Old rye baking book: no sourdough?
In my quest for rye breads I came across this publication. Printed in 1936 it is devoted to baking with rye. It seems to me that rye was more commonly used in bread back then but surprisingly it has very scant information on sourdough. However there is information about quite a few types of rye flour that were available under the Gold Medal brand back then. I was a little bit disappointed as I was expecting to see some old school sourdough info there but it has almost none. Still, the recipes look interesting and I'm sure they're solid.
It contains an array of rye bread (and some roll) recipes. What's most interesting to me, is that even though it has a section on sours (and some recipes with a whiskey one being the most intriguing), where it's mentioned they can be added to the formulas, all of the bread recipes rely on yeast for leavening. The most elaborate recipe, which is "Russian Rye Bread (With Sour)" is a three stage (plus dough) affair that specifies "old dough" in the first stage. But it's not a sourdough as it gives instructions in case of not having old dough handy and it also starts with yeast. Most of the other recipes have just a sponge stage with some having an option for straight dough. None of the recipes are 100% rye with only one being 76% rye and others much less; 15-48% with the aforementioned Russian rye being just 40% rye. Most recipes specify first clear for the white flour portion. I'm tempted to try my hand at these bakes but I realize the flours of today are different than what was available back then so I will have to make some hydration adjustments. Did anybody come across this book? Surprisingly I didn't find any mention of it on this forum so I wonder if anyone would have any suggestions with regard to these old recipes. Another thing is: did they not use sourdough method(s) of production back then? Was it unknown, lost or was it just that yeast replaced it as it was perhaps more convenient and faster? But then what about the starch attack? Did they adjust the recipes so they did not have to worry about it?