The bread is sour-sweet. At a mashing stage (saccharification) amylase
enzymes convert starches to sugars, mostly maltose. When starter added,
maltose is happily lowered by yeast enzymes to sucrose and eaten.
Subsequently, at the dough stage, molasses and sugar are added. As
bread is sour-sweet (and should be like this according to the
description), the yeasts leave us some sugar... Maltose substantially
improves rising and baking qualities of bread. With only a sourdough
starter (no bakers yeast) and 85% rye flour the bread is fairly light:
about 50% porosity.

For the bread I use Carl's starter: thank you, Carl's friends!
The recipe has two standard versions: 4 stage (with sponge) and 3 stage
(w/o sponge). Storage starter (usually 1 week old) is very thick: about
60% hydration.

And here follows the 4-stage recipe.

The mashing-cooling takes 4-5 hours and to prepare the working starter
3-4 hours: could be launched about the same time.

The recipe is for 2 loafs ~900g each.

Working starter: 70g storage starter, 60g whole rye flour, 40g water.
Ferments 180-240 min at 25-28C.
The mash: to 150g whole rye flour in a thermoresistant bowl (plastic
or other convenient) add about half of 500ml nearly boiling (96-98C)
water, mix well, add the rest of the water, mix. Add to the mixture 50g
of ground rye malt and 3g freshly ground coriander.
Rye malt is sold as a grain at homebrew stores. Ask not to crush: it is
better to coarsely grind it before adding to flour-water mix. Put the
cover on the bowl and get the bowl into the oven preheated to about
70-80C. I use alarm type digital thermometer to look after the
temperature of the mixture ("the mash") . It is important not to surf
out of the 63-65C range. After 90-120 min take the bowl out. Don't
forget to smell the porridge-like mash but bewa it is addicting! Let
it cool down to about 30C for 2-3 hours.

Sponge: add 170g of the working starter and 350g of rye flour to the
cool mash and mix well. Almost forgotten, you mix with, for example,
wide and short wooden spoon. After mixing you start knead. How to make
kneading rye dough easy and pleasant? Knead in the bowl with your wet
hands. When the hands wet the dough doesn't stick. Kneading this way is
quite a pleasant experience: somehow reminds happy childhood. Knead
about 10 min. I knead 5 minutes but I'm lazy.
Important note: In any case, don't improvise with water and flour
quantities!
Don't add flour or water arbitrary just because it looks like it will
help to add water or flour. You will manage with the quantities of the
recipe just wet the hands. I measure ingredients with electronic weight
Leave the sponge to ferment for 210-240min at 28-30C.
Dough: mix 200g rye flour and 150g wheat bread flour. Dilute 10g of
salt and 60g of sugar in 100g water (hard work!). Add the flour, the
sugar-salt solution, 40g of black molasses and about half of 2g more
ground coriander to the sponge. Mix and knead (wet hands down!) for
10-15min (me 5min).
Leave the dough rise for 60-90 min in the bowl at 28-30C.
For the last rise divide the dough between two bread pans (I use
silicon ones), spread the rest of coriander on it and let the dough
rise for more 50 min at 32-34C. To provide humidity sprinkle water on
the top of the dough and inside polyethylene bags, and put the pans
into the bags (or any other more appropriate technique). Preheat the
oven to ~250C. Sprinkle and bake about 50 min at 200-220C. Watch the
crust; if necessary shield by aluminum foil. I used to bake up to 205F
inner temperature.
After the bread out of the oven, sprinkle water on it immediately or
smear 3% potato starch solution.
That is Borodinsky bread.

Interesting. Ortiz (The Village Baker) has a porridge-based (yeasted)
Tuscan bread, and despite the lack of salt it is very tasty. I'd been
wondering how to combine porridge and sourdough techniques (for wheat,
that is; Ortiz does also have a 100%-rye porridge bread made without
yeast, that bakes for 7 hours and allegedly "keeps best when stored in
wine cellars and hay lofts"!)

Greg

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Unfortunately, I have no Ortiz book and have no idea, what is it
"porridge bread".
Is it of Limpa batter bread style like Ed Wood describes?
The technique for Borodinsky bread is an elaborated method for a kind
of rye breads (60% rye and more) called "improved" and made by keeping
rye/rye malt mix for about 2 hours at temperatures 62-67C (about 150F)
that is mashing in essence: saccarification of rye flour starches by
rye malt amylase enzymes. Mashing is a main stage of making beer.
See the thread
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...31258f400eab2c

and www.howtobrew.com

Russians and German mainstream idea (read correspondence with Michael
Ganzle in D. Wings book and here, at the group) is that because "white"
wheat bread shouldn't be acidified substantially; there is no need for
use of sourdough starters but usual baker's yeast. Not as French or
Italians think! Recently I have found hints that "off the beaten track"
there are sourdough techniques for wheat bread in russian technical
literature but meantime have nothing tangible just references.
"A 100%-rye porridge bread made without yeast that bakes for 7 hours"
reminds Pumpernikel, doesn't it? But can't say it's not my cup of
tea/slice of bread: I limited myself to russian breads only.

Leonid

hofer wrote:

> Unfortunately, I have no Ortiz book and have no idea, what is it
> "porridge bread".

Bread that starts from (or at least contains) a "porridge" made by
scalding flour with boiling water. As opposed to, for instance, a
"sponge" made with flour, cold water and yeast. Your "mashing" sounds
like making a porridge but sustaining the high temperature for a while.

> Russians and German mainstream idea (read correspondence with Michael
> Ganzle in D. Wings book and here, at the group) is that because "white"
> wheat bread shouldn't be acidified substantially; there is no need for
> use of sourdough starters but usual baker's yeast. Not as French or
> Italians think!

