Rheinisches Schwartzbrot - "Coarse" & "Fine" cracked rye?; inactive malt syrup
In formulas calling for "coarse" and "fine" cracked rye, never having tasted, seen or felt what these might be from German suppliers, wondering if anyone has suggestions - either "Milling" some coarse cracked grains by pulsing in a spice grinder, let's say, or using "cracked" and "chopped" rye from various suppliers to get a decent approximation?
I have on hand Janie's Mill Cracked Rye, which feels slightly finer to me than Baker's Authority Rye Chops - but then, I don't know if I'm just feeling a minor difference between chopped and cracked grain. I also have Baker's Authority Pumpernickel Flour.
Thoughts?
Secondly, a formula (Lutz Geißler) calls for "active malt flour" (no problem - I have rye malt), but also calls for inactive liquid malt - I presume something like one can find in homebrew stores, liquid wort basically boiled down. Can't get liquid rye malt syrup however. Another formula (Hefe und Mehr. Can't recall who referred me to the site - thank you!) calls for sugar beet syrup (Rübenkraut), which I just obtained. I presume this is perfectly fine as a rye malt syrup sub. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Paul
I doubt the syrup has to be from rye, I'd use barley malt extract (syrup).
Thanks Ilya. I do have some barley extract (in fact, I have some "Munich Malt" extract too, which I think might be interesting in certain breads - probably even the Baltic and E. European breads as I come to understand them). I'd forgotten about the Barley syrup until later today, lol - the same day this "Sugar Beet Syrup" arrived. Given Hefe und Mehr uses the beet syrup, I think I'll go with her recipe for now to see how it pans out. But it will be nice to use these barley syrups I have, too.
Just in case folks don't know, "Munich Malt" is standard 2-row barley malt, which undergoes a unique malting process compared to other malts such as standard pale ale or pilsner malts. Malts are germinated, then kilned and/or steeped, roasted and cooled down; some such as "crystal" malts undergo a steeping regime to actually saccharify kernel starches while the whole corn is still still intact; these are the "crystal malts" that lend anywhere from golden to red to deep chocolate hue to beers, and anything from a pretty-straightforward sweetness to the wort to a decidedly toffee or baked dark fruit quality, maillard reactions in addition to saccharifications.
Munich malts, which can be light to dark, are something like both of the above. They are germinated normally, but they undergo a staged saccharification process through a combination of kilning temperature, duration, and moisture management to promote maillard reactions and melanoidin reactions (think caramelization and the joining of reducing sugars and free amino acids promoting color and changes to flavor).
The result is "maltiness." Not sweetness, but the rich taste of continental lagers such as the "Vienna style," or the Bavarian "Märzen" or Dunkel style beers (think Negro Modelo for a Mexican example).
Just as their potential in even non-German styles of beer is broad, I suspect their flour can lend some nice things to certain breads. Some point, I'm going to play.
Just thought some might find it interesting.
Thanks for the info Paul, I'm terribly uneducated about brewing in general, so that's quite interesting! I have explored the local brewing shop online to see if there was anything I could use in baking, and they had lots of malts and malt extracts, but the latter were all in much larger quantities than I could use for baking.
How do the Munich malts compare to red rye malt by the way?
Oh wow, totally different (you're talking about the fermented red rye, right?). Munich has no sourness, and none of what I would call "dirt; earth" I find in the rye. Note I don't mean the "dirt" descriptor as a downside - I mean that in a great way. I've never had anything even remotely like the red rye before so my palate is uneducated about it. Maybe something like smoked red spices, e.g., smoked paprika, or sumac?. Spent yeast, meatiness. Marmite?
Munich has that "maltiness" which is probably as hard to describe as "umami." A sensory neighbor to sweetness, but too much roasted dryness and malt-shop powdered malt flavor to be truly "sweet." The cleanest possible roastiness, from very mild to a deep roastedness, bordering on caramelly without cloying sweetness. Have you had any Oktoberfest beers, Spaten, Ayinger? Eku 28 (classic dunkelbock - though bocks actually tend to sweet - and knock-you-out potent!). Hofbräu Dunkel, Negro Modelo, Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel, Münchner Dunkel (Hacker-Pschorr), Original Münchner Dunkel (Paulaner)?
