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August 28, 2009 - 10:09pm

dmsnyder

Pumpernickel Bread from George Greenstein's "Secrets of a Jewish Baker"

George Greenstein's “Secrets of a Jewish Baker” is a wonderful source for traditional New York-style Jewish baked goods. It has been criticized for giving ingredients in volume measurements only, though. I have previously provided Greenstein's formula for Jewish Sour Rye with ingredient weights, but I realized today that I had never done this for another of my favorite Greenstein breads – Pumpernickel. So, here is Greenstein's pumpernickel formula converted to weights.

This is Jewish pumpernickel. It is moist and chewy. It is not the dry, dense German-style pumpernickel. I make it generally as long loaves, as pictured. However, you can also make it as round loaves, in which case you should "dock" the loaves by making 6-10 holes in the top with a skewer or ice pick, rather than scoring them across with 3 slashes. You can also make this bread in loaf pans, in which case I would score them with a single slash along the center of the long axis.

The recipe that follows is taken from Secrets of a Jewish Baker, by George Greenstein. The ingredient amounts are both those Greenstein specifies and the ingredient weights I actually used. The procedures are adapted from Greenstein's.

Ingredients	Volume (per Greenstein)	Amount (per dmsnyder)
Warm water	1 cup	240 gms
Yeast	1 pkg active dry	7.5 gms instant
Rye sour	1 cup	250 gms
Altus (optional)	1 cup	1 cup
Pumpernickel color	4 tablespoons	1 tablespoon caramel color
Common (First Clear) flour	2 ½ to 3 ½ cups	350-400 gms
Pumpernickel flour	1 cup	115 gms
Salt	1 tablespoon	8 gms
Caraway seeds (optional)	1 tablespoon	Not used
Cornstarch solution	(see below)

Notes on ingredients:

1. Rye sour: This is a rye sourdough starter. You can make it from scratch. You also can easily convert a wheat flour sourdough starter to a rye sour by feeding a small amount of your existing starter with rye flour and refreshing it a couple of times.

2. Altus: This 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.

3. Pumpernickel color: This is really optional but is necessary to give the "black" color expected of pumpernickel. It also gives the bread a subtle bitter undertone without which it just doesn't taste "right." You can use 1 tablespoon of powdered caramel color, instant espresso cof

fee or cocoa powder. I use powdered caramel coloring from King Arthur’s Baker’s Catalogue.

4. Pumpernickel flour: This is whole grain, coarsely ground rye flour. You can use dark rye flour, but it won’t be quite the same. I get pumpernickel flour from King Arthur’s Baker’s Catalogue. Like other whole grains, it will spoil in time. I keep it in my freezer in a 1 gallon Ziploc bag.

5. Common flour: This is also known as first clear flour. Its definition gets into esoteric grain milling stuff, but it is necessary for authentic Jewish rye breads, including pumpernickel. It also makes wonderful sourdough breads as a substitute for bread flour or a mix of white and whole wheat flours. I get First Clear flour from King Arthur’s Baker’s Catalogue.

6. Cornstarch solution: Mix 1 ½ tablespoons of cornstarch in 1/4 cup cold water. Pour this into 1 cup of gently boiling water in a sauce pan, whisking constantly. Boil until slightly thickened. Set aside. It can be kept refrigerated for a few days in a sealed jar or covered bowl.

7. Caraway seeds: I don’t use them in pumpernickel, myself. You can add other things to pumpernickel, though, such as flax seeds (soaked overnight), sunflower seeds, raisins, minced onion.

Procedures

Mixing (by hand. See Note below for mixing with a stand mixer.)

In a large bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water to soften; stir to dissolve. (If using instant yeast, mix it with the flour, don’t dissolve it. Add the water to the rye sour and mix.) Add the rye sour, altus (if desired), pumpernickel color, pumpernickel flour, 2 ½ cups of common flour, and salt. Mix thoroughly until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and knead, adding small amounts of flour as needed. Make the dough a bit stiffer than normal, since this dough softens as it is kneaded. Knead the dough until it feels smooth and silky (5-8 minutes).

Note: I mix in a KitchenAid mixer. I put all the ingredients in the bowl and, using the paddle, mix well at Speed 1. Scrape the dough off the paddle and replace it with the dough hook. Knead at Speed 2 for about 8-10 minutes. If you do not use altus, the dough should form a ball on the hook and clean the sides of the bowl. With altus, even when an additional 50 gms of flour is added, the dough does not clean the bowl. I then hand knead until the dough is smooth and silky.

