Scald. Choux. Tangzhong. Mashing. Gelatinised starch. There are many strange words followed by many different process recipes. What are they? Why do we need them to bake a loaf? And why so many techniques? I will try to answer these questions in this post.

I believe English speaking baking communities got introduced to flour scalding through Japanese Hokkaido milk bread, but gelatinisation of different kinds is used all over the world: most of Latvian rye breads are scalded, French chefs are making choux pastry and the whole beer brewing process starts with mashing everywhere in the world. It is a very common process in grain preparation and cooking.

Let’s start with a chemical process common to all methods. This process is called starch gelatinisation.

Oh, and by the way, this post is HUGE!

It’s that time of the year when everyone cooks plenty of festive foods and enjoys their time with families and friends. Back home in Latvia one of the festive foods on the table is a rye bread with dried fruits, berries and nuts inside. It’s mid December and it’s a perfect time to share one of the festive Latvian rye recipes!

This is a very complex recipe even though I tried to simplify it as much as possible. The dough is made in three stages (regular wheat sourdough bread has only two, full process as done in Latvian bakeries would have 4-5 stages), there’s filling preparation, custom crust development and starch wash to finish the process. But the end result is worth every second spent on this bread!

Latvia is definitely a rye country and I believe that Latvian rye breads are the best in the world. Their unique taste comes from extremely complex dough development processes which span across multiple days and some of them can not even be replicated at home. But there are also some very simple breads which still pack plenty of great flavor. One of such breads is usually called “a rye brick”.

Rye brick is actually a wheat and rye bread, not pure rye. It is very common and differs slightly between bakeries. You can also find similar breads in other European nations like Germany and Russia.

There are many different methods to create all kinds of starters for all your bread baking needs. But most of them take a lot of time to develop - a week or even more is what you’ll usually see. That can be quite intimidating for someone who wants to try their skills out at this wonderful hobby and many people just never take this step.

I’ve spent some time reading studies, learning all about existing methods and came up with a method which yields a healthy starter in just 48 hours. And this is the method I’ll share with you today.

Barley is one of the oldest cultivated grains and it is heavily used in food industry still: brewing, baking, there are even some barley based dishes. But it is rarely used for making bread - wheat and rye replaced it centuries ago.

That got me curious… How does 100% barley bread look like? How does it taste? Is it even possible?

Minsk is the capital city of Belarus. Minsk rye is a common rye bread in Belarus named after the city. And it is quite different to most of xUSSR rye breads because it is made using white rye flour instead of a more traditional dark wholegrain rye.

The recipe is known for quite a while now, I have it my Russian book from 1940, I saw it in many bread related blogs and it is present in Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker book as well.

I believe that every bread should have a great crust. But different types of breads will have completely different crusts and their development techniques differ. Rye breads benefit from steamed baking just like wheat breads do yet steaming regiment is a bit different. If one tries to steam rye bread the same way it’s done with wheat breads, the end results might be unpleasant.

The best rye crust I’ve ever had in my life was on a coarse rye from small family owned bakery called Bemberi located in a small town of Saulkrasti, Latvia. Crunchy, slightly sweet and full of rye flavour!

Some of the techniques used by professional rye bakers are virtually impossible to replicate at home. This post covers the methods I’m using at home to get quality crust with common household tools.

This is probably the simplest sourdough rye bread recipe possible. It only has 3 ingredients: dark rye flour (type 1740, read more about rye flours in my previous post), water and salt. And it comes from a great book called 350 Varieties Of Bakery Products by Plotnikov and Kolesnikov published in 1940. It is the first recipe in the book and is used to describe several bread making techniques.

One important thing to note is that, as the name implies, this bread is sour. Very sour. If you’re not used to really sour rye breads, you might not like it. But this bread is a good starting point in learning how to bake rye.

As the name suggest, sourdough is nothing more than a dough which is sour. But why is it sour if two basic ingredients inside are only flour of some kind and water? And why is it bubbly and has a funky smell? Neither flour not water is sour, bubbly or have funky smell and mixing two together doesn’t result in any chemical reaction.

The answer is both very simple and very complex at the same time. Flour, like everything else in this world, contains many microorganisms which are hibernating on the surface of flour particles. Once one adds some water to flour, these microorganisms wake up and start eating, multiplying and, well, simply living their life. Let’s take a look at who they are and what exactly are they doing inside our sourdough.

Rye dough can be discouraging — it’s sticky, it’s heavy, it’s hard to deal with. And while it doesn’t require kneading for gluten development, proper mixing is very important. If the dough is not mixed properly there might be dry spots inside and uneven distribution of sourdough and flavouring agents like salt and seeds will result in poor bread quality and taste. The importance of mixing quality grows with the ratio of rye flour and its wholeness: dark rye is harder to mix than light rye and 100% rye is harder to mix than 50/50 rye/wheat combination.

I’ve tried multiple different mixing techniques and I’d like to share the one which made my life a lot easier. This technique is based on a method provided in an old Soviet book called 350 Varieties Of Bakery Products by Plotnikov and Kolesnikov. In its basic form it doesn’t require any tools except for baker’s hands, but I’d also like to note a few tools which make my mixing a lot easier.