Over the last year I have been trying to make a Rye bread called Tzitzel, which I remember from a bakery in my home town - University City, Missouri.  The bakery is still there and still makes Tzitzel, but as I don't have much (any) reason to go back to U. City, I figured I'd better learn how to make it myself.  After many attempts, I finally felt that I managed to make a respectable Jewish Rye with a nice crust and flavor http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20506/jewish-corn-rye but it still didn't taste anything like the Tzitzel I remembered.   Recently I took advantage of the brief free shipping period at King Arthur, and ordered White Rye and Sir Lancelot flour, neither of which I'd baked with before.   I tried making Jewish Rye with these two flours instead of Hodgson's Mill Stone Ground Rye and King Arthur Bread Flour.   I started to feel I was onto something despite the fact that the white rye flavor was much too mild, and the loaves puffed up like a white flour wheat loaf, which is very un-Tzitzel-like.   Today I tried again with a rye sour made with 2/3 white rye and 1/3 Arrowhead Mills organic rye, which is a whole rye flour, but much less gritty than Hodgson's Mills.   This time, the shape (broad and squat) flavor and texture were much more on target.   So now I have one more thing to add to my long list of baking lessons that I've learned this year - the flour matters.   If I want to get any closer to the original Pratzel's tzitzel, I am going to have to find out what kind of flour they use, and that's that.

I have been trying lately to recreate a bread that I ate as a child.   It was called Tzitzel and was made by a local Jewish baker, Pratzels, in University City - a suburb of St. Louis.   I have so far made 5 attempts - 4 with sourdough starters and 1 with yeast only.  I am a relatively new bread baker, so I'm not sure I have the vocabulary to describe what I think these attempts lack, but I'll try.   My first attempt was a bread that I made with the no knead method using two to one white flour to rye, and some whole wheat sourdough starter.   What made this similar to the original was the texture (rather than the taste) which was a coarse and uneven crumb.   All the attempts after that have had a fairly dense and even crumb.   The tastiest by far (and the closest in taste) was my attempt at the Greenstein corn rye recipe that I found posted on this site.    So the thought might be to try to adapt Greenstein to a no knead method, but I really can't even figure out how to do that, since it is raised in water in less than an hour, and only kneaded for a few minutes.    BTW, I did contact Pratzels which is still in business, and still making Tzitzel - although I don't live close enough to buy it from them anymore.   The owner did tell me that their starter is almost 100 years old, and that their Tzitzel is "just" a Jewish rye wrapped in cornmeal.   It seems to me that once you get a decent starter, it really doesn't matter how old it is, so I'm not sure if this is material, but of course, I'm still trying to duplicate their recipe.   Any thoughts on how I might make a coarse and uneven crumb rye bread and even better, if you have had the original at Pratzels, how to duplicate their Tzitzel?

Corn Rye CrumbMulti-grain Crumb

Greenstein's Corn Bread is the ultimate Jewish rye, and it is unique in the technique with which it is made. The ingredients are the usual - rye sour, rye flour, common flour (AKA first clear flour), yeast and caraway seeds. And water. The crust is glazed with a corn starch/water mixture.