Hi Stan, Very interesting to read your formula and process for making this bread (Borodinski is a favorite, so delicious, with the coriander seed!). What a lovely beginning for your book of rye breads. :^) breadsong
for you, Stan and you are a wonderful baker, but as a person who has been eating Borodinsky bread since childhood I have to say that it absolutely MUST be a deep brown, almost black color. Maybe it's the picture quality?
Thanks TT, I appreciate your feedback. The photo has a somewhat yellow cast, but the bread isn't nearly as dark as what you describe, which sounds more like a German pumpernickel. I suspect this is because, in the interest of simplification, I didn't include a steaming phase I've seen in a few recipes. This step involves covering the bread with foil 15 minutes or so into the bake and steaming for about 1 hour, then unpanning and baking to set the crust for an additional 30 minutes. Next time I bake this one, I'll include the steam phase and see how things turn out.
the steam will help somewhat, but really the thing is the kind of malt you are using. Usually, as far as I know, and I must admit that that knowledge may be wrong, the type of malt used for Borodinsky was a roasted rye malt. It's a "dead" malt with no enzyme activity. It might be the case that this malt was mixed in some proportion with the red malt, which does have some enzyme activity. Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is that the roasted rye malt is very dark in color and an addition of about 5-7% colors the bread very dark.
I've used dark roasted rye malt in some German recipes, but virtually all of the Russian rye bread formulas I've seen call for red malt, which darkens the crumb somewhat, but clearly not to the extent a black malt would.
also known as GOST does prescribe the use of red rye malt (the standard itself and manufacture technologies are available at http://www.borodinsky.com/standart/gost5309-50/gost5309-50.html . I'm not Russian myself, but I can understand it well enough to ascertain that the malt in there is not roasted (if you don't speak Russian at all maybe someone might translate).
So I suppose in the historical malt to use would be the red malt, since I think Borodinsky bread as we know it did originate in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. Certainly, there were probably similar recipes all around rye-bread-baking countries, but the standardization of taste (and name) is not likely to have come before.
However, if we skip ahead a few decades to these much happier times when the Soviet Union is no more, the types of bread labeled as "Borodinsky" in Lithuania are very dark indeed and I know for a fact that it isn't molasses or food coloring that does it, but the malt. May it be a national aberration from the norm? The more I think about it, the more likely it seems, since roasted malt is almost a "national additive".
So in the end, sorry for my rambling post which doesn't really say anything. I guess it's a matter of what preference and/or definition. I consider good Borodinsky to be this color:
though it seems that the authentic thing looks something like this:
.
Cheers,
Tadas
P.S. Stan, there is one sure thing that I can tell you -- it's never Borodinskye Chleb, it's just Borodinsky Chleb ;)
As you can see, it's a pretty dark brown, almost black. The closest I can come to describing it is dutch-process cocoa powder. The texture is usually pretty rough, a bit rougher than wholegrain flour, but not as rough as meal or groats.
This stuff is made by tons. You can't even get a bag smaller than 25 kilos from malt companies, but I've managed to persuade a local bakery to sell me some :)
Stan, I noticed that your page took a while to download and render the banner photo. A look at the image data reveals that is a png image of 774kB. The png format is better suited to a limited color palette as in line drawings. A better format is jpg which is suitable for photographic images.
Converting to a jpg, reduces the image size to 157kB, a five fold reduction. For your visitors with metered bandwidth, that would be a Good Thing.
If you like, I'll email the converted image to you.
Thanks so much, Gary, for the heads-up. I always thought that png was a more efficient format, and have been using Photoshop to convert. Now that I know the difference, I'll go back and convert all of my images.
book out on the right foot! Nice rye Stan!
Happy New Year.
Looks great Stan. Great start.
Hi Stan,
Very interesting to read your formula and process for making this bread (Borodinski is a favorite, so delicious, with the coriander seed!).
What a lovely beginning for your book of rye breads.
:^) breadsong
Thanks!
for you, Stan and you are a wonderful baker, but as a person who has been eating Borodinsky bread since childhood I have to say that it absolutely MUST be a deep brown, almost black color. Maybe it's the picture quality?
Thanks TT, I appreciate your feedback. The photo has a somewhat yellow cast, but the bread isn't nearly as dark as what you describe, which sounds more like a German pumpernickel. I suspect this is because, in the interest of simplification, I didn't include a steaming phase I've seen in a few recipes. This step involves covering the bread with foil 15 minutes or so into the bake and steaming for about 1 hour, then unpanning and baking to set the crust for an additional 30 minutes. Next time I bake this one, I'll include the steam phase and see how things turn out.
Stan
the steam will help somewhat, but really the thing is the kind of malt you are using. Usually, as far as I know, and I must admit that that knowledge may be wrong, the type of malt used for Borodinsky was a roasted rye malt. It's a "dead" malt with no enzyme activity. It might be the case that this malt was mixed in some proportion with the red malt, which does have some enzyme activity. Anyways, what I'm trying to get at is that the roasted rye malt is very dark in color and an addition of about 5-7% colors the bread very dark.
The malt looks like this:
and gets even darker when wet.
I've used dark roasted rye malt in some German recipes, but virtually all of the Russian rye bread formulas I've seen call for red malt, which darkens the crumb somewhat, but clearly not to the extent a black malt would.
I'll look further ...
also known as GOST does prescribe the use of red rye malt (the standard itself and manufacture technologies are available at http://www.borodinsky.com/standart/gost5309-50/gost5309-50.html . I'm not Russian myself, but I can understand it well enough to ascertain that the malt in there is not roasted (if you don't speak Russian at all maybe someone might translate).
So I suppose in the historical malt to use would be the red malt, since I think Borodinsky bread as we know it did originate in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. Certainly, there were probably similar recipes all around rye-bread-baking countries, but the standardization of taste (and name) is not likely to have come before.
However, if we skip ahead a few decades to these much happier times when the Soviet Union is no more, the types of bread labeled as "Borodinsky" in Lithuania are very dark indeed and I know for a fact that it isn't molasses or food coloring that does it, but the malt. May it be a national aberration from the norm? The more I think about it, the more likely it seems, since roasted malt is almost a "national additive".
So in the end, sorry for my rambling post which doesn't really say anything. I guess it's a matter of what preference and/or definition. I consider good Borodinsky to be this color:
though it seems that the authentic thing looks something like this:
Cheers,
Tadas
P.S. Stan, there is one sure thing that I can tell you -- it's never Borodinskye Chleb, it's just Borodinsky Chleb ;)
too light of red. It need to be chocolate to get the color of the bread right. Thanks for the tip and photo MRTT.
I'll post up a plate of roasted rye malt used in East European later in the day -- it costs pennies so I've got a few kilos lying around :)
As you can see, it's a pretty dark brown, almost black. The closest I can come to describing it is dutch-process cocoa powder. The texture is usually pretty rough, a bit rougher than wholegrain flour, but not as rough as meal or groats.
This stuff is made by tons. You can't even get a bag smaller than 25 kilos from malt companies, but I've managed to persuade a local bakery to sell me some :)
Stan, I noticed that your page took a while to download and render the banner photo. A look at the image data reveals that is a png image of 774kB. The png format is better suited to a limited color palette as in line drawings. A better format is jpg which is suitable for photographic images.
Converting to a jpg, reduces the image size to 157kB, a five fold reduction. For your visitors with metered bandwidth, that would be a Good Thing.
If you like, I'll email the converted image to you.
cheers,
gary
Thanks so much, Gary, for the heads-up. I always thought that png was a more efficient format, and have been using Photoshop to convert. Now that I know the difference, I'll go back and convert all of my images.
Stan