Выпечка настоящего чёрного хлеба на “пиндостанской” кухне: возможно ли это?

In one of her Easter posts, Yelena mentioned the challenge of making baked goods — such as the sweet Easter кулич — from дрожжевое тесто (“yeast dough”). And indeed, yeast loaves can take a bit more practice, and are more labor-intensive, than “quick breads” raised with пищевая сода (“baking soda”) or пекарский порошок (“baking powder”).

But her comment reminded me of my own опыты (“experiments”) with reverse-engineering чёрный хлеб (“Russian-style black bread”) at home.

This is something I’ve been tinkering with for years, and I’ll say right up front that although I’m very pleased with the latest results, my рецепт (“recipe”) is still only a хитроумное подражание (“cunning imitation”) of the original — so maybe I should’ve put the word настоящий (“genuine; real”) в кавычках (“in quotes”)!

In Part 2 of this post, I’ll take you through the recipe шаг за шагом (“step by step”). But to explain why perfectly duplicating Russian “black bread” outside of Russia ain’t so simple, you first need to understand what чёрный хлеб is — and what it is NOT. As I was surprised to learn when I bought my first loaf from a Moscow булочная (“bread store”), the color, flavor, and texture have virtually nothing in common with American pumpernickel!

It turns out that most of the pumpernickel we buy in U.S. supermarkets — although much “blacker” than чёрный хлеб — is merely American-style rye bread with artificial coloring added. And American-style recipes for так называемый “ржаной” хлеб (“so-called ‘rye’ bread”) sometimes contain as much as 75% wheat flour and only 25% rye flour! This is because пшеница (“wheat”) is quite rich in глютен (“gluten”), the elastic белок (“protein”) that helps dough rise –while рожь (“rye”) is comparatively gluten-poor.

In contrast, industrial-scale пекарни (“bakeries”) in Russia have always made their black bread with 100% rye — apparently with the help of a special закваска (here: “sourdough starter-culture”) that’s optimized to compensate for the lower levels of gluten in rye. (Something I learned from Википедия!)

However, sourdoughs can be slow, fussy, and unpredictable — and to be honest, I have very little experience with them even though I make my own bread all the time. Besides which, there are different formulations of закваска and I don’t know exactly what Russian bakeries use. Maybe in the future I’ll try to do an all-rye, sourdough version — когда-нибудь, но не сегодня (“someday, but not today”).

So, beginning на основе (“on the base”) of an all-wheat white bread recipe from a cookbook, I aimed to create an adaptation with mostly rye flour but raised by good ol’ надёжные дрожжи (“reliable yeast”), not a temperamental закваска. And just recently I found a solution: Adding a few tablespoons of ultra-concentrated “vital wheat gluten,” which can be found in many U.S. supermarkets under the Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills brands. Using the gluten powder let me make a 75% rye dough that would rise sufficiently with ordinary yeast.

With the gluten problem solved, the rest of the adaptation was rather easy. I added some cracked bulgur-wheat for texture and moistness; whole coriander seeds, which are obligatory in the popular style of black bread called бородинский; plus some coffee, cocoa, and molasses — for their bitter/sour notes and also for color.

The finished bread is medium-brown inside, похож по цвету на картон (“resembling cardboard in color”) — close to the Russian original, but much less dark than our American pumpernickel. The texture is плотный (“dense”) and жёсткий на ощупь (“coarse to the touch”), though somewhat different from my memories of the “real thing,” which may be the unavoidable result of using дрожжи instead of закваска. And the flavor is, dare I say, крепкий (“robust”) — strong, кисловатый (“sourish”), earthy.

In other words, quite непригодный (“unsuitable”) when you’re craving sweet, fluffy French toast with strawberry syrup — but absolutely perfect to slice thin as a sturdy base for бутерброды (“open-face sandwiches”) topped with something salty and savory: cheese, salami, ham, smoked fish, pickled mushrooms…

Tomorrow: the рецепт!