Fermenting

Shape the dough into a ball, place in a large oiled bowl, and turn to coat. Cover and let rise until doubled in size.

Shaping & Proofing

Punch out all the air, cut in half and shape into rounds, and let rest for 10 minutes.

Shape into round loaves, long loaves or pan loaves. If baking free form, place the two loaves on a baking sheet sprinkled with coarse cornmeal. (Or on parchment paper if baking on a stone, which I prefer.) Cover and proof until doubled in size. (About 90 minutes, or more depending on room temperature). Brush with cornstarch solution. Score the loaves across if long dock them if round. If using caraway, sprinkle seeds on the top of the loaves.

Baking

Bake with steam in a preheated 375F oven until tapping the bottom of the loaf produces a hollow sound (30-45 minutes). The internal temperature should be at least 190F. If the crust seems soft, bake 5-10 minutes more. (The crust should be very firm when you take the loaves out of the oven. It will soften as the bread cools.)

Note: I use a pizza stone for baking free form loaves. I heat it at least 1 hour before baking. I produce steam by preheating a cast iron skillet filled with lava rocks in the oven along with the stone and, right after putting my loaves in, pouring 1 cup of boiling water into the skillet. Be careful you don’t scald yourself with the steam!

Cooling

After baking, place on a rack to cool and brush again with the cornstarch solution. Let cool thoroughly before slicing and eating.

This type of pumpernickel is one of the breads we always had in the house when I was a child. I usually ate it un-toasted, spread with cream cheese. My grandmother ate it spread with sourcream. I think this pumpernickel is especially good with smoked fish or herring, and it is my favorite bread to eat with scrambled eggs.

Unfortunately, my wife isn't as fond of pumpernickel as I am, so I also made one of her favorites – the Cinnamon-Raisin-Walnut Bread from BBA.

David

Submitted to Yeastspotting

April 18, 2009 - 1:49pm

bassopotamus

Selling at farmer's markets

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong forum, but it didn't seem to fit anywhere else.

I have been baking fairly seriously at home for about 6 months, and my wife really wants to start selling at the local farmers markets. I am a little skeptical of the idea but wanted to at least do some background on the matter.

The big challenge, as I see it, is that I haven't really baked in quantity before and we don't have commercial grade equipment. Average sized home oven (with quite good temp control at least), kitchen aid pro 600 mixer, which I'm pretty sure is not up to many baking in quantity tasks. That said, I think we can get around the mixing issues by at least starting with no knead (but for a few stretch and fold) recipies which wouldn't overtax the mixer. Since it only involves about 2 minutes of mixing per batch, I kind of figure the two of us could assembly line it. I've got a great sourdough and good baguette/boule recipe. If we were to turn a profit, I'd probably sink money back into either an Electrolux DLX or maybe a used 5qt hobart. The bigger concern is the oven. It will do about 2 boules per rack, but I have not yet tried baking on both racks at once (I think it would be OK for this) but will need to try it later this week.If we could do 4 boules at a time, I can see baking about 50 loaves in around 6 hours which wouldn't be awful.

SO, a series of questions

1. WHat is the best way to store loaves, and what is a reasonable hold time. I see baking a bunch friday evening and selling saturday morning.

2. It seems desireable to get flour prices down. I use king arthur at home, which right now is 4 bucks for 5 lbs at the local grocery, or about a buck a loaf. Other material costs are negligable (water is more or less free, I got a ton of yeast at sams, my starter is going like a champ). Unfortunately, our Sam's does not sell any bread flour at all. Not sure if there are other ways to get bread flour in quantity easily.

3. I am figuring, supply wise, I need several more large rising containers, plastic bags, and twist ties for selling the bread, maybe some kind of homemade logo to establish a bit of a "brand". Am I missing anything here

4. Would baking stones be an advantage here? I currently have been baking on an old air bake cookie sheet and getting great results, but I'm wondering if more mass in the oven would be desireable.

5. What kind of quantity would be a sensible amount to sell? I'm thinking 20-30 loaves for starts to see where that goes, but I don't have any idea. We have a series of farmer's markets around here, and they are pretty well attended, but I don't know what the market looks like. I'm also not sure what fees are involved with getting space (I've got calls out). Seems like this and ingredients would be the main costs.

