March 22, 2024 - 3:24am
Malt taste testers: chocolate malt, caramel Munich and biscuit malt
A few years ago, Dan Ayo posted here about his experience with using chocolate malted barley from the brew shop in a bread. It made a big difference to the colour of the bread and the flavour of it too.
Thinking the same, I made small taste testers using three different kinds of barley malt that I picked up from a craft brew supply store.
Taste testers in this case were seven different doughs each made with a base formula of 100g white bread flour, 65g water, 20g levain and 2g salt. I tried two different concentrations of each malt - 2% and 0.5%, and made a seventh dough with no malt in it for taste comparison. Credit is due to Paul for the idea of the 100g sample loaf.
In this pic you can see the testers after baking. In columns, from left to right, they are: chocolate, caramel, biscuit. The top row is at 0.5%; the bottom row at 2%. And the lone one on the far right had no malt added to it.Called the whole family to taste and we had a pleasant time sniffing and tasting each sample. As you can see the chocolate malt one was quite visually distinct, even at 0.5% but especially at 2%. It had a taste like 'coffee' and not chocolate. The other two didn't bring in enough flavour to notice, but they did improve the dough and bread texture, especially the biscuit malt. If you sniffed them very carefully you could pick up some interesting malt notes even with the pale malts.
In conclusion I'd say that the chocolate malt was worth the try and can see why Dan found it interesting too. There are many other interesting malts used by brewers that I'd like to play with as well, obviously there are rye and wheat malts, but also curious to know if anyone has opinions on whether things like an acidulated malt or a malt with high dextrins that might have an effect on the Maillard reaction would be a worth a try. And then there is the approach of including the grains themselves in the bread which might be a better way to go.
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Thanks for reporting this. I had wondered how much difference such additions would make.
I have also been dabbling with trying different malts for bread baking. I was inspired by a friend who makes his own beer and seeing how important malt is to brewers in terms of the flavor and character of the beer, as well as to the fermentation process.
I have focused on pale malts as I am also wanting to study their diastatic properties. I have been experimenting with using a SD biga preferment for my loaves as it seems to me that the biga uses up lots of the sugars from the flour resulting a slightly sugars-starved pale final loaf, so I felt the malt was needed to provide food for the enzymes in the bulk fermentation. Lovely nice crisp, crunchy and nice color crust since incorporating the malt.
Bought about 25g of different malts from a home brewing supplier to try: Czech Hana, spelt, 2 different rye and oat. So far I have tried the Hana and the spelt. The Hana is barely and is used in Czech pilsner type beer and was quite strong in terms of diastatic effect and a classic malt flavor to the loaf. The spelt was more gentle in terms of diastatic effect and had a more nutty flavor that complements the white spelt flour in the loaves I have used it in.
I will be following your malt experiment with much interest!
Interesting reading your thoughts about pale malts, to me the barley ones have always worked largely the same in terms of diastatic effects and am mostly interested in the flavours you can get, so the Czech pilsner comment was helpful to me as I do hanker after that classic malt taste.
I was thinking about your biga experiments and comments about sugar, out of curiosity have you ever tried a sweet stiff starter, eg. like the one Benny uses here?
-Jon
I have been trying to get my head around all the posts about sweet stiff starters.
I can get the scientific reasoning behind it and it makes sense and I am intrigued to possibly try it, but having started with a stiff starter with my baking, given to me by my Italian wife's sister in-law, I found the maintenance too onerous and demanding and ended up converting it to a liquid (100% hydration starter) which I use to this day and which I find much more forgiving and tolerant of slightly erratic feeding and refreshing.
Interestingly, the so-called shaggy biga, while it causes the yeasts in the bulk fermentation to be more voracious, it produces a less sour bread than the poolish. Maybe the dryness of the shaggy biga deprives the LAB of a conducive environment to thrive in and hence the yeasts get the upper hand. This might also explain why the gluten structure is stronger (less LAB degradation) with the biga and the fermentation stronger.
