Dark rye flour
Hi everyone,
I'm ready to try out some recipes from "Inside the Jewish Bakery" by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg. The trouble is that several of the ones I want to try call for "dark rye flour." The introduction to the book specifies that in the context of European Jewish bakers, this meant the remnants of the whole rye berry after the white rye (endosperm) was milled out, making it not just unrefined but the opposite of unrefined.
I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and while it's easy to find bags of flour labeled "dark rye" here, they appear to be ordinary whole grain rye flour. I could order from Ginsberg's flour supply business in New York, but shipping would be prohibitively expensive. Does anyone know whether it's possible to find Jewish-style dark rye flour in Western Canada, or in Canada at all? Barring that, any advice for substitutions?
Thanks!
I am a bit surprised that someone even mills that anymore.
It's an unavoidable byproduct of white rye production, so it's not too surprising that it exists in the first place. The question is whether there's a market for it.
and equally difficult to deal with. Absolutely no rise when used alone, and if I use more than 20% of it in wheat breads the dough tears almost instantly, but the bread comes out really delicius!
I bought a 25KG bag and I still have 8 left.
The book contains a recipe for rozeve broyt (black bread) that calls for mostly dark rye, with coarse whole rye making up the difference. For what it's worth, the method described for getting as much oven spring as possible is to begin baking at 475 F (246 C) with a steam pan and to add boiling water to the pan three times at three-minute intervals before lowering the temperature to 225 F (107 C) and leaving it there for at least two hours. I'll post once I've tried it out with the materials available to me.
it will contain enough of the whole berry to be flavourful.
I know bob's red mill makes a dark rye flour that they claim is 'complete', including the germ and oil. Here's a link -
http://www.bobsredmill.com/organic-dark-rye-flour.html
Find any dark rye flour that you can and bake away. It will work just fine even if not exactly as described in the book.
Jeff
When you procure the dark rye, please post information about how your bread came out. I am interested in Jewish breads and bread history. Are you enjoying Inside the Jewish Bakery? I really like Claudia Rosen's The Book of Jewish Food, but more for the historical information, though I have adapted the mandel bread recipe.
I'm only looking through the book now; we just moved, and I finally found the box with the baking books. Wth any luck I'll be able to try this one out some time next week.
Flourdusted. I am near Vancouver myself. I get Rogers Dark Rye Flour, but this is probably something you have found as well?
John
I have a bag of Rogers dark rye in my kitchen right now. The trouble is that it appears, based on their web site, to be just whole grain rye flour, and what I'm looking for is rye flour that is missing most of the endosperm. I'm thinking about playing games with a fine sieve so I can extract the bigger pieces of bran and germ from the flour, then add back in a bit of the remainder, but that will involve digging up some numbers on extraction rates for white rye flour and calculating backwards.
Sounds like quite the process. You may want to give Anita's Organic Mill a call to see if they have something for you. They are in Chilliwack. I get all my flours and whole grains from them now. Good luck.
John
I hadn't heard of them. I just moved here from New York in August. Thanks!
(Also, sorry for the multiple replies. I'm having a little trouble with the interface right now. Any idea how to fully delete my own comment?)
Well welcome to Canada!
No I do not know how to do that. I think Floyd is the only one that can delete a forum post?
John