Rye baking day
Light Rye & pumpernickel
Silesian Light Rye from Leader's "Local Breads"
Silesian Light Rye crumb
Pumpernickel crumb
The Silesian Light Rye from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" is even lighter than the usual "Jewish Sour Rye." It is a lovely bread that my wife and I always enjoy fresh or toasted.
Leader's recipe calls for free form loaves, but I've usually made it in brotformen. I recently bought a couple of oval brotformen from SFBI, and this was their maiden voyage. The dough was quite extensible. It was hard to form the loaves short enough for the brotform, so they ended up sort of brot-deformed.
Also, Leader calls for caraway seeds as an optional coating, but I like them in the bread, so I added them for the final minute of mixing.
Greenstein's pumpernickel is another favorite of mine. It is made with rye sour, pumpernickel flour, first clear flour and altus (stale rye bread, soaked in water, then wrung out and added to the dough). I use granular caramel coloring, which not only makes the color "black" but adds a bitter flavor without which this bread just doesn't taste "right" to me. This is a bread that makes good sandwiches, but my favorite way to eat it is spread with cream cheese , untoasted, as an accompaniment to scrambled eggs. That's my breakfast for tomorrow morning.
Dough for Nury's rye is retarding to bake tomorrow. I'm thinking of cutting some of the dough into squares to bake as rolls (hamburger buns?). I may set up another bread or two, if time allows.
Hey! I haven't baked for the past two weeks. I was getting kind of twitchy. I feel so much better now. :-)
David