mike avery

Another, and hopefully last, set of questions about malted rye.

When the Russian recipes call for malted rye, are they calling for the
grain or an extract?

If the grain, how is it prepared for use in bread making?

Thanks,
Mike

ron

The books I own specify the grain. The most common recipe for
Borodinsky bread specifies 80% whole rye flour, 5% "red" rye malt, and
15% wheat flour. That's the extent of the flour and it includes the
malt.

"Red" refers to fermented, or toasted rye malt, which loses its
diastatic properties due to the heat treatment. The untoasted malt is
called "white," and can be either rye or barley malt. Different breads
call for one or the other. Borodinsky calls for fermented "red" rye
malt, while Riga bread takes unfermented "white" malt.

The malting procedure is not usually described in Russian bread books.
I have a very detailed description in a book about kvas production
(Proizvodstvo kvasa, V.V. Rudol'f, 1982, p. 56), since kvas relies on
rye malt of either the "red" or "white" type. Rather than translate the
long chapter on malting, I can tell you that it comes down to soaking
the grain, sprouting it, and stopping the procedure at the right time.
In the case of red malt, a heat treatment is given at the end of the
procedure and loses most or all of its diastatic properties. White malt
is simply dried.

I have made my own rye malt and used it to flavor bread. You just soak,
sprout, and toast at around 55-60 C. They describe a huge industrial
quantity, so the toasting goes on for days, but I do a tiny household
amount (maybe one pound), so my toasting goes quickly. I aim for
non-diastatic red rye malt by holding it at 60 C. or above. It conforms
to the recipe and does not pose a danger of converting too much dough
starch to sugar.

Actually, the ground red rye malt that I make smells a lot like G****
Nuts cereal. If you want an easy way out, I guess you could grind G****
Nuts to equal the 5% of the malt in the Borodinsky recipe. But it's
more fun to sprout your own. It makes your house smell like a brewery.

Ron

jonathan kandell

I use maris otter 2 fow barley for borodinsky--it too smells and tastes
like g**** nuts. (I wonder if it's "red" or "white"?) I tried some
wheat malt, which smelled more g****-nutty--but the flavor wasn't as
pronounced after scalding.

ron

I start by buying the whole grain, but be prepared for the volume to
swell at least 5 times or more, so don't place the grain up to the top
in a container--leave lots of room.

What you essentially are doing is starting the root of a seed, as would
be the case for any seed you'd plant in your garden. But, instead of
soil, you're doing it only with water. The rye, wheat, or barley sprout
is just the root of the plant.

I start by soaking the grain with room temperature water (cold from the
tap) for several hours (up to 8 or so). Strain off the water through a
sieve, colander, etc. and let the sprouts remain in a covered
container. Temperature controls the rate of growth, but I'm not fussy
about that and just use room temperature. Twice a day I rinse the
sprouts with cold water from the tap. I let the water cover them for a
minute or so and then strain it off, as in the first step.You want to
make sure that they always are moist, but that there is not a pool of
water at the bottom.

When the root is of the size you want (I can't say exactly--maybe 1/2
inch), rinse, drain and toast in the oven at around 150 F.

They create several layers in my oven pan and the top layer dries out
first, so you have to stir them to make sure that the middle and lower
layers also dry out.

When they're completely dry, cool at room temperature. When cool, you
can store them in a container. Eventually, you grind them like any
grain for use. You could add this flour to bread dough, use in a scald
(=zavarka), or make it into a kind of cookie, which will give you
home-made G**** Nuts when broken into bits.

You can find many internet websites for sprouting. Just search for
"sprouting" in Google.

Here is one such example from: http://chetday.com/sprouts.html, that
will work for wheat, rye, etc.

"Wheat, including Kamut and Spelt: Soak 8-14 hours, sprout 1-1.5 days.
Method: cloth or jar. Hard Winter wheat better than soft Spring wheat.
Wheat can get excessively sweet at 2+ days of sprouting. Spelt has nice
texture, but spelt and kamut are more expensive than ordinary wheat.
Wheat, rye, kamut, spelt, triticale can be used for grass also."

Ron

mary fisher

Thank you, that's given me something to work on. Mary

ron

By the way, if you are a regular user of coarse rye chops (i.e.
Schrot), you can now use your freshly made malt as a basis for Schrot
in Vollkornbrot. I thought about this, then could not resist running a
Google search on "Malzschrot" and "Vollkornbrot." E.g. "rustikales
Roggenmischbrot, welches durch die Malzflocken und den Malzschrot einen
besonders würzigen Geschmack aufweist," found on
http://www.geha-muehlen.de/shop/. (a rustic mixed rye, which displays
an especially spicy flavor thanks to malt flakes and crushed malt).

I haven't tried it yet, but just make your regular Vollkornbrot with
malt in place of the whole and crushed rye grains.

(I would have search for this in English, but I could not quite come up
with good seach equivalents for Malzschrot and Vollkornbrot.)

mary fisher

By the way, if you are a regular user of coarse rye chops (i.e.
Schrot), you can now use your freshly made malt as a basis for Schrot
in Vollkornbrot. I thought about this, then could not resist running a
Google search on "Malzschrot" and "Vollkornbrot." E.g. "rustikales
Roggenmischbrot, welches durch die Malzflocken und den Malzschrot einen
besonders würzigen Geschmack aufweist," found on
http://www.geha-muehlen.de/shop/. (a rustic mixed rye, which displays
an especially spicy flavor thanks to malt flakes and crushed malt).

I haven't tried it yet, but just make your regular Vollkornbrot with
malt in place of the whole and crushed rye grains.

(I would have search for this in English, but I could not quite come up
with good seach equivalents for Malzschrot and Vollkornbrot.)

If you're telling me this I admit that I don't understand a word of it:-)
I'm English, I live in England! But thanks anyway <G>

Mary

ron

Actually, it applies to anyone. I'm English-speaking and live in the
US, but I like Northern European rye breads, among them the German
Vollkornbrot and Russian Borodinsky. I also like to look at the Russian
and German language descriptions of these breads (perhaps since I'm a
linguist by profession).

As to the German Vollkornbrot (or whole grain bread), it's usually made
with a quantity of very coarsely ground rye and may have whole grains
as well. The coarsely ground rye and whole rye grains are usually not
malted, but it just occurred to me that one might use malted version of
them. So, if you malt your own and come into limitless supplies of
malt, you might also think of using the malt as ingredients in
Vollkornbrot, both in the form of coarsely ground malt (Schrot) and the
entire grains. I hope that's more comprehensible.

Ron

ron

Here's a link to an English language recipe for Vollkornbrot. It should
have been attributed to Dan Leader, but wasn't.

http://whatscookin.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=german&action=print&thread=1122176276

This should bring everyone up to speed about what Vollkornbrot is.

Ron

mary fisher

Thank you again, I'll try it. Mary