Certainly not as San Franciscans think! I don't know how common pure
white wheat French or Italian sourdough breads actually are. Ortiz seems
to think sourdough rare in Italy altogether. Many French recipes contain
some rye or whole-grain flour.

> "A 100%-rye porridge bread made without yeast that bakes for 7 hours"
> reminds Pumpernikel, doesn't it?

Indeed: I sent some by airmail and called it pumpernickel on the customs
declaration. But I'm not well read enough to risk calling it that here.

Greg

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Porridge (without mystics) is a gelatinized starch. Your remarks about
wheat porridge bread were just in time: reading Auerman's book posted
by Ronald Fieldstein in the past the following was found about porridge
bread (these are only extracts and conclusions):
Wheat bread:
- to make the porridge 5-10% of the whole amount of flour mixed with
triple amount of water to gain about 70C temperature (not 62-65C!). The
result: starch is gelatinized.
Afterwards the porridge could be:
- saccarified (by autosaccarification with amylases of the flour or
adding malt) at 62-65C
- left "as is"
- salted (to make "salt porridge")
- fermented with SD or yeasts
Experiments have shown that the best thing for wheat bread is to leave
porridge as is w/o saccarification. It is absolutely necessary to make
porridge when adding "adjuncts" like oat or maize (corn). General
conclusion: porridge improves the wheat bread when the flour is weak to
produce enough CO2 and/or sugar.
Rye bread:
Jumping directly to conclusions: only saccarification (preferably with
rye or barley malt) of the porridge does make good to rye bread and
substantially improves it.
That means that you (and Ortiz) are right: the porridge w/o
saccarification (mashing) does exist. Actually, temperatures of mashing
(62-65C) are lower than that of "simple" porridge (70C) because this
70C temperatures aims to kill (denaturize) amylase ferments.
Exciting.

Leonid

hofer wrote:

> That means that [...] the porridge w/o
> saccarification (mashing) does exist. Actually, temperatures of mashing
> (62-65C) are lower than that of "simple" porridge (70C) because this
> 70C temperatures aims to kill (denaturize) amylase ferments.

Kenneth wrote:

> Heating does not produce the tastes and textures of
> fermentation of grain in my experience.

Fermentation can certainly FOLLOW heating, e.g. in beer-making. What
would be another purpose for resting a denaturized porridge overnight?
Or perhaps, despite the boiling water, the effective maximum temperature
is still below 70 degrees Celsius because the water cools on mixing and
thereafter. The porridge-based Tuscan bread is certainly tasty, whereas
ordinarily bread lacking salt is not; I can't tell you for sure what the
tastiness consists of, but if I were to guess I would say sugars.

In beer-making, is the purpose of mashing to produce additional sugars,
or merely to extract them from the grain into solution (after they were
produced during malting)? Either way, it presumably enhances the
subsequent fermentation.

You can understand "quickly" to mean "producing more flavour", instead
of "taking less time", if you prefer. My own baking is certainly not
directed towards shorter elapsed times.

Greg

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Greg wrote:

> You can understand "quickly" to mean "producing more flavour", instead
> of "taking less time", if you prefer. My own baking is certainly not
> directed towards shorter elapsed times.

Yes, I understand. I was thinking of porridge as a traditional cereal
not as a specific, and apparently technical, banking term for
gelatinized starch. So my apologies for taking the thread down a back
alley.

I would imagine that bakers denatured some of their rye to keep amylase
under control if/when they were not using a souring levain. But it
seems odd to fix the starch, disable the amylase, but then add barley
malt. Counterintuitive.

One thing that comes to mind, if you are looking to build latent
starch: old bread. Works well for me in pumpernickel. I probably add
10% to my dough. It seems like it would have about the same chemical
contribution as scalded flour.
You see a lot of old bread in traditional rye formulas.

I think I was misunderstood. There were two different approaches
described: porridge "as is" w/o following saccarification where amylase
activity deliberately terminated by heating to 70C (that is
recommended for wheat) and porridge which is saccarified at 62-65C
(recommended for rye bread, the one used for Borodinsky bread).
Saccarification is a kind of fermentation where amylase enzymes convert
starches of malt grain to sugars. In all-grain (professional) brewing
they succeed to achieve 90% and more conversion, in home brewing
75-85%. The readiness (completion) of conversion is checked by iodine
test. Mashing (saccarification) is followed by sparging: rinsing the
sugars from the grain by water. This liquid (called) wort full of
maltose and other sugars is boiled with hopes, cooled and successively
fermented by yeast enzymes (another kind of fermentation). The yeasts
are "baking yeasts": Saccaramices cerevisae, but metabolism is
different from that of dough: because the fermentation is aerobic with
much oxygen the alcohol is released.
There are many very interesting points looking by one glance at SD
baking and (home)brewing.
For example, belgic lambics are SD of beers: they are made by wild
spontaneous fermentation.
Or back to porridges: that is usual matter to add "adjuncts" to the
beer mash, like not malted whole grains of wheat, rye, oat, rice, corn,
to be converted by barley or other malt grain enzymes to maltose and
other fermentable and not fermentable (dextrins) sugars. But amylase
enzymes can't convert starches that are not gelatinized to sugars.
What knowledgeable brewer do? He makes porridge. Or, for several cents
more, he buys pregelatinized oat/rye/corn etc. flakes - see
http://www.listermann.com/Store/products.asp?id=5
that is instant porridge like "Quaker oats".
Dan Wing wrote that old bread is added up to 30% in some recipes for
acidification of dough. Can't say anything about it.