The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Jewish Corn Rye Bread Recipe - A request for help

LMR's picture
LMR

Jewish Corn Rye Bread Recipe - A request for help

Greetings,

I am new to the forum and am eager to learn more about baking these wonderful breads. I would like to start with the Jewish Corn Rye Bread recipe but do not know that it means to "Ripen 80% rye sour until pungent" as per the instructions. Please pardon my ignorance here but I'm more experienced with cake baking and cooking.

Thank you for any help that can be offered here.

Lisa

 

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Welcome! 

I am no expert either but with an educated guess I'll start the ball rolling and hope this helps. 

A rye sour is a sourdough starter made with whole rye flour. If you have a sourdough starter already but it's not rye then take some off and give it a few feeds with rye flour. 

If you don't have a sourdough starter then you'll need to make one. You'll need to mix whole rye flour with water to make a thick slurry. Keep warm (at around 78 - 80F). Once every 24 hours take half off and discard. Top back up with more water and flour. Over the next week or two it'll ferment, become bubbly and smell good. Once it is strong and bubbles up with every feed it is ready to bake with. Just make sure to always keep some back to use in the next dough. Keep it in the fridge once mature and give it a feed each time before baking. This will be your starter. 

80% could mean hydration (for every 80g water you'll have 100g flour). Or it could mean that the rye sour forms 80% of the total flour. You'll need to post the recipe in full to know. 

LMR's picture
LMR

Hello,


Thank you for this helpful information. It's just what I need to get started, especially since I have never done this before. I am eager to learn.

I'll keep you posted about my results.

Lisa

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Hi, Lisa.

A ripe rye sour should have a prominent, fruity aroma. That's one sign it is ripe, but there are others that I find more reliable and objective. Please follow the links below and feel free to ask more questions. A corn rye has a wetter dough than the Jewish Sour Rye. To me, the flavor and texture are very similar. The sour rye is easier for some one new to bread baking. And welcome to TFL!

Care and feeding of a rye sour

Jewish Sour Rye

Happy baking!

David

LMR's picture
LMR

Hello, David,


Thanks so much for your assistance here. I'll keep you posted as I learn how to do this!

Lisa

IceDemeter's picture
IceDemeter

(side track: I just finished getting caught up in the above links (many thanks, David) and loved learning more about different approaches to building up a rye sour for a bake.)

From the wording given in the OP, it looks to me like you're looking at Varda's wonderful formula here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/40280/jewish-corn-rye  That formula is using an 80% hydration rye sour, which has been fed and allowed to ferment past peak and to the point where the aroma is quite acidic.

If it isn't quite clear, a "rye sour" is a sourdough starter that has been built and maintained using rye flour instead of whole wheat or all purpose or some other flour.  Do you already have a sourdough starter?  If so, then you can easily create an off-shoot by taking a small amount of it (4g or so) and feeding it up over a few days with rye.  If you don't, and are totally new to the bread world, then just let us know and we can start explaining things a bit more clearly.

LMR's picture
LMR

Hello,

Thank you for your help here. I really appreciate it. I have heard of sour dough starters but have never done this before. Any help you can offer would be terrific. 

Many thanks,

Lisa

 

phaz's picture
phaz

This may have been already mentioned, I'm not so good at going through lots of posts, but, a starter is simple a mix of bacteria and yeast. Yeast we know about (it rises bread), and bacteria makes acid (that's where the sour cones from). There's a lot more to it than that, but fortunately we don't really need to worry about any of that. We just mix the 2 and things take care of themselves - eventually. Then all we do is feed the hungry critters. You can get much deeper into it than that, but in the end, that's all it really is. As far as the bread goes, we add some starter to some more flour (basically give them a big meal), and the critters do their thing (yeast produces gas and rises the bread, bacteria creates acid that make it sour). It is a neat one hand washes the other relationship, and we reap the benefits - tasty bread. Enjoy!

clazar123's picture
clazar123

Stan Ginsberg has been a long time contributor here on The Fresh Loaf and he has a website and 2 marvelous books. His latest is  The Rye Baker and can be seen on his blog http://theryebaker.com/  

Rye bread, in many respects, can be much easier than wheat bread to make. It mixes up like a cake batter.  The trick is to know when it is ready to bake-the final proof.

I have been working with rye as of late and I hope this would be helpful:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52790/pumpernickel-honey-and-dates

This recipe was actually derived from a Volkornbrot but I didn't have exactly the correct rye so I renamed it to Pumperknickel.

I also made a similar recipe on Stan's site but the coarse cracked rye berries were a little too crunchy using his technique. I would soak all the  grains overnight, as in my pumperknickel recipe.

http://theryebaker.com/?s=the+juicy+one

Bake some delicious bread and enjoy!

LMR's picture
LMR

Hello, 

Thanks so much for your reply. I have heard of this book and now am even more eager to get it. Yummm.

Regards,

Lisa