A Rye Bread Year

When I was a little girl in the 50s, my family was traditional for that time. My mother did all the cooking and the shopping and only on rare occasions did my father go to the grocery store. Whenever he did, whatever my mother sent him to get, he always returned with special items that he bought for himself. He'd bring home cans of Vienna sausage (!), sardines, Hershey's chocolate bars, salami, and my favorite: "Party rye bread." The loaf was tiny with a shiny crust and replete with caraway seeds. I loved it. Pepperidge Farm makes a party rye loaf now that is about the same size but the slices are square and not nearly as appealing as the tiny commercial loaf my father would bring home.

The photo above is what Pepperidge farm sells now but the slices of the loaf I remember looked more like this photo from a deli called Kenny and Ziggy's in Texas, of all places.

All of this to say that I have always loved rye bread. I used to snack on it when Daddy brought it home and was thrilled whenever we had it. So this Christmas, my oldest daughter gave me this cookbook:

I am so excited to try the recipes in this book. Actually there are seventy-six rye bread recipes - more than once a week! But I am committing to baking one rye bread a week this year - either I will get entirely too much rye in my system or I'll find favorites that I want to bake over and over.

I started at the beginning of the year with the first recipe in the book, "Old School Deli Rye." It turned out beautifully and tasted just like deli rye bread. I didn't photograph it, but will make it again and will the next time.

My second bread was a failure - it was the New York Corn Rye. The loaf is HUGE - and is often quartered to sell because it is so large. Many grocery items are in short supply because of COVID and caraway seeds were nowhere to be found in my local Atlanta grocery stores. I went to the DeKalb Farmer's Market and they had a container of caraway seeds. Delighted, I brought them home and made the bread. Since I had made the sponge the night before, I hurried home from the DFM and threw all of the ingredients into the mixer. It smelled funny - not like the delicious caraway aroma that a bread dough with 13 grams of caraway should emit. 

Horrified I opened the container of "caraway seed" and realized that it was cumin seed mislabeled as caraway seed. I went ahead and baked the bread but it was AWFUL and I literally threw away the 3.5 pound loaf without eating it.

One might get discouraged at this point, but I ordered a pound of good caraway seed from My Spice Sage and soldiered on.

The day after the seeds arrived, I made the second bread in the book, Dakota Norwegian Rye. What a difference! This recipe made a beautiful loaf with a dark crust and a delicious taste. I thought it was a little light in the caraway for my taste - only 5 grams - but it also includes rough rye chops which gives it an interesting texture.

This loaf was so large that I gave half of it to my youngest daughter and her family. It is delicious with a softer crumb than some rye breads.

Yesterday I baked Old Milwaukee Rye on page 99 in the book. It tastes more like commercial rye bread, packaged in groceries, but I liked it. It includes molasses and an egg. It's sweeter than how I think of rye, but I liked it and am enjoyed toasting it with soup.

So this is the beginning of my rye bread year. I'm going to post one recipe at a time going forward and photos of the breads I bake. If you'd like to join me and bake from the same book, The Rye Baker, post here and let me know or post on my instagram page: #linda.tillman 

Making M'smen from Hot Bread Kitchen

 Food52 named the Hot Bread Kitchen cookbook as the best in all the land in May, 2020. I own all of the cookbooks they referenced for this competition except James Beard's Beard on Bread, and while I have baked out of most of them, I have never baked anything out of the Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook.

Inspired by the thought of the cookbook being the best, I decided to give recipes in it a try. I started at the beginning and on Saturday morning I made the Moroccan bread, M'smen. The book begins with flatbreads and this is the very first one.

It was so much fun and the outcome was a melt-in-your-mouth flatbread with flaky layers like a croissant. I ate it with honey from my beehives and wanted to eat every single one. I only made six because I live alone, so I quickly gave four to my daughter who is also a bread baker. Otherwise I believe that I would have eaten all six by the end of the day - they were that good.

The recipe includes all purpose flour and semolina flour, salt, water and canola oil mixed with melted salted butter (this makes the flaky part). OMG, what a treat and your hands stay oily throughout the process - a lovely side benefit resulting in softer hands!

Here are photos of my process:

I forgot to use the dough hook although the instructions called for it!

Look how translucent the dough is - you can see the counter through it. 

The oil/butter mix is brushed onto the circle of dough.

Then the dough is folded into a three inch square packet and rests for 30 minute.

You then stretch it to a seven inch square on oiled parchment squares.

In the medium hot skillet, it puffs some, and browns some.

After two minutes you flip it for another two minutes.

Then is is absolutely gorgeous and DELICIOUS.

Well, I overcooked one, but I can't wait to make these again. She also offers a version in which the square is folded around a filling of kale, onion and cheddar - that could be interesting. Meanwhile I salivate as I remember the mouth feel of the hot M'Smen with the flaky center and hint of semolina.

Pain de Campagnard - Rustic, Countryman's Bread from Beth Hensperger

So here's my third use of sourdough with the help of Beth Hensperger. I decided to try her rustic country bread. The recipe calls for wheat berries, which I actually HAVE! I bought them and used them for one of the rustic breads in the Tartine cookbook (another one that I love, but each bread takes two or three days).

