Active starter in two days (Rus Brot)
Before moving to Switzerland I went back home to Moscow, and staying here for 1-2 months. I wanted to continue baking, but I forgot to bring some starter with me (all dried and packed to be shipped to Switzerland). Wanting to make one I turned to the method recently shared on youtube by the ever helpful Rus Brot here: https://youtu.be/meVg13NtnPw His recent video are all focused on a special technique based on dried old dough and kvass - liquid rye starter/preferment, which he says is the original way used in Russia to make bread. It's a continuous process with no starter maintenance.
While I don't want to learn a new approach right now in a place without all my tools, his method of creating the first "kvass" - a liquid starter - caught my attention. It's ready to bake in less than two days! And I have just tried it and it works.
The liquid starter is mixed with whole grain rye flour (35 g), red rye malt (15 g), warm water (95 g) and malt extract / maltose molasses (for the lack of a better word... - 10 g). Red rye malt provides slightly acidic environment to suppress the "bad guys", while flour brings the microorganisms and food, and the sugary substance gives more food. The starter is simply mixed and left alone at 28°C except stirring it twice. Then in around 42 hrs from the initial mixing the kvass is ready for baking. It was very foamy and even risen, despite such high hydration, and smelled amazing, just like kvass - the drink. Since I didn't actually want to use it right away, I decided to convert it a 100% hydration starter. I fed 15 g kvass with 25 g water and 30 g whole rye flour. It nearly doubled in 2.5 hrs just now! So even including this time for change of hydration, you get an active starter ready for baking in just under 48 hrs! Amazing! Maybe this is helpful for someone.
In the meantime, I wasn't ready to start a dough in the evening, so I mixed the first stage for the Swiss Farmhouse bread using a new raisin yeast water I created - which took exactly a day longer than the starter (also kept at 28° - still only three days!).
Am I correct, Ilya? When Rus posted a video about making Kvass, I was very interested in giving it a try. But I also started learning to use CLAS at that time; picking up another technique was a bit too much. I did not realize how important Kvass's role was in ancient breadmaking. After reading his latest blog post today, I cannot help but applaud human beings' intelligence for developing such scientific and efficient techniques to survive under the most barren conditions. Bravo!
Yippee
What do you mean by your question exactly? Kvass in the context of this post is a liquid whole rye starter. For the drink, it's a little different - he actually just posted a video about making it using old dough from this continuous process, and then making bread using the "bottoms" of the kvass, the stuff that sedimented from the solution. There are different ways to prepare it, but in this latest video he shows how to make it using the same procedure as a scald, and fermenting it with the old dough. Although I think mariana mentioned somewhere that actually if you make an even more liquid starter the liquid on top is totally drinkable like kvass.
But I agree, the intertwined bread and kvass process is really impressive! People say beer is like liquid bread, but kvass is even more so!
I'm forever amazed at how living organisms behave in any given condition. Thanks for sharing, enlightening.
Exciting story. Is it easy to get hold of red rye malt in Russia?
Was going to say raisin water, but the kvass method is even faster! Impressed.
Good luck in Switzerland. Moving isn't easy and gets harder the more the years pass.
-Jon
P.S. my jar of 'plain malt' (syrup from barley) has got parahydrobenzoates listed as preservatives. I feed one of my yeast waters with it and they still grow but was concerned about the preservative.
I ordered the RRM on the Russian equivalent of Amazon and got it next day. I haven't seen it in a regular supermarket, but probably available in some specialty shops or bigger supermarkets.
Yes, raisin water was quicker than I expected (I probably used quite a lot of raisins, and also keeping it warm helps), but kvass was blazing fast! And the starter it made appears very strong. For now I put it in the fridge, hope it doesn't create a problem.
Thank you. I already noticed that previous times I moved it was so simple with just a suitcase, and now we have all these boxes to ship, and it was all much more stressful...
I guess the preservative gets diluted quite a lot and doesn't do much anymore then.
Wow interesting and fast method of creating a starter Ilya. So will you maintain it and then dry it for your journey to Switzerland?
Benny
Maybe! I'll see, it's so easy to make it again, so I'm not sure if it's worth bringing it.