Just about any German beer that is golden amber to dark - though bocks are different in their sweetness and potency, as I mentioned. Germans migrated to Mexico in the 19th century and brought with them their lager brewing. So dark Mexican examples such as Negro Modelo. Then taste your barley syrup. That is malty v. malt sweetness.
Very interesting, thank you! I'll have to try some of that at some point.
I am from Germany, had a micro bakery for many years and sold different kinds of Schwarzbrot and Vollkornbrot.
There is no exactly defined grade of coarseness for cracked or chopped eye. If you can find a source for it in your area, fine. Otherwise you have to grind it yourself. You take what you can get.
Rye berries are so hard, you can’t chop them in a food processor or coffee grinder - you need a mill.
Diastatic (active) and non-diastatic malt (or malt syrup) you can order online, for example at King Arthur Flour Co. The American equivalent of Zuckerrübensirup (sugar beet syrup) is molasses. It tastes very similar.
Happy baking, Karin
Karin,
You don't know me at all, but I have enjoyed your many posts here and your blog. I'm so pleased to meet you. And you remind me now how much I've wanted to bake your Frisian! My mother's side is German (with a direct line going all the way back to 1415 - Johannes Hoffman, 1415 to 15-4-1451, Stolpen-Sachsen), with a smattering of Danish blood ("Mattsen") thrown in for good measure. So your Frisian Rye caught me eye and my love of the ocean was very moved by the austere beauty of your Amrum video. So, yes, nice to meet you here.
Thank you for your information, too. It seems a mill will be the next piece of equipment. The Janie's Mill "Cracked" does seem finer than the Baker's Authority "Chopped," so perhaps I'll try to parse these with some pumpernickel to try the recipe out. Mariana, if you're reading this, perhaps you've some thoughts?
Danke!
Paul
And if you buy a mill - I recommend Mockmill. It’s much better and more practical than the Nutrimill I had before (no, I don’t get a kickback from them 😉).
Karin
Lol, yes, I sniff no ulterior motives..!
Thanks for the recommendation, (would you prefer your name, or username?). The Mockmill was my definite plan but a member here very kindly gave me some thoughts and a Retsel in excellent shape and a great price almost fell into my lap so I went with it. I can't wait to mill whole-grain flours at home.
Thanks again for your Friesisches Schwarzbrot formula. Baked and, um, sitting on the cooling rack quaking with fear because someone has a bread knife at the ready and is having a hard time letting this poor thing mature until tomorrow!
Paul,
Rye malt syrup is sold here, for example
https://www.easternshoresbrewing.com/briess-rye-liquid-malt-extract-3-3-lbs/
Instead of beet molasses, I would suggest fancy sugar cane molasses, any other kind is not pleasant in taste or odor in bread. Look for fancy.
I have never seen diastatic rye malt in our stores, only barley malt or diastatic liquid malt. Since the recipe tequires specifically dry diastatic malt, then KAF and Amazon sell it, no problem.
I don't know if it's schrot that you are looking for or pure cracked product. Schrot could be made in vitamix or blendtec if you already own one,
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrot_(Getreide)
otherwise, with those three different grades of rye chops or rye meal that you already have you would do just fine.
In a pinch, you could always simply presoak whole rye for 12 hrs at room temp or refrigerated and then chop by hand or in a food processor to any degree you want, just the amount you need for the recipe. Adjust water in your formula accordingly. Dry rye grain is 10% moisture, whereas fully soaked is 40% moisture content. You can weigh your rye before and after soaking and thus you will know how much less water add to your dough.
Best wishes,
m.
Packed with info as usual, thank you so much mariana.
Warning all - this is going to be lengthy, I think!
