Using cultures from a lab
Several years ago I visited a baking laboratory in Moscow and I mentioned my interest in trying some of their cultures. I had been baking sourdough rye with a homemade culture that I made simply by grinding some rye grains and letting the mixture wait until I got some sourness and wild yeast action. I saved the dried cultures I got from Moscow and never bothered to use them because my results were good with my homemade culture. The Moscow cultures were like hard, dry lumps of flour and I put them in my freezer.
They gave me these two cultures:
1. saccharomyces cerevisiae 69
2. lactobacillus delbrueckii D-30
I finally decided to try the cultures out a day or so ago and took a little pinch of each and added them to a mixture of water and whole grain flour (rye and wheat) and now I have a bubbling result.
I had no recipe or guidance, so I'm wondering if I should wait until the mixture smells sour to use it. Also, did I use the correct procedure in combining these two cultures. Is the first one just equivalent to commercial yeast?
Thanks for any comments.
I have no experience with the Lactobacillus delbrueckii culture, but I am very much interested in its use. I have made a couple of Baltic rye breads from Stanley Ginsberg's The Rye Baker (Vilnius Rye) and from his website (Black Rye Bread and Latgalian Rye). I loved the flavor of these breads, so I went looking for more information and recipes.
I found two sites that had a lot of recipes for Baltic rye breads:
https://registrr.livejournal.com/94799.html
Хлебные закваски: Термофильная закваска в домашних условиях (brotgost.blogspot.com)
I poked around these sites and found quite a bit of information. I was somewhat hampered by the sometimes inadequate translation available with web browsers. I see from your profile, though, that you have some Slavic language experience, so that impediment will likely be removed.
I also found that I would need to prepare a thermophilic Lactobacillus bacteria to achieve authentic flavor. One of these bacteria is L. delbrueckii. This culture has no yeast in it, so it will not raise the bread. It has to be used with yeast, and that's probably why you were also given the S. cerevisiae culture.
I don't have a convenient temperature control required to prepare the thermophilic cultures. so I have not yet proceeded with these recipes. I hope this information helps. Good luck!
Actually, I went ahead and made an all-rye loaf with my combined cultures and it was quite good. It sat for 8 hours for a single rise and I baked it at 285 F. for around 80 minutes plus 250 F. for 15 minutes more. Hydration not exactly measured but around 75%. A bit sour crumb but I like it that way and the acid really helps the rye crumb structure, especially when the baking temp. Is on the low side.
Hi,
The YT-er and blogger rusbrot has many recipes with various lactic acids. Here are some links on making the thermophilic sourdough, l. delbrueckii (50-53C).
http://brotgost.blogspot.com/2015/04/blog-post.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7dgQgYLuUs
(I recorded the recipes for making various lactic acids here.) Take a look at the above YT channel - there are many with English subtitles. There are ones labeIed "thermophilic".
I have liked using these lactic acids (clas, flas, thermophilic) very much and a few others here love it too.
I know about brotgost and enjoyed hearing it in Russian (my field). That website taught me how to make fermented rye malt which is hard to come by in the USA. Mine is not as dark as his but I add it to rye doughs all the time. The only issue is that my whole house smelled like fermented rye malt for a few days. The brotgost posts all seemed to be a little old. Is the Youtuber still active? I also couldn't locate his name when I watched the videos.
Mainly because I wanted to try it in recipes from Ginsberg's "The Rye Baker". He specifies red rye malt (he was even selling Fawcett Crystall Rye Malt when he had the store) in some recipes but I think solod would be closer to the originals. Specifically for the Baltic and Russian ryes. But I don't know if it would be a one to one substitute as the one recipe I tried it in came out OK but was somewhat bitter. Do you have specific recipes where solod would be used?
I used solod (instead of Fawcett's Crystal Rye) in Ginsberg's Black Rye and Vilnius Rye. Both were delicious! The quantities are small in these recipes.
The recipe I use specifies 3% red fermented rye malt (krasny fermentirovanny rzhanoj solod). It is non-diastatic and is used in the scald (zavarka). I use the recipes in two slightly old Russian bread books, by Royter and Auerman. The older books put recipes in the technical manuals but the newer editions publish them separately. I really like the Royter book, published around 1965.
The recipe I use specifies 3% red fermented rye malt (krasny fermentirovanny rzhanoj solod). It is non-diastatic and is used in the scald (zavarka). I use the recipes in two slightly old Russian bread books, by Royter and Auerman. The older books put recipes in the technical manuals but the newer editions publish them separately. I really like the Royter book, published around 1965.
I looked at several of rusbrot recipes and solod used was 5% of total flour.
I baked Borodinsky several times and the flavor was great.
Tsukatniki
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOxVEDfX74Q&list=PLrSg5cYpPtU-8Nd_ljnhXHLpaXe9oH5jN&index=28
Borodinsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIcAuRRxWo
Salinātā rudzu rupjmaize
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo7_nP6OhwA
Sorry, I made a mistake. I also use 5%. I usually have 300 grams of flour and that includes 15 gr of the rye malt. There is some variability in the sugar or syrup amount. A Russian baker told me that molasses is better than the malt syrup that the books recommend. I also add ground coriander to the dough and i don't sprinkle whole coriander on top.
Thanks!
Thank you!
What's the title of that book?
I'm answering this much later than your question and I'm not sure if you're asking about the two books I mentioned. Both are in Russian, by the way.
The one by Royter is called Хлебопекарное производство (Изд. Техніка, Киев, 1966). The Auerman edition is from 1948 and is called Технология хлебопечения (Изд. Пищепромиздат, Москва, 1948).
My Russian is rusty but may be worth it to refresh my memory especially since there is a severe lack of rye baking books in English, Hamelman and Ginsberg notwithstanding. If I can ever find them. In my internet travels I came across the "РЖАНОЙ ХЛЕБ АЗБУКА ПЕКАРЯ" book by СЕРГЕЙ КИРИЛЛОВ of the "ХЛЕБ & ХЛЕБ" blog. Do you know if it's any good?
Thanks!