Latvian black bread - old family recipe
Hello, I've been a long time reader of this site but this is my first time posting. I've been making bread for several years, and my favorites are good hearty rye breads. So I am experienced working with rye, but I recently came across an old family recipe for Latvian black bread, and I am looking for any suggestions you may have.
The recipe is from my great grandmother (who I never met). She would bake this in large batches for her kids and grandkids, who all lived within the same neighborhood. She was apparently notorious for not measuring things, which you can see in the recipe which I will post at the end of this.
I've been taking her recipe and measuring and weighing all the ingredients in the hopes of having a recipe I can reproduce if it comes out ok. Some questions:
I have never used fresh yeast before. I normally use my own starter or dried yeast. The recipe refers to yeast by the "piece". I found some small blocks of fresh yeast at the local supermarket. Is it reasonable to assume that a piece I buy today is close to the size of a piece from 50 years ago? Any suggestions for how to estimate the right amount to use?
The recipe calls for sifted flour, both rye and white flour. I have sifted some so I can measure the weight of a cup, but I don't plan to actually sift the flour before making bread. Is there any reason that sifting would make a difference to the dough? I assume that once you mix it all up and knead it, it shouldn't matter. I just can't think of why a bread recipe would call for sifted flour.
The sugar in the recipe surprised me, as these European ryes are usually not sweet. Have any of you seen that in rye bread recipes before? I'm going to do it, but I have my doubts...
Last question: the recipe calls for caraway measured by the handful. I figure I'll just approximate a small handful, since she was a small woman. Any suggestions for a reasonable measurement of caraway for this bread? I am OK with some caraway flavor but don't tend to like rye breads that bowl you over with it.
Thank you for any help/suggestions. I'm really excited to make this, I hope it turns out well. In case you're interested, the recipe as given to me by my aunt is below.
-Rob.
Starter (Roga)
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2 cups rye flour (sifted)
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 t lemon juice
1/2 piece yeast
1/4 t salt
Into small bowl sift flour, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add lemon juice and salt.
Stir. Cover, set aside one hour to raise a little. Refrigerate covered one week.
Black Bread
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6 cups sifted rye flour
12 cups sifted white flour (don't sift if it's presifted)
2T coarse salt
1 cup sugar
2 handful caraway seeds
8 cups warm water
1 piece yeast
Night before baking warm 4 cups water. Put in large pan with starter, stir, add one
piece of yeast dissolved in 1/4 cup water. Stir all, add rye flour and stir well. Cover
pan airtight. Sit on counter overnight.
Next morning add white flour with 4 cups warm water., stir, add salt, sugar, caraway
seeds. It is best to knead with hands, too heavy for spoon.
Start early as it takes 3 hours to rise.
When dough is almost to the top of pan, put out 5 loaf pans ( 1 lb each).
Place dough in each 1/2 full so room to rise while baking. Set aside 30 minutes.
Bake 400 degrees for one hour. When bread is out of oven, coat top with egg wash
for glossy finish.
I don't have much to offer, just a few things that may or may not help.
Sifting -- that's going to lighten the flour if you sift before you measure. Obviously, it would end up weighing less than unsifted flour if measured in the same amounts, but I can't imagine it would add up to much of a difference. Sifting the rye would remove some of the larger bits, assuming you were using a coarser grind of rye flour. I doubt if that is the point, but maybe?
As to caraway -- I make a one-loaf rye that has about a cup of rye (approximately, what I remember right now, without the recipe in front of me) and the suggested amount of whole caraway seeds is 20g. That gives a *very* light caraway flavor. I like caraway in my rye, and I made a note the last time I made this loaf to start increasing the caraway until it got to where I wanted the flavor. I'm figuring twice that much for just one loaf to start. Just FYI.
The sugar amount is shocking to me as well. That is a ton of sugar -- if she is talking about refined white sugar. If we just take a guess at 120g per cup of flour, that's 2,400g of flour (the rye will weigh more than120, I'm guessing, but it works for this estimate). One cup of sugar is 700g. That means your sugar percentage is approaching 30%! That's a surprise.
Anyway, good luck. Keep posting as you develop the recipe.
jaywillie
Unless different cups are used for sugar and flour I would say that sugar does not weigh 700g/120g = 5.8 times as much as flour for equal volumes (though of course it can be made that way on purpose by adding a lot of air to the flour and removing it from the sugar).