This bread is also a three day bread that I shortened to two days because I used my levain instead of making hers. I started with 1 cup of my sourdough levain and added 1 1/2 cups of warm water and 2 cups of bread flour. The mixture was really wet and bubbly.

On Day Three (it really was my second day, but if you follow the recipe, this is Day Three), I think Beth left out a step. She says to stir down the sponge and add the "yeast mixture." She says to add 1 tsp active dry yeast. I've never used active dry yeast without dissolving it and she does say "yeast mixture" so I dissolved the tsp of yeast in 1/4 cup of water with the tiniest bit of honey to make the yeast happier. THEN I added the what-was-then-yeast-mixture to the sponge.

I drained the wheat berries (1/4 cup soaked in boiling water for FOUR hours - this bread takes all of the third day) and poured them over the yeast and sponge. Then added 1/3 cup of rye flour and a cup of bread flour. This whole combo is mixed well and then you add up to 2 1/2 cups of bread flour, 1/2 cup at a time. I only needed 2 cups, despite the 1/4 cup of yeast mix water.

After kneading this, my bread dough was left to rise for 2 - 2 1/2 hours. The little nubs poking out are the wheat berries. Well, I'm going to leave it and go take a coronavirus on-line chair yoga class.

Two and a half hours and a yoga class later, the risen dough looks like this:

I poured it out of the rising bowl and cut it into two parts. Then I shaped the two parts into smooth balls.

I let these sit on the counter for about five minutes and then placed them upside down in two bannetons.

Bottoms up! Here they are, ready to rise for another 1 1/2 hours. I baked each of them in my cloche. When I do that, I put the bread in the hot cloche at 500 degrees in the oven for 22- 25 minutes. Then I lower the temperature to 450. After 10 minutes at 450, I remove the cover of the cloche and let the loaf brown for another 10 minutes or so.

I just can't figure out the lame and snipped these with scissors - also didn't come out well. I'll bet the bread tastes great for tomorrow's toast, though!

This bread does not have big holes because it is kneaded hard and well. I don't think that was the goal of this bread. Having had it toasted for breakfast, it was delicious. My favorite of these three Beth Hensperger sourdough loaves is the Pain de Seigle, though, because of the caraway seeds.

Beth Hensperger's Pain de Seigle

When I was little, sometimes my father would go to the grocery store where he always indulged his wishes. He would come home not only with what my mother requested but always bought a small round loaf of thinly sliced rye bread. The diameter of the loaf was about three inches and I loved every slice of it that I got to eat (it was his treat, but he always shared with me). There's just something about caraway seeds - they really speak to me and I love rye bread.

So when I was looking through The Bread Bible, my first bread cookbook, I saw that Hensperger had a recipe for sourdough rye bread that I had never noticed before. Her book is not my go-to sourdough cookbook so I guess it had always missed my notice.

This is a three-day bread but my starter was ready to go. Her starter for this bread is made with just bread flour. I feed my starter half and half whole wheat and bread flour, so I decided to skip Day One and go with my already active starter even though it would not be purely the recipe to do this.

Day Two you make a mix of 1 cup of starter, 2 cups lukewarm water, 2 T molasses, 1 1/2 cups rye flour (I used pumpernickel since that was what I had) and 1 1/2 cups bread flour. This rises on the counter overnight.

On Day Three, you stir in 1 1/2 tsp of active dry yeast, 3 T canola oil, 2 T molasses, 4 tsp salt, 4 tsp of caraway seeds (mine were a little heaping), and 1/2 cup of rye flour (I used pumpernickel).

Beat the mixture well and then add 3 or so cups of bread flour 1/2 cup at a time.

Knead well and let bread dough rise for about an hour.

Turn the bread out of the rising bowl and shape into two long loaves on a baking sheet. Cover and let these rise for another 45 minutes to an hour.

Preheat oven to 450. I started preheating as soon as this loaf rise began. When the bread is ready, brush the surface of the loaf with beaten egg and sprinkle with more caraway seeds.

Put bread into oven and lower the temperature to 375. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Cool completely before slicing. It's WONDERFUL and meets my childhood memories fully.

Beth Hensperger's Pain de Campagne

Using my mother's sourdough starter paired with the deeply complex flavors generated in most of Beth Hensperger's recipes makes me very happy. In this time of the coronavirus, I, like many other people, am baking my heart out.

I give away Mother's starter frequently (about four times in a year) but now have given it to four people during the six or seven weeks so far of the stay-at-home time of the coronavirus. One young man who asked for it then drove to N Georgia to Helen to get flour ground in a local mill, the Nora Mill Granary. The grocery stores were all out of flour (as they continue to be) and he really wanted to get started with his sourdough. Generously, he brought me two huge bags - one of whole wheat and the other of high gluten bread flour.

Meanwhile I have been feeding my starter twice a day and it is really happy:

Hensperger's recipe for Pain de Campagne takes three days. The first one, though, is the making of the starter and mine is already fully functioning. So I used the equivalent amount of starter and began the recipe with Day Two of three.