On the sugar beet syrup. Can't recall who (hate that, because I want to give credit where it's due) recommended the Hefe und Mehr site and her formula for the Rheinisches Schwarzbrot, which looked pretty interesting to me, has this in it. I was stumped by "Rübenkraut" so unfortunately had to rely on Bing, and sure enough saw that it was sugar beet syrup. I looked around and see it's fairly common and got this from Amazon, "Grafschafter Goldsaft Original Sugar Beet Syrup" so figured it's the real deal. BTW - is this actually molasses, or a different product (and therefore, it would be good)?
OH. Just as I was writing the above paragraph I see this stuff is a spread, so that doesn't sound right at all, even based on that alone. So - no good for baking, right?
Sugar cane syrup. I actually have a darker invert sugar I made myself, that I used to use making traditional British ales. Would that work well (i.e., not just be OK," but a good ingredient to use)? (no idea on the moisture content).
Thanks for the liquid rye malt wort. I was just being lazy and presumed they didn't even make the stuff, since most brewers use it in spare amounts (I think even roggenbier has a lot of two-row barley malt, but I could be mistaken) so, good to know. I think that's truly rye malt wort, in which case it's active, isn't it?
As a raw dry grain, rye malt has a diastatic power of 105 deg. Lintner, which should be plenty as a diastatic ingredient, but then I've never used it for that purpose as I don't particularly like roggenbiers or rauch roggenbiers (not a fan of drinking smoked hickory, thanks very much!). When I've needed rye malt flour, so far it's only been in small amounts so I used a spice grinder, then sieved for flour. Can't wait for the mill to arrive and make all kinds of flour.
I just found out the Eden's natural (liquid) malt is inactive, so when Lutz calls for "Flüssigmalz inaktiv," I now realize I should be good to go. Sorry for the waste of time on that one!
On the schrot, I can't recall which thread it was (might have been my actually asking for a source on schrot, cracked rye, or even pumpernickel - can't remember) but you very helpfully posted some material there so I learned a bit. The Hefe und Mehr recipe is calling for both coarse and fine schrot, and Lutz's calls for both coarse and "Roggenschrot mittel," as well as whole rye. So I was trying to parse with what I have - the cracked, chopped (no indication as to what degree the BA schrot is), pumpernickel and whole flour (as well as raw whole grain, and dry rye malt).
So, yes, I could use some guidance from yourself or hanseata maybe. Any blend here that will give me a decent sub for coarse, middle and fine schrot? Or am I as usual just overthinking things too much?
Many thanks mariana and hanseata, again. Thanks community for putting up with such a lengthy post. I hope it's at least interesting enough, and not rambling too badly.
Edit: THANK YOU mariana on the moisture information. I would never have known the figures so would have very likely screwed up the formula's overall hydration.
Paul, your sugar beet syrup is molasses, indeed. So, go ahead and use it where molasses are asked for.
As far as substitutes, you should look for that info in the book where the recipe is from. Some formulas allow easy swap between different kinds of syrups, including invert syrup or even plain sugars, others are very specific and the very nature of bread depends on the syrup you use. Not knowing what you are going to bake with your molasses or invert syrups it is hard to tell. You can test both and see if you like the results.
The rye malt extract from the beermaking supplies store is non-diastatic.
Your dry rye malt is extremely diastatic, so be careful. Use no more than 2% of overall weight of flour in the formula.
I mentioned in the previous comment that I didn't know if the recipe was calling for schrot or for rye meal. Schrot is very different from rye meal. Cracked rye or rye meal is simply little bits of rye grain whereas schrot is very irregular in composition, it has a lot of rye flour in it and not only bits and pieces of cracked rye and rye meal particles. So, you cannot substitute one for another. See what the recipe says.
In the previous comment I gave you a link to schrot compositions and previously alcophile also gave you links to photos of schrot for you to see just how much flour it has. In the US there is no such thing as schrot in stores, you would have to mill your own or as I mentioned soak the rye grain for 12 hrs and then rinse and chop. This would give you a good approximation of German schrot.
