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
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