The Fresh Loaf

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ITJB Round 2 Week 4: Mild Deli Rye (pps 76-78) 5/19/12 - 5/26/12

gmagmabaking2's picture
gmagmabaking2

ITJB Round 2 Week 4: Mild Deli Rye (pps 76-78) 5/19/12 - 5/26/12

I apologize for jumping in ahead of regular posting but wanted to get this out before some of us bake.

This Mild Deli Rye should be a wonderful bake. The recipe is made as written with no errata. However, if you are putting on the cornstarch glaze, (page 63) be sure to note the errata that tells us to use 2 TEASPOONS of cornstarch instead of tablespoons, also heed the instruction to use a very fast and light hand with this. Too much glaze will make a white coating and a gummy crust.  I am thinking this is what Jewish Baking is all about! Can't wait to see your loaves.  Mine are on the second rise and looking spectacular!

 

gmagmabaking2's picture
gmagmabaking2

We 3 sisters, gmabaking, gmabaking2, and gmagmabaking2... actually started working on this bake, on Mother's Day, the 13th when we started our Rye Sour.  We are all keepers and careproviders of live sourdough creatures, but did not have a living RYE sour, so the adventure began.  The questions of whether to feed with white rye flour, or wheat flour, or regular rye flour came up. We went similar ways. Gmabaking, Barb, had a healthy starter, white, and she decided to start feeding it rye flour to change it's non-rye personality. Gmabaking2, Helen, and myself, gmagmabaking2, Diane have healthy starters but decided to start fresh and feed with rye and white rye flours... a few days to start and a week to build and suddenly it was Day 1 (yesterday) of our two day bake. Finally!

Barb is our expert on Rye bread, but had not made this particular recipe, her hubby's favorite is the Old School Deli Rye a few pages over.  Helen makes a good rye, from another recipe and I was the original Rye newbie.  Below is our bread, Very similar pictures, we all staged with the great cookbook in the background, as a tribute to Stan and Norm.  

Barb's bread is the first picture, her crust is crispy and crunchy. Her comment: "not great looking, but tastes good. I weighed instead of using volume measurements yet somehow my dough got so dry the swirl can still be seen." Looks great to me, but I am 1500 miles away!

Next is Helen's bread. She mentioned that she didn't feel that her bread got brown enough. I think these look good also. Her crust is also crunchy.

My loaves are the next ones. As you can see by my crumb, I did not wait long enough to cut into the bread... it smelled so fantastic we had to taste it... we like it a lot and will make it again.  To my surprise my crust was as soft as my crumb and it sliced very easily once it was really cooled down.

I slashed one loaf and poked holes in the other... I think the poked loaf held it's shape better. We all used the corn starch glaze on page 63.  All in all it was a great challenge and a great bake... The week seemed to take forever to get here, for me, as I am the impatient one of our 3! But WE DID IT, here is the proof, and ... we will probably do it again. ;-)

See ya'll next week for that 125% Yellow Cake... if anyone knows WHY it is named that, we would love to know! 

Happy Baking,  Diane

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

girls are baking up a 'Jewish Deli Rye Storm',  A schmear and lox must be around somewhere....

Nice baking the ITJB way!

Urchina's picture
Urchina

Diane, thank you so much for getting the post up! The weekend (and then the week) got away from me. 

I have piles of grading to do this week, but once final grades are turned in on Friday --- I'll be a free, flour-coated woman and will get my hands into this loaf this weekend!

 

Kendra

gmabaking's picture
gmabaking

Love that phrase! Best of luck with the grading this week, hope all your students did well. Enjoy the recipe- look forward to hearing how you like it.

Barbra

gmagmabaking2's picture
gmagmabaking2

I have to go on record as saying that this Mild Deli Rye is even better the second day... I am thinking the next time I make it, which will be soon, I am going to let both loaves cool for 24 hours before I even try to slice it... I really, really, am.  Best of luck with the grading, Kendra! Being a retired teacher, I can appreciate what you are going through.  Am loving these challenges, as I am baking things I never would have dreamt of being done in MY kitchen! Love it... Hey, will being coated in flour make you a flour child?

LOL, Diane

Elagins's picture
Elagins

beautiful breads, all of you! I would comment, Barb, that in my experience, a lot of the Jewish-style doughs are very dry, and for rye breads in particular, the dryness becomes apparent because rye is generally thirstier than wheat.  the swirled dough is characteristic and very much reminds me of the rye breads of my childhood.

125% refers to the ratio of sugar to flour in the cake batter: high-ratio cakes are called that because the amount of sugar exceeds the amount of flour. ITJB has several high-ratio recipes whose names give the proportion of sugar to flour.

there's an old Jewish saying that the dead know what the living are up to, and somewhere, Norm is smiling. you do yourselves, and the book, proud.