Otherwise you would have to blend chopped, cracked and coarsely milled American rye in different proportions along with some rye flour to approximate rye schrot and it is simply not worth it. Below is a typical composition of each kind of German schrot form which you can see that even Feinschrot contains about 5% of huge rye particles, close to whole rye flake and 35% of large cracked rye particles, another 30 of medium large rye meal particles and about 30% of coarsely milled rye flour :
Thanks mariana. On the LME, I wasn't thinking. Of course it's non-diastatic - the boiling process alone denatures any enzymes. Rookie mistake, sorry.
Thanks also for letting me know re the sugar beet syrup being molasses. It sounded like it would be, just thrown by the description as a "spread."
The sub thing - because these are from blogs, I don't know if there's sub info available but hanseata's indication that molasses is fine was nice to go on. BTW, HANSEATA: This Friesische is INSANELY good!!!!! The loaf was gone by this morning - my family went nuts for it! Thanks for such a great bread, and great "cultural placement" on your site. Will definitely put this one in the "keeper" section!
The recipes are calling for chopped rye of various finenesses - Roggenschrot grob, Roggenschrot mittel, and/or Roggenschrot, fein. Thanks on the fractions analysis - we do much the same in brewing, but have specialized screens and it's not to "blend up" a certain crush, but rather to make sure our mill is set properly for what we're trying to do. I can see it's a PITA if nigh-impossible to approximate any schrot-grade by trying to custom blend. I do have chopped rye from BA, looks somewhere in the mittel-fein range IIRC. I did see your method for making schrot off of saturated corns - will give it a go.
Thanks mariana, great stuff to go on.
Could you please share a link to the Frisian bread you are so happy with, Paul? I'm curious.
Here you go, Ilya.
Thank you! Looks really good. I don't have any rye meal though :( The lack of rye in coarser form than flour is quite limiting here, lots of German recipes have different grades of it (as you were just discussing above).
mariana,
In the U.S., Bay State Milling produces fine, medium, and coarse rye meals. These meals are sold in smaller retail packages by NY Bakers. These meals do not appear to have been bolted and do contain some flour, but I’m not sure how close they approximate German Schrot.
I also have a question about the link to the Wikipedia entry for Schrot. There is mention of Backschrot and the autotranslate (my German isn't all that great) I used stated that this is meal without the embryo (endosperm, I assume). The rye Schrot/“meals” that are discussed in this thread are Vollkornschrot and not Backschrot, correct?
If I'm not mistaken, schrot means chopped - as distinct from cracked or milled.
Edit: But what do I know, lol. Probably should have let mariana or Karin straighten it up. Sorry for jumping in.
Edit 2: Schrotbrot
OK, Hamelman, p. 42:
Edit 1—My Langenscheidt's dictionary says Schrot is crushed grain, but I will defer to the experts.
Edit 2—That description sounds like Backschrot. I am curious to know if most Roggenschrot is Vollkornschrot or Backschrot.
SchapfenMühle states that their rye is Vollkornschrot and the rye is zerkleinert/crushed ("zerschnitten"/"sliced") by a roller mill. Do roller mills "chop" or "slice" grain? It looks like the grain is crushed between two rollers. Bob's Red Mill say their steel-cut oats are chopped in a steel buhr [sic] mill. Hamelman is specific, but I still want to know if any commercial mill "chops" the rye instead of using a roller or stone mill.
I still haven't found the rabbit down this hole! 🐇😀
See below, if you haven't seen it. Waiting on Ardent Mills.
Are we tying ourselves up in (garlic) knots over terminology? We may be getting hung up on the wrong thing. It would be helpful in this discussion to have Jeffrey Hamelman explain to us his difference between chopped rye and cracked rye (and I would have preferred he used grob, not gross, like German labeling). I’m still not convinced that there is a commercial miller that is actually chopping the grain as opposed to crushing (roller mill) or grinding (stone-mill) the grain. When a 500-year-old German miller describes their Schrot produced with a roller mill (crushed), it makes me wonder where Hamelman obtained "chopped" rye in Germany. Does he mean the difference in the presence (Schrot/chopped) or absence of the flour associated with the milling process?
