The Fresh Loaf

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Schwarzer Muckel

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Schwarzer Muckel

I want to try the Schwarzer Muckel recipe found on the Home Baking (Austria) blog (here). I have a couple of questions:

The recipe calls for Roggenmalz dunkel or dark rye malt. I have chocolate rye malt (looks like mini coffee beans) and Fawcett’s red rye malt (reddish-brown). Which of these would be closer in roast/color to the Roggenmalz dunkel?

What’s a Muckel? I haven’t found a translation for the word. Is it an idiomatic or slang word?

Thanks!

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

is most likely a surname.  Surname Muck + el suffix

pronounced Mook-kel, long u short e

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Thanks, Mini.

What meaning does the suffix -el confer to Muck, if any? My German is so rusty that there is barely any metal left. I continued searching and found a definition that said any thick, viscous matter. I imagine that could describe the dough.

Do you have any thoughts concerning the roast level of the malt?

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

This ad came in a bi-monthly "Mahlzeit" food product magazine from Spar.  I will have to check it out.  The recipe on the same page uses 10g (2%) for 500g flour (300g spelt, 200g rye) so most likely an active malt and not roasted.  Looks like the large package contains 10 x 10 g packages. (Like sugar packages.)  The Käseweckerl are light in crumb color.

Which makes me wonder about the malt in the Muckel recipe.  I would pick out the darkest one as it is more for color and aroma than enzymes. There has been a revival with very old recipes lately and the name implies this is an oldie. Muckel may also imply a small loaf. I don't think it has anything to do with the dough being sticky.  It might have more to do with a short baker who was known for baking it in a particular region. 

albacore's picture
albacore

I think you could use either. The only thing I would say is that chocolate malt can have a pretty powerful flavour and there's a lot going on in this recipe already. Plus I don't think Dietmar's Rübensirup alternative is that dark, so personally I would play safe for a first take and use the red malt.

BTW, just making sure that you are aware that this recipe is mainly made with Schrott?

 

Lance

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Thanks, Lance.

I have not used either rye malt yet in a bread, but I did make a mostly wheat bread that used some whole crystal wheat malt and powdered crystal barley malt (120 Lovibond, dark reddish-brown) and the flavor was fine. I was trying to find images of of the Roggenmalz dunkel to try to match the malt I have. I'll stick with the red rye malt on the first attempt. The recipe mentions two different malts: Röstmalz dunkel (in the summary) and Roggenmalz dunkel (in the main dough). I'm assuming they are interchangeable?

I do know that the recipe uses mostly all Roggenschrot mittel. Is your concern about the mixing? I don't have a stand mixer. Will I be unable to handle the dough? I am going to scale down it to ≈1100–1150 g for one loaf in a Pullman pan.

albacore's picture
albacore

"I do know that the recipe uses mostly all Roggenschrot mittel. Is your concern about the mixing?"

No, I was just wondering where you are getting the Schrott from, or are you making your own?

 

Lance

alcophile's picture
alcophile

I have a supply of the three grades of rye meal (Roggenschrot) from NY Bakers in the USA. Unfortunately, Stanley Ginsberg is changing this business and will no longer sell retail quantities of rye products. When it runs out, I'll have to figure out how to replicate it. I don't really want to mill my own, but it may come to that if I can't find replacements.

Ilya Flyamer's picture
Ilya Flyamer

https://agrarzone.de/bio-backmalz-roggen-malzmehl does the picture help for the colour?

From the recipe I thought perhaps it would be same as fermented red rye malt, but this looks much lighter than that, I guess just roasted rye malt... So yeah, just matching by colour is probably the way to go.

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Thanks, Ilya. The images in your link are much better than the ones I found. I'll have to grind up some malt and compare colors.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

or roast the altus carefully stirring constantly over medium hi heat. The hot pan will continue to roast after removing heat so remove to another pan to cool or just keep keep stirring for a few minutes.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

https://www.homebaking.at/en/roggenkorn/

A lot of good observations and tips.