Stan

gmagmabaking2's picture
gmagmabaking2

for the kind words from ya'll.  There is such enjoyment in learning the history and the flavors of the Jewish Bakery.  Enjoy NYC and best of luck with the book promotion.  The richness of this experience rivals the taste of the sweets and savories! Thanks again, for the opportunity to be a part of this.

Diane

 

gmabaking's picture
gmabaking

Thank you dabrownman and Stan. Wow, you two made my day with your generous comments. Stan, I think to make Norm smile would be the greatest compliment this baker could think of! Followed closely by baking bread that would be close enough, at least in looks, to remind you Stan, of breads of your childhood.

On another note, I noticed one of the dark rye pictured in the book has raisins added. My husband remembers a pumpernickel with dried fruit from the days he lived in Milwaukee. Since that was a mere sixty years ago he isn't sure of what type of fruit. Could it be more dried fruit, or maybe just different raisins?

Looking forward to hearing about your adventures on your trip to New York. Have to get busy and get a flour order in for your return. I ended that Deli Rye bread with a scant half cup of first clear. Fed it to the starter and made it boisterous.

Barbra

Elagins's picture
Elagins

Basically, any fruit that could be dried was included in ryes and pumpernickels -- raisins, plums, apricots, currants. The sweetness and acid of the fruit complement the rye flavor so well!

And sit back and enjoy our admiration; it's well-deserved.

Stan

Nici's picture
Nici

Thankfully I read all the comments first, which made me realise I would have to get my skates on.  My wheat starter has always worked, but it could never be called vigorous, however, off I went at the beginning of the week and fed it rye flour. On Friday I was ready to go, and started the Day 1 process,  forgot it and left it overnight in my airing cupboard.  On Saturday I resumed Day 1 . At the end of the 4 - 5 hours it certainly did not look "bubbly", in fact my well meaning husband said it looked like mortar. Brown, stiff and going no where.  Today, thank goodness the magic worked, and here are my two lovely loaves.  I cannot wait to cut them tomorrow for lunch.   This really is a first for me,  Cheers  Nici

gmabaking2's picture
gmabaking2

Wow! Those look great! You are going to be pleasantly surprised how good your bread tastes when you slice it!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

example of Jewish Deli Rye.  I'm guesssing it tastes better than it looks too!

Nice bake.

Janetcook's picture
Janetcook

Mild Deli Rye,

Challenge caught my eye and I had to wonder why I hadn't baked this loaf yet....I have baked the Jewish Deli Rye numerous times and people rave about it so I didn't look at what followed until it came up here.

Glad I gave it a try.  Neighbors who I gave one of the loaves too loved it.  Their comment was that it was the best rye loaf they had ever tasted.....(They haven't had the NDR yet....)  I have not heard back from the other person I gave the second loaf to yet but decided to post anyway.

I loved working with this dough too.  I did make my usual change though which included a soaker with the  final flour and water that sat out overnight before being mixed with the sour the following morning since I use freshly ground flour.  (I like it to soak for at least 6 hours to soften the grain and it gives the gluten a head start on forming so final mix is a lot shorter.)  I also scored it differently and used an egg wash rather than the  cornstarch glaze.

                                                      

This is a keeper and will go into my bread files :-)

Take Care,

Janet

gary.turner's picture
gary.turner

This is very close to my usual sourdough rye, but there are two things that are definite improvements. First, the lower (60%) hydration (I usually go about 62.5%) gives a noticeably less sticky dough. Second is the use of first clear flour, which provided a stronger dough with less mixing/kneading.

I used a medium rye instead of white, since I like it better and I was out of white anyway.  ;)

For flavoring, I used 1% caraway for the fresh in-the-field rye taste, and 0.5% nigella. I will cut down the nigella a bit in the future as it easily overpowers the rye and caraway. Nigella is a wonderful complement to rye; I just need to find the balance.

I will need to cut back on the commercial yeast as temps are getting higher in my kitchen. The bulk rise tripled before I had turned around, and the final proof was jiggly (over proofed) in about 35 minutes. Both loaves collapsed a bit when loading the oven.

I didn't preheat my stone long enough, as witnessed by the pale bottoms of the loaves. In my defense, I didn't expect the final proof to be so short.

From what I've said, you might be expecting a major fail. Not so. I ran up the oven temp to 400℉ to hopefully boost oven spring (it worked), and to also bring the water in the steam pan to a boil. 10 minutes into the bake, I brought the temp down to 375℉. 350–360℉ is not sufficient in my non-convection oven to properly brown/caramelize a lean dough unless the loaf is very large, requiring a long bake.

The crumb shot overstates the smallness of the holes. A gentler hand at shaping is indicated. Away from the ends, the crumb is less dense, but still very regular as expected of a sandwich bread.

The bread was baked last Friday, and today for lunch (Tuesday, I was up way too early today so lunch came early), the last slices of the first loaf were still moist and tasty. It was becoming less flexible. I'll slice the other loaf for dinner.

So, here are the pics.

cheers,

gary