I have never seen German Schrot in person, but if you want what I believe is a close approximation of Schrot (grob, mittel, fein), you may want to get some Bay State Milling rye meals from NY Bakers. These meals have not been bolted to remove the flour and their appearance is very similar to the images shown on the SchapfenMühle site. I would be willing to send you samples of them for evaluation.
On your first paragraph, totally with you, alcophile. Let's hope Jeffrey comes on.
On your second paragraph, extremely kind and generous of you! I do have them in mind when I run out of what I have but it seems between BA pumpernickel and "chops" and Janie's Mill cracked rye, I've got plenty to play with (certainly not a huge difference between the Janie's and BA, but enough I'd like to bake them through). So thanks for the nod - will check them out.
alcophile,
it is nice that you picked up the difference between whole grain schrot and baker's schrot. Good for you!
For the purposes of this discussion they are the same, although I don't know which type is required by the formula that Paul uses to bake his bread: with or without germ. I don't even know if the formula is asking for rye schrot or rye meal.
By the same I mean that both classes of schrot, whole grain and baker's schrot, have the entire range of granulations and the only ones that are absolutely the same are vollkornshcrot and backschrot Type 1700 (wheat) or Type 1800 (Rye, max ash 2.2%).
Vollkornshcrot, though, doesn't have an average or maximum ash requirement, its ash content would depend on the variety of rye milled and can easily surpass 2.2% for example.
In their formulas they usually indicate it like that:
roggen(vollkorn)schrot.
So, for us to know whether backschrot has the germ or not, we would need to see the type indicated. If it is Type 1800 backschrot, then it is whole rye, identical to vollkornschrot.
m.
Sorry mariana, thought I posted it. I'm going with Lutz's formula, which calls for the three grades of schrot.
Sauerteig
Malzstück
Kochstück
Hauptteig
Just trying to get it right.
Am I right in thinking we basically have 4 different products - flour, meal, cracked rye and chopped rye? And that cracked and chopped are indeed different products, with cracked being something like what happens in brewing - the corn is cracked open and plan sifters give a breakdown of grist fractions; while chopped, which has 3 grades in Germany, is literally chopped?
Secondly, Hamelman seems to point up the additional product of chopped rye in Germany, having the three grades. So - when a recipe calls for roggenschrot in Fein, Mittel and Groß, these are the chopped products Hamelman is referring to - not cracked rye. Right?
Hi Paul,
in milling there are two different kinds depending on the machine used and the final goal.
One is to create crushed grain - for animal feed or for human cooking (not baking). It is done in grain crusher which basically chops grain into smaller pieces to create corn meal and other meals. I will refer to 'corn meal' as a representative of all meals, grain or bean meals, used in cooking. They have practically zero flour particles in them.
Grain crusher works as food processor. There is a rotating central rotor with knives on it.
If the grain crusher has heavy dull knives set on rotor, which work as heavy hammers, then it produces quite a bit of flour as well as a lot of crushed grain. This crushed grain is used for animal feed. If the knives on rotor are thinner and sharper, then there is very little flour and the whole grain mass is accurately broken (cut) into flourless pieces and sold either for cooking as corn meal, or for baking as crushed grain.
The most important feature is that grain crusher that produces crushed grain and meals practically without any flour in it. The operator of the grain crusher also has a set of screens to subdivide that mass into fine, medium, or coarse fractions to sell it as fine corn meal, or medium, or coarse, or as crushed grain as is.
In flour milling we use flour mills, where grain is passing through two rotating disks or two rollers. The first passage through the break rolls will create grist (schrot) which has flour, cracked grain and bran particles in it. The flour is sifted out of grist. Air aspiration then yields purified middlings, free of bran and flour, which are then milled into refined flour.
Depending on the distance between two disks or rollers inside flour mill the resulting schrot (grist) would be extra coarse, coarse, medium, fine or extra fine.