I was going too fast and created a mashup of ounces (7) and grams (200). Even so, at 200g, we're approaching 10% sugar. That's still a lot.
jaywillie
That sounds great - I am inclined to give a smaller batch a try.
Using the following conversions (from http://www.cuisinivity.com/guide/measurement.php) the dough weight is about 4600g, so I guess those are not the cups used in your recipe since you end up with 5x1lb dough ~ 2270g.
1 cup sugar ~ 227g
1 cup water ~ 235g
1 cup flour ~ 120g
I know a couple of Danish rye bread recipes where sugar is on the list of ingredients. I can recommend brown sugar for rye bread and I think a good amount is about 20g brown sugar for 1kg dough. If the relative weights of the cup to gram conversions are correct your recipe has about 50g sugar per 1000g dough so that does not sound unreasonable, especially if the sweetness should be emphasized.
By the way, I think a lot of the Swedish rye bread has sugar or syrup in it as well.
If you use King Arthur's weight of different flours you would use:
Those differences could make a decent difference. Having used sucanat many times I would estimate it's on the 150g/cup range because it's very "fluffy" (like powdered milk, kind of).
hello,
i was born in neighboring Estonia and this type of bread is very common to both of them and the entirety of the Slavic Cultures.
one of the main reasons that sifting flour has usually been advised there is the quality of flour may not have been that awesome, i.e. few irregular or large lumps, some debris, a tiny pebble etc.
secondly, the bread isn't sweet but the sugar does bring out a caramelized/malty type of dark eye flavor... That being said, the sugar back in the old country wasn't like modern American white sugar. Maybe more like the raw sugar varieties, so it had more caramelized flavor and less obnoxious sweetness. I would reduce the sugar by 25% and only use the raw types of sugar (or zulka Mexican non-gmo sugar, which is available in a lot of retail shops in the US including Walmart).
sounds like a yummy bread
Tatyana
Is the term 'black' simply used to basically denote that it's not a 'white' bread? Or, do you recall the bread being distinctly dark/black? I'm just trying to get an idea of what the end goal would be here.
From the recipe, I see nothing that would make the loaf any darker than "whole wheat" color; and certainly nothing that would resemble 'black' in color. Perhaps, if the sugar used in the old country was indeed a very unrefined sugar then that would certainly attribute a darker color to the bread. When I've made syrup from sucanat sugar, it comes out a very dark amber color that's bordering on brown. The flavor of sucanat is also very much less sweet than white or turbinado sugars with a fairly strong molasses component to it.
I've made some other recipes called black bread and they are not black. Some can get reasonably dark, but this looks to be a 40% rye recipe so I don't think it will be that dark.
really black bread is just the generic name for rye bread And it's usually not very dark.
Thanks everyone for these helpful answers, and thanks Tatyana for the suggestion to use non-white sugar and reduce it a bit. I'll try that. I don't think I have any raw sugar in the house (and I need to make the final dough early tomorrow). Do you think a mix of white and brown sugar would approximate it? Or just make it even more of the wrong kind of sweet?
that sounds like a good idea! Hope it works out well
Just add some molasses to the dough.
One more question as I am about to make the final dough. I calculated the whole recipe and it looks to me like 80% hydration, which seems very high. Would you go with it, or cut it down to more like 70?
At 40% rye flour, it should be able to handle that hydration very well. Assuming the white flour you use is a bread flour (i.e. higher protein than all purpose) then 80% should be very doable.
Keep us posted on how it works out. I've very intrigued.
Interesting recipe on several counts:
Use of lemon juice+yeast to create the starter culture. Ordinarily, a healthy starter will contain yeast and lactic acid bacteria, which produce both lactic and acetic acid; this one clearly uses citric as an acidifier, which is unusual both technically and also culturally, as the Baltics were never known for their citrus agriculture.
"Sifted" in old recipes, particularly from Eastern Europe, typically means flour that's been bolted -- understandable if one is baking with stone-ground flour that has particles of varying size. Bolted flours are lighter than wholegrain flours, so the recipe is probably referring to a light to medium rye flour and a high-extraction wheat flour like sifted stone-ground whole wheat or a blend of first clear and bread flour.
What you're describing is really a two-stage sponge and a final dough. The first stage establishes the yeast and acidity and the second builds the foundation of the dough. What surprises me is the use of yeast in both stages: most of the Baltic ryes I've seen only use yeast sparingly (if at all) and it typically gets added to the final dough when the stage 2 fermentation has lasted 12 hours or more, which intensifies the acidity, but weakens the leavening power of the sponge. Caraway is also consistent with Baltic and Russian ryes, but not in such high quantities; your great-grandmother must have really loved the stuff.
