graded and standardized flours milled to precise set of parameters, and on the other we can't decide whether medium refers to extraction rate or particle size.
... my apt is really tiny & -- perhaps to my detriment -- I'm not a gadget guy
What a crazy lovely story, thanks for writing about it. I think your failures are way more successful than mine!
-Jon
Thanks, Jon. I lucked out this time. I just haven't posted about my total failures yet.