Search Results for “pentosan”

Should I store bread in the refrigerator?

Lots of questions about bread today! Reader Trey, you definitely should not store bread in the refrigerator. Low temperatures speed up — dramatically speed up — the rate at which starch crystallizes. Unless the bread gets below the freezing point of water, at which point is slows down dramatically, most likely because the water between the starch molecules hardens, keeping them from stacking up and forming crystals. So: at room temperature or frozen, nowhere in between. The exception to this rule is a really moist bread like a pumpernickel, which stays supple as a result of all the pentosan (seed coat) gums it contains, and the fridge will keep it from getting moldy.

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How Bakers Fight Staling

Reader Evan asks:

How do additives (either traditional like fats or modern) slow staling?

That’s a great question, Evan. The answer is that the way in which additives inhibit staling isn’t always well understood, which shouldn’t be surprising because the chemistry of bread isn’t all that well understood either. Still there are some pretty good theories out there.

We’ve talked before about crystallization, which happens when similar molecules start stacking up on each other like LEGO’s. Crystallization is the phenomenon primarily responsible for the hardening of bread starch (i.e. staling). Thus it stands to reason that if you could somehow stop wheat starch crystals from forming, or at least slow that crystallization down, then you’d keep bread fresher for longer.

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Making Black Bread (Pumpernickel)

Here’s how I like to eat a real pumpernickel: with lox, cream cheese and capers. Why? Because this moist, ultra-dense bread calls out for accompaniment. Smoked fish and cheese. A nice slice of pork fat with onions and chili powder on top. Something — and something rich. Oh, and beer.

Not that this bread doesn’t taste great on its own of course. This is an all-rye bread. No white wheat flour, no caraway seeds, nothing to mask it’s pure, peasant the-wheat-crop-failed-this-year-and-we-have-nothing-else-to-eat rye-ness. You’ll get it when you taste it. It ain’t no sandwich bread but it’s great for canapés, toast, or just eating with butter.

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Embrace The Goo

A couple of astute readers out there noticed something about the black bread (pumpernickel) recipe. Specifically that after the initial “soaking” step, no more liquid is added. Can that be right? Indeed it is, and for that you can thank the goo. The pentosan gums, in other words.

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Dark Matter

Pumpernickel is deep, dense stuff. Over 300% as dense as a sturdy white loaf. This is due to certain botanical differences between rye and wheat. The gluten in wheat is composed of two types of proteins: gliaden and glutenin. Rye gluten is made up of gliaden and glutelin. Unlike glutenin molecules which readily form strong end-to-end bonds, glutelin molecules form only very weak bonds. The upshot of that is that rye proteins have a hard time forming the nice bubble-holding networks that we take for granted with wheat . All the active enzymes don’t help either (see below), since they pre-digest the bread’s starch structure as it rises.

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Two days????

Yes, all you legions who’ve written in in shock, this black bread does indeed need to rest for a full two days before you slice and eat it. Why? It’s because a black pumpernickel like I’m making this week has no white flour in it, just rye flour, and rye creates a very different structure that’s not based on gluten so much as jelly-like pentosan gum. I’ll be talking all about it as the week progresses. But let’s just say for now that if you try to slice all-rye black bread right from the oven it crumbles. On the upside, this type of bread takes a very long time to stale, so the wait has no averse consequences from a texture standpoint. More on this soon.

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Rye Flour

Rye isn’t a wheat at all, though it is a grass (Secale cereale) that produces a grain. That grain is useful in many of the same ways that wheat is useful, but truth be told, you’ve really gotta love rye if you want to make things out of it. Why? Because unlike rye’s housebroken cousin, […]

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