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Rus Brot "yeastless" sourdough bread series

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Rus Brot "yeastless" sourdough bread series

Last year Rus Brot posted a series of videos in an attempt to reproduce and demonstrate how bread was, or at least could have been baked, "in the old times" in Russian villages: https://youtu.be/meVg13NtnPw. "Yeast-less" refers to a fad in Russia about how using commercial yeast is bad for you, and sourdough bread is marketed as "yeast-less", which is of course absurd (and he's made fun of this multiple times on his channel). For a long time I couldn't be bothered to try following these instructions, except for using his proposed way of creating a liquid rye sourdough starter ("kvass"). That worked exceptionally well for me back in Moscow, to create a very strong starter within two days.

Now that I am sort of settled here in Basel and got all my equipment including the heating pad for temperature control, I finally decided to try and follow all instructions from the start (create a new starter again) and actually bake some bread with that technology. It did seem interesting: instead of maintaining the starter, a little portion of mature dough is dried by rubbing 1:1 with flour to preserve for a long time. Then this dry starter crumbs are used to inoculate a liquid starter "kvass", which is used for pre-dough and dough. And again a small portion of the dough is dried up for the future.

Unfortunately, for some reason, my attempt to make the starter here didn't work out, my suspicion is the water I used was too hot (normally for refreshing a starter this temperature would have been perfectly fine, but perhaps to start a new one it was too much). To be on the safe side in case actually it was the flour, when repeating I used rye schrot mixed with barley malt instead of whole rye flour, and some raisins, and then everything went perfectly.

Bread Nr 1

The first bread he recommends baking is 100% whole rye. Which I did. On the outside it looked great!

And it tasted nice too, just simple robust whole grain rye. But it had these weird cracks inside, I've never seen this before, very curious where it could have come from...

The bread was huge (from 1 kg flour), and quite dense, so best eaten in thin slices, so it's been three weeks and I still haven't finished it, since I am temporarily here on my own. While it's a bit dry on the outside under the crust now and hard to cut, inside it's still moist, and no signs of any mold are visible. Today toasted some small peaces in olive oil with salt, pepper and garlic powder, they were great as croutons in a salad.

Bread Nr 2

Now after almost three weeks of no bread baking I was bored and although I still haven't finished this bread, I decided to bake the next bread following his instructions. Dry dough is resuspended in warm water with flour and malt extract, and left to ferment for 20-24 hours at 25-26C. I mixed it in the morning before work, and when I came back home the starter was already bubbly and frothy - but not at all sour yet. So I just stirred it vigorously, and then once more before bed. Then it had a bit of acidity and more complex smell. In the morning about 23 hrs later it must have overfermented, because there were no bubbles at all! Must have consumed all the food and gone quiet.

I assumed the yeast and bacteria were all still there, and just proceeded with the pre-dough (5.5 hrs at 28-29C - I gave it extra 30-40 min to account for the sleepy starter, and also I tend to like a touch more sour bread than his default recipes), and the final dough (1.5 hrs at 30C), shaping and final proof. Like in the video I used some high extraction wheat flour in this recipe (I used ~17% Ruchmehl, in place of his 15% grade 2 flour). The dough was very pleasant to work with, easy to shape and I had a good feeling about it - the only second thought I had was it didn't seem quite as airy as . I final proofed for 40-45 min above a tray of hot water, air temperature was around 35C. Then applied liquid dough, docked and baked - all just like in the video. Just this time I split the dough into to loaves, planning to give one away, so I don't end up eating it all again on my own for three weeks.

The loaves looked good, the only thing they had these back spots, which from experience I know show bubbles just under the crust. But what does the presence of these bubbles mean about the dough? I don't know.

Then net day (today) I cut into one of the loaves. And was greeted with this crumb:

Had it been a wheat bread, I would have assumed it was underfermented, with denser areas between large holes. But I've never seen anything like that in rye bread! Would one expect the same crumb structure defect from underfermentation? Or is that another issue? The crumb is not sticky, and not crumbly, can be cut with a serrated bread knife without leaving any marks on it. But the caverns are a clear issue... Tastes good - just like I remember simple mostly rye bread tasting in Russia. Nothing too special, just sturdy with a prominent taste.

