Making tea infusions from rye flourSource: THANKS to the author
(Sergei) for the work done
I am a big fan of custard varieties of rye bread, therefore, like many lovers of baking at home Borodinsky, Delicatesky, Viru, Riga or other custard bread, I have to regularly prepare and saccharify the infusions.
From recipe to recipe, from source to source, we are faced with completely different recommendations for making tea leaves. Of course, if you follow the recipe, an excellent result will always be guaranteed.
But what is interesting, the time of saccharification of similar brews varies greatly from source to source, from 5-6 hours for P. Plotnikov in "350 varieties" in 1939 to 1.5-2 hours for L. Kuznetsova. . in "Production of custard varieties of bread" in 2003:
This difference is probably due to many reasons, including the different degree of study of the saccharification process 70 years ago and now.
But is it possible to get a comparable result when saccharifying the infusion for 1.5 hours, instead of the recommended 5-6? I think that the modern concept of saccharification, in relation to the conditions of home baking, makes it possible.
But first, a little theory, and since this article is not scientific, I deliberately do not include a single graphic, because in this area I am not a professional, and for practice it is quite enough to own the principle, and not its deep scientific understanding.
“Tea leaves are a semi-finished product obtained by mixing 5-15% (sometimes 20-25%) rye flour, the entire recipe amount of malt and chopped spices (cumin, coriander, or anise) with water heated to 95-97C, respectively, in a ratio of 1 ~ 1.8 to 1 ~ 2.5 or bringing the mixture to a temperature of 63-65C for starch gelatinization by heating it with steam, electrocontact or any other method. " (page 68 of the source)
From a practical point of view, saccharification of the brew is understood as the process of aging for a certain time and at a certain temperature of the flour brewed with boiling water. As a result of this process, the heterogeneous structure of the brewed flour becomes smoother, more liquid and sweeter in taste:
From a chemical point of view, saccharification of a brew is a reaction of gelatinization of flour starches and their breakdown into sugars under the influence of temperature and enzymes. This chemical reaction can proceed faster or slower, and this depends both on the reaction conditions (time and temperature) and on the presence or absence of catalysts, the so-called saccharifying components, which affect the rate of the reaction. As such components, white (non-fermented) malt rich in alpha-amylase or rye flour (peeled or whole) is used as a carrier of amylolytic enzymes, if white malt is not included in the recipe.
The infusions can be different:
1. Brewing rye flour using fermented (red) malt. Such brewing is used for baking black bread, the most famous of which is Borodinsky.
2. Brewing rye flour using unfermented (white, active) malt. This brewing is an essential component of delicious white rye breads such as Riga, Viru, Minsk, Delicatessen, etc.
3. Self-saccharifying brew, it consists only of rye flour. Self-sugaring tea leaves are used, for example, in pre-war Sea Bread.
In the 1st and 3rd brews,
amylolytic enzymes are found only in flourbecause red malt is inactive.Therefore, if you need to prepare such infusions, then, as a saccharifying component,
put aside up to 10% of the flour from the recipe in the infuser before boiling the flour.
Second brew, with white malt,
contains the enzyme a-amylase, mainly in malt... Therefore, if such a brew is being prepared, then, as a saccharifying component,
set aside all the malt from the recipe, and all the flour is boiled with boiling water.
It has been proven that the enzyme-active additive (saccharifying component) significantly intensifies the processes of sugar formation and liquefaction in the brew, if the following dosage rule is observed:
the saccharifying component should not be added to the brew immediately after the flour is brewed, but only after the brew has cooled down to 65C.From here we can deduce a single principle for making tea leaves, which can be formulated as follows:
To prepare any brew, in order to accelerate the sugar formation processes and obtain a guaranteed and predictable saccharification result in just 1.5-2 hours, the process must be broken down into the following stages:
- Before making flour, separate up to 10% of flour or all of the malt (if white is used in the recipe) - this is a saccharifying component;
- Brew flour with boiling water and cool to 65C;
- Add the saccharifying component to the infusion and keep the infusion at 63-65C for 1.5-2 hours;
- Cool the finished saccharified brew to the required temperature and use it in accordance with the recipe. Two examples illustrated:Example one... Let's take a brew for Borodino premium bread, according to the pre-war recipe, which Luda showed here:
- 50 g - peeled flour;
- 25 g - red malt;
- 200 g - water.
According to the source, the brew is saccharified for 6 hours at 63C and cooled to 30C. I made two infusions, one of them using accelerated technology, and baked two Borodino breads to compare the results.
Infusion as required by the source, saccharified in 6 hours. The result is excellent !:
I "spent" another brew by the method of adding a saccharifying component to the brew cooled to 65C and saccharified for only 2 hours:
In my opinion, the result is no less excellent! You can't even tell the difference between the two !:
And the bread, perhaps, turned out to be completely identical, to taste, including!:
Example two. To illustrate the action of the described method on a self-saccharifying brew, I took a pre-war recipe for Sea Bread from "350 varieties", the brewing for which requires saccharification for 4-5 hours.
But I immediately prepared the infusion using the saccharifying component and saccharified also for only 2 hours:
Since the brew consists only of peeled flour, I immediately separated 10% of the flour:
He poured the flour with hot milk (such an unusual bread!), Stirred, cooled to 65C and added the deferred flour:
This is what the brew looked like before the two-hour saccharification:
So after. Excellent result!:
I spend saccharification of all tea leaves in stainless steel pots and use the heating mode available in my stove, which ensures the required temperature of 65C:
Good luck with your bread!
Sources:
"350 varieties of bakery products". Plotnikov P.M., Kolesnikov M.F., 1940.
"Production of custard varieties of bread using rye flour" L. I. Kuznetsova and authors.
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