December 13, 2021 - 10:05am
Making Riga Bread in Russia
An interesting video, though I haven't watched it all yet. Check out the mixer at 22mins.
Somewhere between a single diving arm and half a fork mixer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwOwrlnYjHU&t=27s
Lance
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I look forward to the video :)
Well spotted Abe ;)
Just skimming through it now... it is 50 minutes long and i'll need to find time to watch it but the shaping has already caught my attention. They do it with such ease and speed. This is one skill I need to master. I suppose if you shape hundreds a day then it'll become second nature.
That's one skill of a Pro baker we can never match. On the plus side for us, we don't have to start work at 4am and we can bake what we want.
Wow just got to the shaping part OMG that's amazing. They say 2 people can shape 90 kg of dough into 500 g breads in 15 min! Incredible. It takes me 15 min to shape just two hearth rye breads I guess!
Very interesting, thank you. I'd say it's not Riga bread dough they are making there in the video, it looks too dark! Could be Borodinsky perhaps, or their Nobleman's rye. The bakery is called Riga bread, it's quite well known for their rye bread in particular. The bakers are originally from Latvia. They have a nice discussion there about the old master Albert Blumberg who set up the original bakeries in Latvia and developed bread recipes.
The explanation re the mixer is interesting. They say it's unique! Apparently, rye bread dough has to be mixed for at least 20 minutes to incorporate enough air into it - that is with regular mixers. But with this special one they can cut it down to 10 minutes.
I'll try to watch the whole video later, thanks for sharing!
I thought that cold room with all the wooden tubs in was incredible. Any clues as to why there are so many of them?
Are they starters or levains or sponges at different stages?
Lance
I don't think they were cold rooms, just special rooms for starters, scalds and preferments, indeed. Separate rooms for wheat and rye.
Not sure why so many separate tubs, but they mix each multiple times a day, so perhaps it's to simplify that.
The mixer was most likely salvaged from an old bakery, this design dates back to at least 1940-ies.