In two days and ready to bake with in three. I used an organic wholegrain heritage flour that just seemed to turn into a starter from the word go. Could have baked with it sooner but wished to make sure before testing on a final dough. It seems if one gets a flour capable of a strong enzymatic activity the bacteria and yeasts can really get off to a good start. Adding the malt, using rye, high hydration and keeping warm is probably the perfect condition for a spontaneous ferment. Having said that we are still dealing with living things and it's always a good idea to expect the unexpected. It's possible to make bread like this each time from scratch but we make starters to ensure stability. Rye breads too are different to wheat breads which need stronger starters, I 'suspect'. Whether one keeps a piece of dough from the previous bake or always keep some behind is a difference between a six and two threes. Both of which are methods of keeping the process going. I expect old dough, or sour dough, method would have been beneficial when there were no fridges and people tended to bake their bread daily. The downside of that method would be forgetting to keep some back.
P.s. I have some ideas on why some starters take a long time to make, why pineapple juice works (but not for the reasons you're thinking) and why starter methods today need more time for stability. I'll write about it at some point. Will need some experimentation mind you. This will tie into why rye starters and bread are easier than bread flour starters and how we can use this info for a much easier way to make starters rather like this spontaneous rye starter.
Thanks for the comments Abe, and looking forward to reading about your experiments!
Will Switzerland be warmer than Edinburgh, Ilya ;)
Lance
Probably warmer in summer but colder in winter! :) Which I think I will prefer, more pronounced seasons are nice.
https://www.weatherbase.com/compare.php3?first=6130&second=590607&units=metric
Maybe some relief from the East wind!
Annual average 9.0 vs 15.6 km/hr
Lance
where will you be in Switzerland, Ilya? I was just there for a month and can definitely recommend the Walliser Roggenbrot -- a 100% rye (generally, though it is allowed to have up to 10% wheat flour in it) bread that is a specialty -- and a legally protected recipe, a so-called AOP, Appellation d’Origine Protégée -- of the bakers in the canton of Valais/Wallis. I got one from Bäckerei Fuchs in Zermatt. Fermented for 25 hours, they said. Totally delicious.
I need to get a good recipe (I haven't found one I trust online) -- though, of course, if I make it without rye flour grown and milled in the canton, it will never be a Walliser Roggenbrot.
Enjoy.
Rob
Thank you Rob, I think I saw your post about it. I'll try it if I see it somewhere. I'll be in Basel, almost opposite side of the country from Zermatt. Maybe if I go skiing I might be somewhere closer!
Ha ha. 3 1/2 hour journey is like going shopping here. Cheers.
Ha I'd rather shop locally somewhere around the corner :)
a suburb of Basel, but if you ever find yourself wanting to hike or just take in the glory of the alps, it's highly recommended. The SBB -- the Swiss rail system -- is expensive but gets you everywhere with incredible precision (Zermatt, btw, is car-free...you have to park in the valley & take a train up.)
Even if you have no desire to take the journey, you can sometimes find Walliserroggenmehl in the supermarket.
I wonder if you will find that the characteristics of fermentation change once you're in Basel. My sauerteig was hyperactive with Zurich water and flour -- rising like mad in eight hours -- but, somewhat counterintuitively, I found that I could ferment levains far longer -- 24 hours instead of 12 -- and not risk my breads becoming overly sour.
Rob
Very interesting, thank you for all the info!
Here in Moscow my new starter and yeast water seem to be way faster than I've ever had them in Edinburgh. I don't know if it's just a different mix of microbes, or something else... Swiss water is supposed to be excellent! And I guess for some reason you had more yeast activity and less LABs over there, curious!
https://www.seedsparkproject.com/RosenRyeProject.html
https://distilling.com/distillermagazine/often-forgotten-fermentables/
I once tried a Greek style basil starter and it exploded out of the jar. Very easy... soak fresh basil in warm water overnight, come the next day remove the basil leaves, add in flour and mix into a paste. Then onwards treat like normal starter. I did notice it had some slight leuconostoc activity going on in that initial burst of energy but with a little feeding it's good to use.
Did you post about that here? I remember reading about it somewhere!
Here it is.