6. What about pricing? As it stands now, a loaf has about a buck of ingredients in it. The packaging (based on sources I've seen) works out to negligable per loaf, other main cost would be the cost of the space and a little bump on the electricity. I'm thinking I would probably need to sell pound loaves at around 4 bucks a pop for this to make any sense, but am not sure what the market would bear. I know a pound loaf of quasi artisan bread at Target and the local grocery goes for about 4 bucks, so that doesn't seem unreasonable. Don't need to get rich, but don't want to work for free either.

7. What else am I missing here?

Thanks in advance

justin

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Whole Wheat Sourdough English Muffins

JMonkey

My daughter basically lives on these for breakfast. I save up old starter over the week in the fridge and make these both during the week and over the weekend. Super easy, and they freeze very well. Simply split and freeze. When you want one, pop it directly in the toaster from the freezer. I learned this recipe with volumetric measures, and never bothered to convert to grams. I adapted this recipe and converted it to whole wheat from a posting at The Fresh Loaf from KJKnits.

Ingredients

Sourdough starter: 1/2 cup (stiff or wet, makes no difference)
Milk: 1 cup if you use wet starter; 1.25 cups if you use stiff
Whole wheat flour: 2 cups
Honey: 1 Tbs
Salt: ¾ tsp
Baking soda: 1 tsp

Semolina flour or cornmeal, for dusting

Dissolve the starter into the milk and then add the flour. Stir to combine, cover with a plate or plastic, and leave out for 8 hours or overnight. It’ll be pretty wet – don’t worry, it’ll firm up by morning.

The next morning, add the honey, salt and baking soda and mix well. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for a few minutes with wet hands. With your fingers, flatten it out to 3/4" thick and cut with a biscuit cutter or a drinking glass into rounds. Reflatten the scraps to make additional muffins. You’ll get 10-12 muffins. Place muffins on a surface dusted with semolina, cornmeal or flour cover and let them rise for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Spray griddle or skillet lightly with spray oil or add a little butter. (Actually, if it’s nonstick, you may not need any grease at all.) Heat to medium high and cook muffins for about 5 minutes on each side, or until browned on the top and bottom and cooked through. These have great griddle spring and rise quite a bit. They’re done when the sides are firm.

Split with a fork and toast if you like. As noted above, they freeze very well.

Overnight Whole Grain Sourdough with Wheat, Spelt & Rye

JMonkey

This may be my favorite hearth bread. When made well, it has an open crumb, which is unusual for 100% whole grain breads, and a deliciously sour and nutty flavor.

Overall Formula
Whole wheat flour: 60%
Whole spelt flour: 30%
Whole rye flour: 10%
Water: 75%
Salt: 2%

5% of the flour is in the starter, which could be whole wheat, whole rye or whole spelt, and can be 60% hydration or 100% hydration.

Ingredients
Whole wheat flour: 300 grams or 2 generous cups
Whole spelt flour: 150 grams or 1 generous cup
Whole rye flour: 50 grams or a generous 1/3 cup
Whole grain starter: 40 grams if stiff (a dough ball about the size of a golf ball); 50 grams if wet (about 3-4 Tbs)
Water: 375 grams or 1.5 cups + 1 Tbs
Salt: 10 grams or 1 and 3/8 tsp

Mixing
Dissolve the starter into the water, and then add the salt. Mix the flours together well, and add to the water. Mix until everything is hydrated.

Dough development and the first rise
However you develop the dough, it’ll need to rise at room temperature for 8-10 hours. Use the wet finger test to see whether it’s fully risen in the morning.

Shaping
Be gentle. You want to retain as many of those air bubbles as possible. Rounds and batards are the traditional shapes.

Second rise
You can let it rise for another 2 to 3 hours at room temperature. You can also speed things up (and increase sourness) by placing the dough on an upturned bowl in the bottom of a picnic cooler, throwing a cup of boiling water in the bottom and covering it quickly. After an hour, throw another cup of hot water in. The rise should only take a couple of hours this way.

Baking
Score the bread as you like. Hash marks are traditional for rounds, and batards usually take a single, bold stroke down the center or a couple of baguette-style slashes.

While you can certainly bake this bread on a cookie sheet, it benefits from a stone and some steam, or a covered baker. However you do it, bake at 450 degrees for about 40 minutes.

January 6, 2009 - 12:47am

Janedo

French and American flour/ The 123 formula

Hi all! I've been one busy person what with the holidays, kids, etc. But now life is settling into a more calm and regular rhythm. So, I'm BACK!

Over the holidays, Steve from Breadcetera, and I did a flour swap (yes, it cost a fortune!). We sent each other dried samples of our starter and flour. I sent him some organic stone-ground T55 and T65 and he sent me some KA AP and bread flour. Not so much because he himself uses that particular flour, but he figured it would give me an idea of the type of flour many people bake with.