I have no idea what they do in beermaking so your comparing one thing to another doesn't explain anything to me. I am not a miller of course, so my understanding of things is very limited to what I know about corn meals as a cook and various stages of flour milling used for baking as a baker, but the above basically explains what schrot, crushed grain, cracked grain, meal and flour are. Where they come from and why they are called one way or another.
German schrot is the product of flour milling, of the first stage of passing grain through the flour mill. Roggenschrot in Fein, Mittel and Groß, these are the milled products, they are cracked rye+flour+bran particles. They are NOT CRUSHED RYE.
You are mentioning chopped rye. I have never seen it in stores, but by the name I assume it is the same as crushed rye, since only grain crackers have knives that can 'chop'. Flour mills have no knives, they can only crack grain under pressure between two rollers or two flat stones, they produce cracked grain (as part of grist).
best wishes,
m.
Interesting, mariana, thanks for the explanation. Makes perfect sense and up until coming on (must have been Hamelman), I only knew of roller milling (well, or "stone-ground" on the home level, let's say), with cracked grain being one of the products. Brewing reference is just to say it literally is cracked grain (with fractions of fines, middlings and coarsely cracked grains) and not milled flour. This exposes the kernel to mashing and saccharification.
I wonder why Hamelman specifically makes the distinction then, separating out "chopped" in three grades as an additional process beside roller-milled products? And I wonder why Ardent Mills wouldn't just call it cracked rye? Seems odd on both counts to me, anyway.
The wholegrain council isn't helping much:
I understand now, just seems we're talking about cracked rye by another name - yet everywhere, millers are using "cut" or "chopped" in their language.
At any rate, thanks for the elucidation, mariana.
Good morning Paul,
in baking the goal is bread. I assumed that you wanted to know what schrot was and what to use in the US in absence of German schrots.
Schrot is grist - a blend of crushed breadmaking grain (rye, wheat, spelt, etc) with flour and bran particles. Without that flour element in schrot your bread won't gel into a loaf with intended quality of crumb.
So either mill your own grist at home in different granulations, roughly calling them coarse, medium and fine, or blend your cracked, chopped, steel-cut or crushed store-bought rye meal with rye flour 2:1 and use in that recipe that you quoted above.
For me it is all as clear as day when I see the product what it is and why millers or sellers call it this or that. There are two very different groups of millers with different equipment and vocabularies, and then there are large modern mills that cater to farmers, cooks and bakers and they start playing with words and compare things one to another to simplify understanding which in the end might confuse home cooks and home bakers even more.
Professionally, millers don't confuse crushing and cracking, but in common language or when trying to explain it to customers they make them two words interchangeable not only between themselves, but also with words like chopping and steel-cutting. All because in modern flour milling the first set of rolls that create grist/schrot are called break rolls and they are not smooth, but corrugated or look like rotor knives in grain crusher. So the outcome is somewhat similar: pieces of grain with some flour and bran particles. After cleaning it, it could be called whatever: cracked, crushed, chops, steel-cut grain, etc. The customer does not care how it was produced, after all. If it looks the part, then use it in the recipe for porridge, soup or bread and muffins.
OK, understand, mariana. One thing of special note for me, wasn't aware the break rolls were not smooth. Your description of their surface definitely reminds me of a grist mill roller in brewing:
(this gnurling is just one of 3 or 4 configurations.) Yielding something like this:
In case its of interest at all, typical fractional yield is something like below. In the brewing lab, we use malt sieves much like the ones described here by DanAyo and others for the bolting of flour:
I can't think of a better breakdown on the issue, mariana. Many thanks.
Paul
Yes, Paul. That (minus husks, fo course) is schrot with about quarter of it being comprised of flour. Now you know : )
Cracked grain being part of schrot (grist) is partially of fully stripped of bran and germ. Chopped grain is truly whole grain, simply cut into smaller pieces by knives. It has all of its bran and germ on it.
OK, got it. Thank you so much, mariana. I really appreciate it, all of it.
Paul
Unintended.
