Bread-Bakers v108.n018.1

I'm no expert, but here's my understanding:

* plants store up food for their "babies" (the germ within the seeds/grains)
* this food is sugar
* For efficient storage, these sugars are combined into starches
* Howver, the germs (living part) can't use the sugars in the form of 
starches. But luckily the seeds contain the mechanisms for 
deconstructing the starches back into sugars. These mechanisms are enzymes.
* These enzymes become more active when the seeds sprout, i.e., just 
when the germs need the food
* Barley malt are barley seeds that have sprouted...and so their 
enzymes are active

So diastatic barley malt is barley malt in which the enzymes to 
convert starch into sugar are active. It has a distinctive sweet 
taste (from the starches deconstructed into sugars).

Non-diastatic barley malt is the same thing...but the malt has been 
treated (by heat?) so that the enzymes are no longer functioning. The 
malt still tastes sweet from the starch already turned into 
sugar...but it won't desconstruct any *additional* starch into sugar.

Building on this, non-diastatic malt is a lovely addition to dough to 
add sweetness or color (such as when one adds it to the boiling water 
for bagels).

Diastatic barley malt powder is a great addition to wheat dough to 
help it release its own latent sweetness (instead of "adding" 
sweetness). But it's not often necessary. Wheat flour already 
includes its own enzymes...but sometimes less than is desired (in 
technical terms, the "falling number is too large"). In those cases 
one can add some diastatic malt to correct this deficiency...that's 
why you'll often see malt powder listed as an ingredient on the side 
of most bags of flour.

All in all, I doubt adding diastatic malt to the recipe below would 
help...but why not try? Order some from King Arthur online (or find 
it at your local beer brewing supply store) and let us know the 
results. (Also, Reinhart has a new version of this formula in his 
"Whole Grain Breads" book. Compare and contrast!

Other readers, please feel free to correct my "layman's 
interpretation." But I think/hope I got the gist of it correct...

Allen
SHB
San Francisco