I was VERY excited to try the All-Purpose flour for two reasons. I wanted to see how it felt, how it worked and what it tasted like but also I wanted to test Flo's 123 formula because many people seemed to have trouble with it.

So, here are the results:

I did up a dough of 150g starter (100% hydration), 300g water and 450g KA AP and 9g salt.

There is obviously more or different gluten in the flour. It takes AGES to get developed. With the T55 or 65, you literally only need to knead a few minutes to get a good dough formed, but with the KA AP, at initial mixing (in a Kenwood) it was rough and together, then went gloppy and then got extremely elastic (TOO elastic). It took quite a while to mix. So, this leads me to believe that for those who found the dough too wet may have hand kneaded and found it gloppy, but it would take ages to knead by hand to get the right consistancy. With French flours, the dough is wetter than with American flour which is the opposite of what people believe. I think it just the kneading time. More flour would have made a dough that would be much too firm (to my liking).

When it was finally risen and baked, I took it out of the oven and to my surprise, it was SHINY and smooth crusted. It looked plastic. Now, I did everything exactly as I always do, no changes, no more steam than usual. It was really weird. Then, with my husband next to me, we smelled it. We looked at each other and said, It doesn't smell like anything! OK, then we left it to cool and cut it. I handed pieces to my family in different rooms. My son said, it doesn't taste like anything. I went to my daughter who smiled and said, "It's good!... but it doesn't have any taste". The overall concesus was that it really didn't taste like anything at all.

So, I got thinking, and I understand a lot of things now. I understand why preferments are so important and retarding and adding rye, etc. If you bake with KA AP as your basic artisan bread flour, well, it really needs help!

In France, the non organic flours that bakers use can lack in taste but it's still a lot tastier than the KA AP. So, the French organic flour is pure bread heaven.When a loaf comes out of the oven, it smells so incredible, a blend between deep wheaty aroma and the slight tangy, yet earthy sourdough. I did up some Mike Avery's version of The Three Rivers bread that I spoke about on my blog for a cheese fondue and even though there is no sourdough, just poolish and retarding, it could have been mistaken for a sourdough, it smelled so incredible.

I guess I'm being French chauvinistic, but ever since I joined this group and have shared and learned so much from you, the huge question that has lingered for me has been all about American flour, how it reacts and tastes. I'm sure there are some better flours out there. Many speak of some organic brands, Guisto's and some other mills. I know it's more expensive, but if you're looking for something tastier, it's a good idea to try some of them. Oh, and remember, French wheat is soft, not hard. I think that makes a big difference.

So, I invite discussion and ideas or questions. I'm all ears.

Jane

Section I: Introduction

There are few things that smell quite as good as a loaf of bread baking in the oven. But there are other benefits beyond just that lovely smell of baking your own bread. It’s cheaper, tastier, and, more often than not, healthier than buying it from the store.

Our goal with this e-book is to help amateur bakers produce the kind of bread that they would most like to pull from their ovens. We hope that it helps you.

March 21, 2008 - 2:36pm

siuflower

make your own diastatic malt

Make you own diastatic malt

You can make your own: sprout a cup of wheat berries by covering
them with water in a jar for 12 or so hours, dump out the water &
rinse with clean water, and place the jar in a darkish, warmish,
place. Rinse the berries every day with clean water and return to
their place.

In 2-3 days they will begin to sprout. When the sprout is as long as
the berries themselves, dump them out on paper towels, dry them off,
and set on a cookie sheet in the sun for a day or so to dry out. Then
put the cookiesheet in a 100F oven for an hour or three. Do not let
the temp get above 130F or the enzymes will be destroyed.

Then grind the dried malted berries into flour, and use it in your
favorite recipe at a rate of approx. 1t. per loaf.

I am new to this blog but I also could not find any diastatic malt in AL, so I search the internet and happened to find a web site to make your own diastatic malt. I did not saved the web address but I did copy the recipe and I did follow the direction and make my own diastatic malt. I hope it will help some of you to make your own diatatic malt. I sprout 1/4 cup of wheat berry instead of 1 cup and grounded it and store in the freezer.

Siuflower

March 4, 2008 - 8:50pm

Elagins

Norm's Onion Rolls

So, here they are ... a bit too spherical, IMO, but the taste is absolutely right on the mark. The dough was gorgeous: silky, taut, very very gluten-rich. The trick is in the shaping: I wanted them flatter and bigger in diameter, but they came out softball-shaped. Maybe I ought to press them flatter before I mash them into the onion, or perhaps use a mini rolling pin on them to get them thin enough.

