Rupjmaize (Latvian black bread/rye)

[Octave]

Cycling through Latvia I absolutely fell in love with this bread. It's malty, rye-y, hearty and delicious. It is impossible to find here in France. I've been on a quest to replicate it at home, starting with making a rye sourdough culture over the past two months which is now very robust and healthy. I've made Rugbrød with it (Danish rye loaf) with good success, but finding a quality recipe for Rupjmaize is proving elusive. There are a fair few out there, but none which seem to replicate the proper inky darkness of the bread you find in Latvia. Many of them also seem to throw in odd ingredients like egg, which is not traditional. My Latvian friend confirms that it should be simply made of rye starter, rye flour, rye flakes, barley malt syrup, water and salt (plus caraway or other seeds).

So, anyone here have any experience baking proper Latvian black bread? That good, midnight black, dense and molasses-y brick of heaven?

[Too Tall]

Following....

[rwsaunders]

Google an all inclusive instructional video including making the starter...looks like an official recipe and English subtitles are included...won’t allow me to post the link.

[rwsaunders]

I watched the video and damn, making that bread looks like a science project...the author even warns that the recipe is not for beginners. Keep us posted Octave if you go for it. His YouTube site is called Rus Brot.

rus brot
- YouTube

[Too Tall]

Any progress here?

[Octave]

So our approach now has been to work with our existing successful sourdough rye recipe and continue adding increasing amounts of barley malt and kibbled rye until we get a sufficiently dark loaf. The below recipe turned out a rye loaf that was really tasty, had a nice sourdough flavor, good cavitations and a really nice crust. Darker and heartier than what you'd find in your standard deli/pastrami sandwich but still not the rupjmaize we're aiming for.

Here's what we did this weekend (no pics, sorry - we'll be baking another one on Wed/Thu and I'll snap some then!) - it's much simpler than the more complex sourdough process we talked about over in that other thread, and is essentially a no-knead loaf. You need a very active starter and must be comfortable working with a pretty wet dough, but otherwise it's pretty easy. The wet dough is necessary for flours like rye if you want those nice cavitations and not a super-dense loaf.

Ingredients
400g water (RT)
70g very active rye sourdough starter
345g whole rye flour
125g whole wheat flour (T110)
25g rye kibble
45g dark barley malt
3g caraway seed
12g salt

Instructions
Day 1 (afternoon/evening)
Combine the starter, molasses and water until homogenous. Separately, mix the flours, kibble, salt and seeds.

Slowly mix the dry mix into the wet with a dough whisk (or large spoon) until evenly incorporated. Let rest 15-20min, then mix again for 2-3min vigorously. Repeat this one more time (15min rest, 2-3min vigorous mixing) then cover tightly with a wet towel or beeswax wrap (or plastic). Leave at room temp for 2hr then stick it in the fridge overnight or for at least 12hr*.

Day 2 (after 12hr in the fridge)
Remove the dough from the fridge. Keep covered and let come to room temp (at least 1hr).

Invert the dough onto a well-floured surface and stretch/shape into a boule. Place it into a proofing basket (bowl with a well-floured towel) seam-side up and let rise for 1.5hr (I put it in the warm spot in our home, around 25-26C at the moment). Mid-way through this rise preheat the oven and your baking vessel (with lid) to 250C (~475F) to ensure that the baking vessel comes up to temperature.

When ready, invert the boule into the baking vessel, score with a lame/razor and bake covered for 25min. Remove the cover and bake for an additional 18-25min or until the internal temp is about 100C (212F) - baking times vary so go by the internal temp to avoid an underbaked loaf.

Let rest in the baking vessel for at least 1hr.


*Once the bread is retarding in the fridge you can leave it longer if you'd like (I'd not go more than 24hr). So for example if you start this by 18h on day 1 you can stick it in the fridge by 21h, then the next day you can start the remaining steps basically anytime after 9h or wait until you get home from work on day 2 and do it then. Basically you're looking at ~20hr from mixing the ingredients to eating rye bread, so play that how you will.

[Too Tall]

Fantastic, I really appreciated your meticulous approach applaud it even. Gives me something to aspire to.

[Octave]

Here's a shot from this weekend's loaf. Upped the barley malt to 52g and upped the seed content (from 3g caraway to 4g caraway + 4g fennel seeds). Really fantastic loaf, a little more dense and a little more dark than last week (expected with the increased malt). Getting there..
IMG-20190216-WA0001.jpg

[Too Tall]

That's looking really really good.

[JoB]

it just occurred to me that this looks exactly like Austrian Schwarzbrot (Black Bread). It also has rye flour and caraway and/or fennel seeds in it. Maybe take a look for a recipe for that?

[dgaddis]

That looks really good Octave!

[Octave]

Thanks y'all! I'm pretty pleased with these experiments so far - after all, even the loaves that have failed to be quite "black" enough for my purposes are still delightful rye bread.

For what it's worth, I seem to have hit a dead-end in the barley malt avenue - 60g appears to be enough to really weigh things down, meaning even with a very active starter there is not quite enough luft to overcome the weight of the malt and liquid combined, resulting in a very dense and difficult to bake-through dough. One possible solution to this is to decrease the autolyse period and maybe add a bit of vital wheat gluten for some structure. Probably not the traditional approach, but I'll report back if it works!