Grain Millers:
Proth, "Rye Chops"
Edit: didn't mean to post these - intended for my own info gathering. "Cracked" and "chopped" rye are merely synonyms then, correct?
Yes, Proth uses cracked and chopped as synonyms. She is not a miller, so she uses common language to describe what she does. A flour mill doesn't chop the way grain crusher does.
No, what Proth milled was not cracked grain. Nor cracked grain is the same as chopped. She milled schrot (grist) which is a blend of cracked rye, flour and bran particles.
Chopped grain has all bran on it, intact. Cracked grain, by virtue of being part of grist , has bran and germ partially or fully removed.
OK. Just one:
How are they different?
Hallo Karin,
It's great to read your posts. Maybe you could shine a light on the translation of Roggenschrot. I'm a German living in Ireland and I want to try a Vollkornbatzen (from Mecklenburg Vorpommern), but I can't get hold of Roggenschrot or even a correct translation of the word? Could I maybe make it myself in the food processor or do I have to buy a mill? I'm not a Baker but I make my own sourdough here, but Schwarzbrot is still a mystery. Thank you and Danke. Malka
You can chop up some rye berries in a coffee grinder to a coarse texture, for example. Roggenschrot is basically that. I seriously doubt it's possible to buy it in Ireland.
Maybe a powerful food processor would work too, not sure. It might dull the blades...
My experience with a food processor is it just swirls kernels around like a liquid.
You have to break the kernels up before food processing them.
A small blade coffee/spice mill can work but you have to be careful not to burn out the motor (pulse)
For just broken up rye, I found a burr grinder did well. I have a manual adjustable Porlex and can create chops pretty fast with it. Then if I want I can throw the chops into a food processor to make something finer.
Thank you Happycat. Should I buy a mill, grinder?
Hello sorry I missed your post.
I have a coffee hobby so I already had extra adjustable coffee mills on hand and the Porlex worked well. It's not cheap and it's manual but it was already in the apartment I was staying in. I also have a cheaper Hario mill I mover from coffee to spices. Both are conical ceramic mills.
I would probably buy a grain mill for myself except I already have a large Bunn G1 grocery store coffee grinder that I got used cheap on kijiji which is the Canadian version of Craigslist. It's very powerful and has an auger and 80mm metal flat burrs. Haven't tried it yet for grain but hope to during a retreat over the next few weeks.
Whether a mill is worthwhile depends on how much you grind, how often, and how fussy you are.
Take a look at this photo in the Rye Baker blog. It gives you an idea of the different classifications of rye flours and meals, from an American perspective. Not sure how they'd line up with German thinking.
Paul
Great, thanks Paul. I see from the photo that fine is really quite different from the coarse, and neither the cracked nor the chopped will suffice. I think I'll go with the B.A. pumpernickel for the fine of the recipe, with the chopped for the coarse. I've got a few German books now (still looking for the Brotland Deutschland series!), so will see if I can find something there, or perhaps Karin or another German baker will have some further insights. Many thanks, Paul.
-the other Paul
Paul,
I have a question about the Janie's Mill and Bakers Authority rye chops/cracked rye comparison you made. Other than particle size, is there a difference in the appearance of the two products? The description on Bakers Authority of the rye chops states that they are produced by grinding and bolting. Do you think the BA rye chops look more like steel-cut oats or do they appear more like they have been ground? Jeffrey Hamelman in Bread says that rye chops are not the same as cracked rye and behave differently with respect to absorption. I am confused by the difference Hamelman makes between the two and I have not been able to find a rye chop that specifically states it is chopped or steel-cut. Maybe it doesn’t make a difference, as Karin says?
Hey alcophile,
Yeah, it really is confusing. I just called Baker's Authority and told them their product description says "Rye Chops, also known as cracked rye"...
-and that wasn't technically accurate. He wasn't able to confirm. Ardent Mills is the supplier, but unfortunately it seems they are impossible to get a hold of if you're not a commercial customer or prospective customer. They don't do retail,
That said, their 50# bags are labeled Rye Chops:
So unless they've mislabeled, my presumption is that these are indeed chops and not cracked. Mariana or Karin would know more. Personally, I don't think it would make that significant a difference. I'm trying to go on coarseness and feel in my hand, more than anything else in the absence of confirmation.
