PieSusan
Washing Up
To make a real NY style rye bread, it is best to
have a rye sour. The rye sour's secret is that it
should be made in three stages, and each time you feed and use it after the first time, the flavor of the bread should be enhanced. Sometimes crushed caraway seeds are used in making the sour starter. The first time you make the rye bread, it might not taste as
sour as each subsequent time. Just keep feeding your starter and using it again and again. This is what bakers do. Also, your sour will taste different wherever you live because of the nature of the natural yeasts in your particular area. These natural yeasts are different in different areas. Another bread baker secret is altus. Altus is simply a mash made of the crusts from leftover sour rye bread and water. It is soaked for several hours or overnight in the
refrigerator, then squeezed dry before using. Small amounts are added to the rye bread dough and it intensifies the rye sour flavor and enables a bread to retain moisture. If you use altus in your rye bread, you will have to add a little extra flour to the dough. Sometimes, if you have a friendly relationship with your baker, he might be willing to sell you a little starter to get yourself going. It can be very costly. This is an area where you have to experiment and keep
trying. Bread dough is lebidek--it is a living thing.
For reading about Bread baking, I recommend the following books (I recommend them also for their recipes: Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik, George Greenstein's Secret of a Jewish Baker, The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook by Brinna B. Sands, Williams and Sonoma Kitchen Library
Breads by Jacqueline Mallorca, and Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno. I have had great success with these and they are a good start. Bernard Clayton has a great resource as well.
have a rye sour. The rye sour's secret is that it
should be made in three stages, and each time you feed and use it after the first time, the flavor of the bread should be enhanced. Sometimes crushed caraway seeds are used in making the sour starter. The first time you make the rye bread, it might not taste as
sour as each subsequent time. Just keep feeding your starter and using it again and again. This is what bakers do. Also, your sour will taste different wherever you live because of the nature of the natural yeasts in your particular area. These natural yeasts are different in different areas. Another bread baker secret is altus. Altus is simply a mash made of the crusts from leftover sour rye bread and water. It is soaked for several hours or overnight in the
refrigerator, then squeezed dry before using. Small amounts are added to the rye bread dough and it intensifies the rye sour flavor and enables a bread to retain moisture. If you use altus in your rye bread, you will have to add a little extra flour to the dough. Sometimes, if you have a friendly relationship with your baker, he might be willing to sell you a little starter to get yourself going. It can be very costly. This is an area where you have to experiment and keep
trying. Bread dough is lebidek--it is a living thing.
For reading about Bread baking, I recommend the following books (I recommend them also for their recipes: Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik, George Greenstein's Secret of a Jewish Baker, The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook by Brinna B. Sands, Williams and Sonoma Kitchen Library
Breads by Jacqueline Mallorca, and Ultimate Bread by Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno. I have had great success with these and they are a good start. Bernard Clayton has a great resource as well.