Curious what other might think about the issues with these breads, and what could have caused cracks in the first bread, or caverns in the crumb in the second bread.

Comments

Martadella's picture
Martadella

Hi Ilya, thanks for sharing the story of these breads! I really like his youtube channel and his blog and baked several of his recipes (yeasted and sourdough alike) I especially like his Monastyrskij procedure, it's one of my favorite recipes ever. Didn't check out the new series, though. The second loaf looks actually underfermented and, maybe, overproofed. Is it possible to happen at the same time? Do you think that the first one could be underhydrated? Also, maybe some subtle differences in flours used caused different dough behavior? 

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Thank you for your comments, I also like his recipes a lot. And normally when followed accurately, the bread is guaranteed to come out perfect - but this time clearly there is something going not quite right.

The first one could be underhydrated (since I have no other ideas myself), but I didn't think so when I was working with the dough. I thought it was within range of consistency for a hearth rye loaf. But possibly I am not quite used to the local flour yet, and didn't realize it needed more water...

I agree there must be something wrong with the fermentation on the second bread. The difficulty is I think the level of acidity is perfect (like I said, the crumb is neither sticky nor crumbly at all). So I guess it must have had enough time in the pre-dough and in bulk stages. But maybe underproofed in the end?.. I just didn't think it could be possible to get such large holes in rye bread even with underproofing, how is the dough able to hold them? Have you ever seen this before?

Martadella's picture
Martadella

I never seen the crumb quite like this in a rye bread. What I think is that your starter might have been too weak in regard to yeast population. There was enough of lactic and acetic bacteria,  but yeast, for some reason, were low. It did happen to me before, and the crumb was dense and tasty, similar to the dense parts of your bread,  just without these large air pockets 

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Thank you for the thought. This is possible! Perhaps over-ripe liquid starter had weak yeast... Although the way it was bubbling before, it seemed very strong.

I asked Andrey of Rus Brot on his blog, he thought perhaps this caverns and bubbles underneath the crust could be caused by lack of lactic acid, and insufficient structure in the dough... I'll see how it behaves next time, and will ferment the liquid starter shorter but at higher temperature.

Martadella's picture
Martadella

That is interesting! Every time  I had acidity problems the bread was very sticky and smelled malty, with gooey center of the crumb. Glad you asked Andriey, he is always very helpful. 

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Those breads look interesting. I've had some of those cracks in some of my rye breads. I don't know what caused them but I chalked it up to my inexperience with high percentage rye breads.

The "yeastless" bread and preserved dough reminded me of a video I had watched from the Conner Prairie living history village in Indiana, USA. The baker describes making yeast cakes from "lively yeast" and cornmeal and then drying. The lively yeast was made from beer barm and flour. See video at ≈3:20 (https://youtu.be/Sp71deZlIxk)

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Nice, thank you! Yeah there are similarities re drying the yeast. Although the beer barm yeast don't have any LABs, so it won't be sourdough (so not usable for high % rye at least without some additional source of acid).

JonJ's picture
JonJ

Interesting experiment Ilya. It does look underfermented to me too, doesn't it?

The method reminds me of the way in which I preserve 'crumbs' of sourdough starter buried in flour. I'm wondering if it would work better without the salt (as the mature dough/Pâte Fermentée has salt in it?)

-Jon

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

I agree, if it were a wheat dough I would say "underfermented" immediately! But with rye I am no so sure...

Yes, indeed, it's basically the same as burying starter in flour. Why do you think salt could be a problem? There is no salt in the liquid starter or in the pre-dough.

Benito's picture
Benito

Very interesting breads and processes Ilya.  I agree the second one looks under fermented.  There just aren't enough alveoli in the centre of the loaf to indicate that it was fermented sufficiently.  As Martadella said it is possible that there was just not enough yeast in your second loaf and that during fermentation the LAB population sufficiently acidified the dough but the yeast weren't sufficient to aerate the dough.

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

Thanks Benny. You might be right! Hopefully it doesn't happen again and we will never know for sure :) I'm less confident with crumb diagnosis for rye bread, I don't think the signs are all the same as in wheat bread...

Benito's picture
Benito

You may be right Ilya, I certainly don’t have the wealth of experience with rye that you have so I will should the crumb diagnosis to you folks who are more experienced.