makes 1 loaf
On a hot summer’s day when Peter and I were testing bread recipes, we took a lunch break while our doughs were resting between folds. Why not check out some new breads? we thought. We had been on the trail of great rye bread and, up to that point, had found good but not great specimens. But just that morning, a Czech friend, Viera Karpiakova, had told us of a place in Sunset Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood not far from the bakery that services my restaurant accounts. So we hopped in the car and headed over, but no bakery was to be seen. There was, however, a store with a big red sign in Polish writing. We had no idea what it said, but on the last line was the word baleron, which I misread as “bakeron” and figured it sounded enough like bakery for me.
Upon entering, we were enveloped in the aromas of garlic, spices, and smoky cured meat. A big case filled with gorgeous cold cuts took center stage. There were shelves full of brined and pickled vegetables that I didn’t even know you could pickle, like celery root (it turned out to be absolutely wonderful). But it was the cold cuts that grabbed my attention. “What’s this?” I asked the clerk, and was answered with something unpronounceably Polish, with lots of “k” sounds. As we pointed at the cold cuts, the friendly lady, who spoke halting English, sliced this and that as we kept nodding. Just behind her, we noticed a few round dark loaves. “Lithuanian bread from Queens,” she said. It was dark, but not black the way rye-heavy northern European breads can be. We added a loaf to our order, along with the celery root, chicken pâté, two cans of sardines in tomato sauce, and two tins of mackerel fillets in oil.
We headed back to the bakery. We didn’t have high hopes for that store-bought loaf from a sausage emporium, but it was, in fact, quite good. I sliced the whole loaf and made twenty tartines (open-faced sandwiches) for my bakers, spreading the bread with mustard, topping it with the cold cuts, pâté, and fish we’d bought, and using the crunchy celery root as a finishing touch. The dense crumb and subtle, slightly sweet rye and wheat flavors provided a fitting backdrop for the meat, and, to the soundtrack of traditional Mexican canciones rancheras on somebody’s iPod and competing Jamaican hip-hop on another, my staff made short work of the tartines.
Working from the ingredients listed on the bread, I baked a trial loaf. I liked the resulting bread a lot, but I sensed that something was missing. Then, weeks later a Latvian baker at our warehouse consulted his grandmother, and she said I needed to use rye malt syrup, which I could find in a recently opened Russian supermarket in Brighton Beach, where many Russians have settled in the past few decades. So on a truly lousy day, with sheets of rain riding in on a cold wind that came onshore at Coney Island, Peter and I went looking for this elusive liquid. As the windshield wipers momentarily let us peek through the cascade pouring off the elevated tracks of the D train, we spotted the Gourmanoff Market, located inside a refurbished movie theater.
Inside, it was like a Russian version of Whole Foods: an array of smoked fish 20 feet (6 m) long, sausages of every size and seasoning, hams from everywhere, dried mushrooms, fresh fruits (which get pride of place in any market whose customers remember the fruitless fare of the Soviet Union)—but no rye malt syrup.
Feeling a bit defeated, we retreated through the continuing downpour only to find that a large truck had double-parked next to my car. As an alternative to standing in the rain, we ducked into a small food market nearby. It was very old-school. A big box of dried smoked sturgeon sat next to an open box of poppy seed pastries. I wondered whether the flavors mixed, and if they did, whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Then, at eye level, like a beacon cutting through the darkness of a moonless night, I saw six jars of dark syrup. The Russian label told us little, but the list of ingredients in English noted “rye malt.’ ” I loaded up with every bottle of the shelf. We drove back to Bien Cuit, where I mixed up a dough with the missing ingredient. It added just the right amount of color and, more importantly, a smooth sweetness with the deep and haunting characteristics found in malted rye beverages.
You don’t have to go on a bread obsessive’s trip to a Russian neighborhood to buy rye malt syrup, also known as rye malt extract. I later found that it’s sold on Amazon, alongside other supplies for home brewers. But I enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, and the chicken breast with gravy stuffed between two potato pancakes that they served at Gourmanoff was, as they say in the Michelin guides, “worth a detour.”