OK, got through with a webform query to Ardent Mills. Will report what they say.
Here are some links to a German producer of rye meals:
https://schapfenmuehle.de/gewerbekunden/produkte/dunst-griess-kleie-schrot/roggenschrot-fein
https://schapfenmuehle.de/gewerbekunden/produkte/dunst-griess-kleie-schrot/roggenschrot-mittel
https://schapfenmuehle.de/gewerbekunden/produkte/dunst-griess-kleie-schrot/roggenschrot-grob
The photos could be better exposed, but I hope this gives you an idea of German milling standards.
Great, thanks alcophile. That makes it really clear.
Edit: Just noticed, seit 1452!!!
Ja, toll!!
I’m happy that you and you family liked the Frisian Rye, Paul, it’s one of my favorite darker rye breads, too.
And for the exact degree of coarseness of the schrot - please, folks, don’t be “more papal than the pope” (as Germans would say). There is not a “one and only” formula for those breads! They are not subject to an appellation contrôlée.
Use, what you can find, or, if you own a mill, grind some kernels coarser and some finer, but don’t obsess about it.
Karin
Thanks a lot for this comment Karin. Do you think this recipe would work well with just whole rye flour, with no coarse component? I guess that would change its nature quite a lot...
With just rye flour you would lose the nice mouth feel and the bread wouldn’t be the same.
Ja Karin, aber du schreibst dem Teufel, zu viel über Dinge nachzudenken, lol!
It‘s a devilish good bread, though 😊
It sounds like rye chops are analogous to steel-cut oats. These oats are cut with knives, not ground. A commercial lot will also include small oats and a few pieces broken along the way. Coarsely ground oats (AKA scottish oats) have a different texture and cook more quickly.
The 1978 book Adv Cereal Sci & Tech, Vol II, Ch 7, has professional recipes for German breads, including Rheinisches Schwarzbrot. There are no chops. It calls for Type 997 flour in the basic sour and Type 1800 medium and coarse meals in later stages, plus a little residue bread.
Thanks Charbono. Yes, that's exactly right, I believe, just like the steel cut oats. Sets of knives literally chop them, and they are not coarsely ground.
Thank you for the info on the book again. I have it on my radar - right now it's priced out of my budget, but I keep checking in. An authoritative book like this would be really, really helpful.
This world of German baking is so new to me, I'm just blindly going in and baking all over the place through these blogs (Lutz's first book is on its way to me). Normally I'd take one bread and work that a long, long time before moving on to another. I want to just get a sensory feel for these different products, start to understand in my palate how they work, before I start focusing in on a particular style.
Speaking of this bread, made Lutz's version and its delicious. 3:40 hrs baking, and no pullman lid so I had to improvise and try to seal with oiled foil crimped down like a tight en papillote. Crust is chewy, but not unpleasantly so so long as the slice isn't too thick. Taste is wonderful. Crump is closed, but moist. Again I have nothing to compare it to so it's hard to know if I'm on the right track but I know most of us are in the same boat.
Thanks again.
Paul
perhaps a lazier approach than you intended, but I use a ready-mixed Danish rugbrod mix to which I add my sourdough - I believe this is similar to a German Schwartzbrod and is easily available from online Scandinavian food stores - it lists the following 3 types of rye in its ingredients:
Coarse RYE flour, RYE flakes (23%), half sifted RYE flour, as well as dried MALT extract.
You all know way more than me about this stuff, but, if you want pale rye malt, I'd suggest that you might want to look if there's a brewing store near you. I recently picked up three ounces of pale rye malt (outrageous price: 54 cents) at a homebrew shop. They even double-milled it for me. This is the diastatic stuff. They also had chocolate rye malt and a medium variety -- both non-diastatic as they are roasted after being dried. Scalding a tiny bit of the pale malt has been a true rye revelation.
Rob