On Day Two, you make a sponge with 1/2 cup of starter (from the first day) and 2 cups of lukewarm water into which you stir 1 1/2 cups of bread flour and 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour. My flours from N Georgia were perfect for this. This mixture rises overnight - it's really wet and rises as a bubbly batter, more or less.

Then on Day Three (two for me), you stir down the sponge and gradually add a cup of bread flour and 4 tsp of salt. Then you add up to 3 more cups of flour - I added about 2 1/2 but I am in Atlanta where it is really humid and I often don't need as much flour as the recipe requires. 

In her recipe, she calls for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours rising, but I left mine for 3 since I was using starter and not fresh yeast. Then I divided the dough in half and put each half in a banneton where it rose for another hour or so.

I baked it one loaf at a time in a cloche in a 500 degree oven. At 20 - 25 minutes I turned the oven down to 450 for 10 minutes. Then I took the top off for about 10 - 15 minutes more. The bread turned out beautifully:

The pictured loaf is the second one. The first one I gave away without taking its photo but it was prettier even than this one. The crust is crunchy and delicious and the bread has a nice crumb. I want to make it again and again!

Popovers from Sourdough Starter

Delicious concoctions can be made with sourdough starter, left in the container after you have made bread. These recipes use unfed starter. A book I love for sourdough baking is Artisan Sourdough by Emilie Raffa. She has some recipes at the end of the book for using that leftover starter.

I decided to experiment with trying her easy dijon parsley popovers. I had bought a beautiful popover pan and had only used it once with my granddaughter. This one asks you to heat the pan in the oven while the oven reaches 450. My popover pan holds six large popovers, exactly the number created by this recipe.

Putting this together was quick and the results were delectable.

First you whisk together three eggs. Then you add 1/2 cup of leftover starter and whisk that together.

Meanwhile you melt 2 T of unsalted butter in 1 1/4 cups of whole milk on low heat on the stove. As soon as the butter melted, I took it off of the heat so that it wouldn't cook the eggs when I added it to the mix. 

 Next I added the mustard, garlic powder, sea salt (I used Himalayan pink salt), and some freshly ground pepper. Oh, and a T of finely chopped fresh parsley. You can see the green flecks.

 Slowly I whisked in the milk/melted butter mix. And finally I whisked in one cup of all-purpose flour.

I pulled the hot, hot, hot pan out of the oven and sprayed the cups with canola oil cooking spray. Then I poured the batter into the cups, making them as even as possible.

The popovers popped up high and light as they cooked and they were oh, so beautiful.

 I had one with a bowl of homemade potato soup topped with bacon and sour cream. What a delicious dinner that was!

This post is being written in the time of the coronavirus. Many of us are isolated at home. I gave the rest of the popovers and the remaining soup to a friend and her husband. She met my car near her home and took the food through my passenger side back window so we could stay six feet apart.

In our own homes, we all enjoyed them as well as the soup which was cooked with a rind of cheese as I often do. Turned out the cheese rind I pulled out of the bag was a hot pepper cheese, giving the potato soup a kick that I loved but will never be able to repeat!.

A Sourdough Starter Story

My mother ordered 100-year-old sourdough starter from San
Francisco when I was 15. She shared it with me when I left home
so I could continue baking sourdough bread. I have baked
bread almost every week my whole life. 

My mother died at age 93 in 2015 and when we cleaned out
her house, I found a blackened quart jar on her screened
porch in Mississippi - not refrigerated and not used for at
least four years. I brought it into the house and opened the
jar. The jar's interior (and suddenly the whole
house) smelled like the sewer. My sister was horrified
that I was going to empty this jar, but after I pulled off
spoonful after spoonful of black gunk, in the center
I found pure white starter. 

We had to leave the windows wide open in the house for hours
to get rid of the awful smell. And to bring the starter home with me,
I triple bagged it in zip-lock bags like a plastic version of the
stacked Russian dolls.

I brought Mother’s starter back to Atlanta to see if I could revive it.
I put about a tablespoon of it in each of nine small bowls and fed
each of the bowls about 1/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water.
I covered all of them and went to work. 

When I got home it was like the starter that ate my kitchen. Thrilled
to have food after four years, the starters had all bubbled up and
over the rims of the bowls in which I had left them. My kitchen
counter was covered with glorious, revived, 151-year-old starter.
Sadly, there are no photos. I have been baking with it several
times weekly ever since and sharing it with everyone who
expresses an interest. 

In case you have any worries about the fact that it was in
the Mississippi heat, unfed, for four or so years, a sourdough
starter was scraped off of a pottery jar in an Egyptian
tomb and brought back to life. Microbes are amazing
survivors! (see Rob Dunn’s book: Never Home Alone).

I love knowing that this starter now includes my microbes
as well as my mother's, microbes from my Atlanta kitchens
over the years, and those from my childhood home in
Mississippi.

As you use a sourdough starter, your microbes and those
from your kitchen will be added as well!