Anyway, here they are. At least if I close my eyes, I'm back in Brooklyn. Thanks, Norm.

Stan

Norm's Onion RollsNorm's Onion Rolls

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November 4, 2007 - 6:34pm

CountryBoy

Rye Flour

Rye flour came up in a recent thread, and I thought it convenient for everyone if I started a separate thread devoted to just rye. This way you can cut and paste it to a document if you wish to save it for future reference.

From my books so far, I have gleaned that:

RL Barenbaum in her Bread Bible discusses it in 2 paragraphs towards the end of the book but leaves quite a bit left unsaid. She does not specify what type should be used in her recipes although Leader and Hamelman do.

Peter Reinhart in his last 2 bks has said rather little on the topic.

Daniel Leader in his recent bk Local Breads points out the following:

Most rye flour sold in the US is whole, with none of the germ and bran sifted out. To confuse matters, it is labeled not 'whole' but medium, to distinguish it from pumpernickel flour, which is a more coarsely ground whole rye flour. Unless otherwise noted, whole rye labeled 'medium' or fine is called for in the recipes in his book.
Medium flour has some grit from the bits of bran
Fine rye flour will be more powdery. You can use pumpernickel flour in the recipes that call for rye flour, but your breads will be a little darker than breads made with medium or fine rye flour.
White rye flour, from which the bran and germ have been sifted, used in lighter Polish and Czech rye breads, is paler than whole rye, grayish white rather than gray. It is rarely available in stores but easily ordered by mail.

Hamelman in Bread discusses it at very considerable length and to summarize some of that says:

That it is higher in bran, minerals and fiber than wheat
Has more soluble sugars than wheat
It is high in a substance called pentosans and amylase enzymes
In Germany it is categorized by its ash content.
In the US, one has far fewer choices of rye flour-usually sold only as white, medium,medium dark, and whole.
White rye flour has little in the way of flavor or color, and is generally a poor choice in bread making.
Medium rye is better, producing more nutrition and flavor.
Whole rye flour is better yet in terms of flavor and food value. It is the rye flour of choice for most of the recipes in his book.
Dark rye is the flour milled from the periphery of the grain. It tends to be coarse and sandy, to absorbe quite a lot of water and in general is difficult to work with.
Pump0ernickel rye, often called rye meal, is just that: a coarse meal rather than a flour; it is made by milling the entire rye berry. It can substitute for whole-rye flour, the main diffence being the mealy consistency of pumpernickel.
Rye chops, similar to the German Schrot in that the rye berry is chopped rather than ground, cracked rye, and whole rye berries.

Mike Avery has said in another thread that:

In the USA, there are 4 commonly available rye flours. White rye, medium rye, dark rye and whole rye. As you move from white to whole, the taste of the rye becomes more intense, and the rye flour will reduce the rise of your bread. Medium rye is a good all-around rye. Good taste and you still get a good rise. However, in recent trips to the store, all I am finding is whole rye. Which will make a BIG difference in your recipes.
Dark rye is the least well defined rye. In some cases it is whole rye. In others it is a lightly sifted whole rye. In others, it is the stuff that is left over after the medium rye has been sifted out of the whole rye.
Also, rye has very little gluten in it, and what there is, is of very low qualty. Most bakers tend to develop the dough, form loaves and bake it as soon as it rises. Some bakers will tell you that a good loaf of white bread can sit for up to an hour after it has risen to it's optimum height and still bake up OK. This is called tolerance. The same bakers will tell you that a rye bread has about 6 minutes of tolerance.

Mike I did not ask you for this attribution but if you wish I will edit it out. Just let me know. Actually your discussion was the kernel that got me to start this thread.

Since so many people on the Forum are very experienced they are probably aware of all of the above. However there may be more aspects to rye flour than have been mentioned here. Since we have such an international make up of the forum others may have their own particular guidance to suggest.

I would start things off with two questions

How is it that Hamelman bakes with 80% rye and more in his bread but some members here have said that one can not have more than 15%. It is possible that they are both right but referring have numbers refering to different things. Can some one clear this up for a Novice?
Since nomenclature is rather loose when it comes to labeling and selling of rye, could someone tell me if they have ever used or know from experience about the flour that sells as:
- Hodgson Mill All Natural, Stone Ground, Whole Grain Rye Flour