40% rye is very low-percentage for a Baltic rye, which traditionally contain 80-100% rye.
One of the things I love most about Baltic ryes is their sweet-sour flavor profile. In traditional recipes, the sweetness most often comes from a scald containing malted rye, but I've seen other breads that use honey, apple cider and plum jam, as well as sugar, to produce sweetness. The sour, of course, comes from the lactobacillus (or, in this case, the lemon juice).
In all, I'd say your recipe is probably an adaptation/approximation of a traditional Latvian rye bread to American ingredients and foodways. The use of yeast, lemon juice and lots of wheat flour are atypical of Baltic ryes (for a good example of a traditional bread, take a look at the recipe for Lithuanian Black Rye Bread I posted a while back on my blog, The Rye Baker.)
Hope this helps.
Stan Ginsberg
with the exception I used SD in place of yeast and lemon and used barley make syrup in place of sugar. I used 10% whole grain wheat on place of some of the white flour and whole grain rye in place of the sifgte rye with a a hydration of 75%. I was shooting for lower hydration to mimic Tzitzel non oan bread but 80% hydration for your bread would be more normal for a pan bread. I used 2.5% caraway and it was there but I think many would use 4% or even more.
Every time I stir my whole grain rye and spoon it into a cup and use a knife to level, it comes out at 130 g.... with white flour at 126 g.
I don't think this bread will come out black but I have seen Latvian recipes with much more rye and red malt in it that are baked like a pumpernickel, low and slow, that come out back.
Good luck with the Latvian baking fun.
Black bread like this I've tried and I can't say I loved it. It's quite a bit different to the Russian black but worth trying as something different.
Here's how it came out. It is not what I expected from a black bread recipe. My mother remembers it as being dark and dense, and this is neither, so I think the recipe must have been written down wrong or changed over the years. I am now on a quest to find an authentic recipe. The one that Elagins posted above looks great, and I would appreciate links to any others. I have searched around and most of the ones I see look like they are trying to approximate the flavor and color with other ingredients like vinegar and cocoa.
As for the flavor, it is a nice loaf of 40% rye with a bit of a different flavor. I made Hamelman's 40% caraway rye recipe recently, and this one tastes quite different even though the ingredients are similar. I used turbinado sugar (3/4 of what the recipe called for) and it is not sweet but the sugar does add a nice flavor to it. The week long sour "roga" added a distinct flavor as well, but the bread is not sour. I would describe it as aromatic, in a nice way, but not like other dense ryes that I have made.
I think my guess on the yeast may have been too much. The dough rose very aggressively, and the texture of the finished loaf is pretty light and springy. Not at all dense even for a 40% rye. This will make a great sandwich.
This was my first post on this site, and I really want to thank everyone for the super helpful replies! It's nice to see such passion around good bread.
I have been trying to reproduce my mother's black bread, with mixed results. The beloved tangy dark bread that I ate as an after-school snack, slathered with sour cream, salt and dill, was emblematic of my childhood as part of a huge immigrant family growing up in the US in the 60s and 70s. Mom took her recipe to the grave, but it certainly was not sweet - maybe a tiny spoon of sugar to help the fermentation, no more. She kept a rye sourdough culture and, as I recall, made the bread with half coarse dark rye, half wheat flour, and lots of caraway seeds. I have not managed to get mine to turn out dark enough or sour enough, nor have I understood how to get the right crust - not crisp but more leathery (can you say that about a bread crust?). Still working on that. Hoping some other Latvians will weigh in. I have taken up the quest again because my older brother is on his last legs in a nursing home, and I am trying to comfort him with traditional family foods. (My apologies - I do not speak Latvian, to my shame and regret - we children never believed Grandma when she said "Ze old country vill be free again one day." We just wanted to fit in and not be accused of being foreigners. :-(
Baltic and Russian breads use rye malt scalds extensively. Get yourself some malted rye berries from a home brewing outlet, roast them at 400 for 12 minutes or so, let them cool and grind them into a powder. Use them in a scald with the caraway seeds.
There's lots more information on Russian and Baltic black breads in my book "The Rye Baker."
Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com
I have tried to make 100% sourdough rye which mimics this authentic Latvian 'ista rupjmaize' (real rye bread) made by Lāči bakery in Babites which is just outside of Riga. Still a long way to go yet before I get close.
