What is malt exactly? Wikipedia states:

Malt is germinated cereal grain that has been dried in a process known as “malting”.

When grains (or most of seeds in general) are soaked in water, they start to germinate. This is the first stage of a growing process of a plant. Germination process develops enzymes, which start to break down complex saccharides like starches into simpler ones like sugar and glucose. The same is true for complex proteins present in the grains as well. Simpler variations of carbohydrates and proteins are then used as an energy source and building blocks for a new plant.

This process is halted midway to stop grains from growing into new plants and to get access to all of the enzymes which became available. These enzymes can then be used in multiple different ways for all kinds of products, including bread and beer.

This blog is using British rye flour names paired with German flour grading. German flour grades (types) are a golden standard in my opinion and are also used outside of Germany. But since this blog is in English and I, the author, happen to live in UK, it makes sense to me to use British naming conventions.

The issue with British names is that there are no flour standards and regulations currently in UK, so the exact meaning of the terms vary by brand. To make things even more confusing, other English speaking countries are using slightly different terminology. And they also have no standards whatsoever. I’ll try my best in this post to provide some guidance on how to deal with this mess.

Rīgas Rudzu Maize (Riga Rye Bread) is a common variant of rye bread in Latvia, it’s even got into Soviet GOST standards during Soviet times. But common doesn’t mean simple to make. It is a four stage bread (sourdough, scald, sour scald, final dough) which requires quite a lot of time to make, higher temperatures than usual, a special coating at the end of the process and a resting period of at least 12 hours. The reward for all of that is a loaf of a truly amazing bread, which is hard to find outside of Northern Europe.

If you’ve never tried a proper rye before in countries like Latvia, Russia or Finland, I would definitely recommend trying to bake this one. 90% rye content and scalding process make this bread completely different from what most of people in English speaking countries think about rye breads.