Unfortunately my baking set-up is very rudimentary so I cannot measure ph etc to be in a position to report in a more scientific way.
Regarding the pale malts, the only issue with flavor experimentation with them is that you can only use a very small amount in order to avoid getting too gummy a bread. But still. even with the small quantities I have been using, you can smell it in the bake and taste it in the final loaf. Maybe I should scald some and use them only as flavor enhancers to experience more of their taste properties.
I guess, in the same way that you would prepare a biga from the 100% hydration starter specifically for a bake, so you could prepare a sweet stiff levain?
One option for using a higher % of pale malts is to use a malt extract. There are both dry and liquid malt extracts that have no diastatic power. The selection is a more limited than the grain malts, but it does avoid the enzymes.
There may also be a way to deactivate the malts with dry heat for a brief period that doesn't change the flavor profile. I have wanted to try this but haven't gotten around to it.
A nice comparison of the malts. I'm also interested in using brewing malts in bread. I've mostly used them in rye breads from Stanley Ginsberg's The Rye Baker. He has a recipe that uses chocolate rye malt (Pumpkinseed Rye) and a crystal barley malt (East German Malt Bread). For the latter, I used a 120° Lovibond (320 EBC) crystal malt. I later discovered that the original East German recipe uses an even darker malt ≈185° Lovibond.
Ginsberg also has several recipes that specify red rye malt and he says to use a crystal rye malt. This is somewhat in error, as the Russian and Baltic (and a few German) breads that use "red rye malt" actually use fermented rye malt, or solod. The aroma and flavor of solod is very different than crystal rye malt, even though the color may be similar.
I have tried one recipe that I called Homebrew Store Bread. I used malts and grains that one can find at a homebrew store. I liked the result, but I haven't revisited the recipe since. Definitely an oversight on my part. I think you will notice more of an effect using the more colored malts with EBC > 140. The chocolate malts can be a little too much and, as you found, the lighter malts may be too subtle for the bread. If you can find some, you might want to try Simpsons Golden Naked Oat malt. It has a nice sweet, nutty flavor. I like your idea to try a melanoidin malt. The Russian solod has a lot of melanoidins, too, so I'm interested in comparing the malts.
For those in the USA, I came across a malthouse that has some unusual malts. Deer Creek Malthouse has buckwheat, corn, spelt, sorghum, rye, triticale, wheat, oat, and toasted oat malts, besides pale barley malts. Some of those I've never seen offered anywhere.
Great feedback, and you've answered some of the things I was thinking about.
I do know you're a great rye baker, but can't recall if you've ever used solod in a bake, but I'm guessing you must have since you can comment on the aroma and flavour! Unfortunately, for me, solod is one of those rare unicorn ingredients that I'd have to make/ferment myself, and would have no idea what to compare it to as have never had the privilege of seeing the real thing. And, out of curiosity is the flavour and aroma of solod worth it, in your opinion?
I bake a lot of Sune's (Foodgeek's) 100% Danish rye for which I usually use malt extract syrup or sometimes a beer syrup made from a stout. It might be interesting to add some of the darker malts in the mix as well for that one, although it is already a fairly dark bread.
Thanks also for the heads up for the oat malt, and for the positive feedback about the melanoidin - I'll look for both, can already see some brewery suppliers offering various naked oat malts, and this is the kind of feedback I was hoping for with this post, especially the advice to look for dark malts but not as dark as the chocolate.
-Jon
Thank you for the kind words about my rye bakes. I still struggle with rye sometimes, but the end result is worth it.
My feeling on solod is that there is no comparison with crystal rye malt with respect to flavor, although I haven't actually tried a side-by-side bake with the crystal rye. Just opening the bag of solod gives a totally different impression. But I don't think I would go through the trouble make it, either. If there are any Eastern European food stores in your area, you might be able to find some. I had to get mine online from Etsy and I have seen it on eBay..