The ingredients of this above bread are: rudzu rupja maluma milti [rye meal course grind], dabigs ieraugs (rudzu milti, udens) [natural leven (rye flour, water)], cukurs [sugar], rudzu iesals [rye malt], kimenes [caraway], partikas varama sals [food cooking salt].
A video of the bread making process at Lāči bakery.
From what I have read about achieving the correct look and bake, the pre-ferment needs to be done with scalding the rye with boiling (?) water, then long ferment and be baked hot, at greater temperature than home ovens can reach. Exact temp for the entire bake I do not know. I personally add blackstrap molasses to create the black look which would normally come naturally from the high temp, long bake if done with correct oven. This particular bread is not rock hard and has a sweetness which is not a by-product from sugar, which you may find in white breads for example. The outside black crust is not a burnt taste or very thick either and the bread does last a long time. It is a dense type of bread but does not sit heavy after eating as it is thinly sliced.
If you read the book Bread - A bakers book of techniques and recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman he explains in detail the process of rye flour development and goes a way to explain how and why rye tastes as it does if made properly.
Hi - I am a Latvian cook and baker, and I often teach Latvian traditional cooking to kids/teens. Hopefully I can help you a bit with some explanations for the recipe you got from your great grandmother. First of all, the 'Roga' is most likely "ieraugs" - which means starter - the bit you start with, and what you save from each batch of bread to make the next batch. 'Raugs' is actually the Latvian word for yeast.
My recipe for ieraugs came to me from an aunt who was a master baker, and who made wonderful rye bread. Her ieraugs recipe is simple: 1 cup of rye flour, 2 cups of warm water, 1 tablespoon dry traditional yeast, and 1/4 cup plain yogurt, the kind with a natural culture/yeast in it. Mix all of these together well, and put it into a clean glass jar (i.e. a large canning jar), but do not cover it. Put this mixture in a warm place and let it ferment/sour for 3 days. After that, put a lid on the mixture and keep it in the fridge. You do not have to keep feeding this starter.
The 'piece of yeast' in your recipe - well, I remember when I was a kid, my (Latvian) mom would buy this little block of yeast at the grocery store. It came in a red and blue package, about 1.5" x 1"?, and I think it was Red Star, made by Fleishmann's. That was the standard 'cube' my mom would have used. If your great grandmother came to the USA post WWII, I suspect that would have been the same kind of cube for her too. My job was to crumble up the yeast cube, and stir it up with a tablespoon or so of sugar until it became kind of runny, and Mom usually used this yeast for other kinds of baked goodies. Latvian rye bread is often started with ieraugs - the sourish starter, which is made with yeast. Brown sugar or honey can be added to the dough, but the bread is not what I would call sweet. The sugar feeds the yeast and helps the bread rise.
I agree with a previous comment about sugar. In Latvija, sugar back in the 1930's and 40's was not what we see in grocery stores these days. First of all, it was made from sugar beets, not cane sugar. It was a much more precious commodity than it is today, so honey, which could be produced on your own farm, was often used.
Latvian rye bread is not usually BLACK! There are some darker ones, like the wonderful rye bread made at the Laci bakery, but even then, it is more a dark chocolate color. The crust of many rye breads is often dark and crunchy, but inside, the bread is more likely to be a version of tan, lighter or darker, depending on the amount of white flour or the kind of rye flour used. Caraway seeds - oh yes! I know many who would say that unless there are LOTS of caraway seeds in a rye bread, it is not a good rye bread!
To keep the crust crunchy, do not put it in a plastic bag after it cools. If it is wrapped up, then it will be more leathery than crunchy.
I have a variety of Latvian rye bread recipes - but the one you use depends on the kind of Latvian rye bread you want to make or prefer. There is no one single recipe, and your great grandmother's may have well been another interesting variant! .
My aunt (master bread baker)'s recipe calls for 13 cups of rye flour, + 2 cups of bread flour, 8 cups of water, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 package of dry yeast (traditional, not instant), 1 tablespoon of caraway seeds, and 1 cup of the starter you saved from a previous batch of this bread, or which you made as per the recipe for ieraugs. Some prefer to use brown sugar. instead of more refined white sugar. That's it - no other ingredients. She also said to cover the baked loaves with a clean dishtowel while cooling, and if you wanted to keep it for a longer time, then you put it in a plastic bag, and store it in the fridge, esp in the summer. .