Finnish Farmer Rye Bread

I have not posted in a while. Both of my grandchildren have lost interest in baking bread. I do still bake every Friday but without their involvement, I've felt less motivated to keep up this blog.

Recently, though, I've been experimenting with rye breads and want to share the recipes I am trying.

Last Friday I made Finnish Farmer Rye Bread from The Sunset Cook Book of Breads, published in 1980. (Note my copy says on the front that my mother paid $3.95 for this book - it's available on Amazon today from $22.95 - $118.95!)

I loved this bread and its funny way of tearing into bread sticks!

The recipe calls for:
1 pkg active dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp olive oil
2 T caraway seed (I was out so I used fennel seed)
1 1/2 cups rye flour
1 3/4 - 2 cups all purpose flour
2 - 3 T melted butter

First I stirred the yeast, sugar and water together and let them work for about 15 minutes.  Then I stirred in the salt, oil and fennel seed.  Next I added 1/2 cup rye flour and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour and beat the mixture.  Gradually I beat in the rest of the rye flour and finally added 1 cup of the remaining all-purpose flour.

I kneaded the dough with my mixer and by hand on the counter, adding just enough flour to keep it from being sticky.

I put the dough in a pottery bowl to rise until doubled (45 minutes).

Turning the dough out, I divided it into two halves and shaped each into a smooth ball.  Then I patted each ball into a circle of about 8 - 9 inches in diameter.  I placed each circle on a rimless baking sheet to rise and covered them each with plastic wrap.

The dough rose for about 50 minutes this time.  I floured the handle of a long-handled wooden spoon and pushed creases into the circle about one inch apart.  I had to keep re-flouring the spoon handle.



















When it was all done, the circle looked like this (I smashed the first "stick" by not understanding what I was supposed to do with the wooden spoon handle):



Both circles were then brushed with melted butter (about half of the amount)

 
In the oven the bread had some spring, making the individual curved parts rise up and smooth out a little.
 


When the bread came out of the oven, I brushed it with more melted butter.  It looked and smelled delicious.  I took one of these loaves to my daughter's house for dinner and we ate the whole loaf!

 
This is a rye that I will definitely make again!

Dinner Rolls for Christmas Eve

Our amazing dinner rolls for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner came from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. Here are the ingredients:

1 T active dry yeast
1 tiny whisk dipped in honey
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup warm buttermilk
2 T honey
grated zest of one lemon
4 T unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
2 tsp salt
4 - 4 1/2 cups unbleached flour

Soften the yeast in warm water. Stir it into the warm water with a tiny whisk dipped in honey.

Heat the buttermilk to warm. Add the sugar (the original recipe calls for sugar; I use honey), the lemon zest, the butter, melted, the egg, and the salt.

Add some flour and the yeast and beat well. Then gradually (1/2 cup at a time) add the rest of the flour.

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Put the dough in a greased bowl to rise until doubled.

I baked these rolls in two greased cake pans. I always melt about a half a stick of butter.



Punch the dough down gently. Divide it in half (1/2 for each cake pan). Then divide each half into 9 equal portions. Shape each into a ball. Dip the ball in the melted butter and put it into the cake pan.

Preheat the oven to 375. When the rolls have risen, place in the center of the oven and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until golden brown. Turn out of the pans and serve.

Last Oatmeal Bread

There has been an interruption in my posting and I apologize. We had a death in the family and I spent the first couple of weeks and weekends in November going back and forth to Mississippi where my family lives.

I made the last oatmeal bread on Halloween weekend, uploaded the pictures and then went to Mississippi and never posted the recipe. The recipe came from the Bread Cook Book from Better Homes and Gardens. My edition was published in 1963.

Here are the ingredients:

2 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 1/4 cups boiling water
1 cup quick-cooking rolled oats,
1/2 cup light molasses
1/3 cup shortening (I used butter)
1 T salt
6 - 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 beaten eggs



While the yeast is softening in warm water, I put the other ingredients up to the flour in a mixing bowl and allowed it to cool.

Then I added 2 cups of the flour, followed by the eggs and the softened yeast. After kneading, the picture below is what the dough looked like.


It was quite happy to rise well in a relatively short time for an egg bread.



While the bread was rising, I greased the loaf pans - I used three 8X3.5 pans - and sprinled them on the bottom and side with extra oatmeal. Then the loaves rose in the loaf pans.



I let it rise a little long so the loaves were tall when they went into the oven! The oven temp was 375 for 40 minutes. I was supposed to use egg white and water to brush the loaves and then to sprinkle them with oatmeal, but I forgot.

The finished loaf was a little lop-sided but delicious.


Since my November did not go as planned, I'm not baking a type of bread this month. Instead I am baking holiday breads from now (the middle of November) until the end of the year. I had planned to bake rolls in November but I'll save that experiment for 2010.

I'll thaw and comparison taste the oatmeal breads tomorrow.

Oatmeal Bread from Dolores Casella

In the mountains over the weekend, I made the oatmeal bread in one of my favorite old bread-baking cookbooks: A World of Breads by Dolores Casella. This recipe is designed to make three loaves of bread.

Here are the ingredients:

1 pkg active dry yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
4 cups boiling skim milk
2 cups oatmeal
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup molasses
1 T salt
10 - 11 cups bread flour

This bread tasted great, but I am sorry I made it because it is such a large recipe that it overwhelmed my mixer in the mountains. The dough crawled up during the mixing process and gunked up the top of the mixer. It really made a mess and I finished making the bread by hand.

First the milk, oatmeal and butter go together and sit for 30 minutes to cool. Then you mix in the yeast, and the rest of the ingredients. Obviously you add the flour gradually - and you might have the same fun I had with the mixer!


My daughter says that she doesn't bake because making bread is its own unique version of making glue! That's how the mixer cleanup seemed to me....


Here's the bread rising before I divided it into three loaves.


Here are the three loaves rising. I didn't have 3 nine inch pans at the mountain house so I used two 8 1/2 inch pans and one nine inch one.



The bread bakes at 400 degrees for 40 - 50 minutes. I set the timer for 45 and regretted it. I was knitting and didn't get up to check it and the tops got too dark in my oven. I'm used to myThermador at home that is well-calibrated. I believe the mountain oven runs hot.


At any rate, I wished I had checked at 40 minutes - really they were probably done at 35.


The slices were pretty and tasted really good with the molasses in the recipe.

Oatmeal Bread from Martha Shulman

The bread I chose today took the entire day to make. The cookbook it is from is Great Breads by Martha Rose Shulman....very expensive now, but the one I own is paperback and I've had it since 1995 - bought for $19.95 - isn't that funny - $19.95 in 1995.

Here are the ingredients:

Sponge:
1 cup rolled/flaked oatmeal (I used McCann's)
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1 T active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
3 T honey (from my bees)
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (for both of these I used King Arthur's flour)

Dough:
Sponge
1/4 cup canola oil
1 T salt
2 -3 cups whole wheat flour

Loaves:
1 egg beaten with 2 T water
1 T sesame seeds

To make the sponge, I boiled water and poured it over the oatmeal when I first got up and left it all morning. When I returned about four hours later, I softened the yeast in the warm water and added it to the oatmeal and its liquid, along with the honey. Then I stirred in the white and whole wheat flours.

I left this sponge for an hour or so until it was bubbly. Shulman, who references a mixer and a dough hook in other recipes, says to make this one by hand. I did not - but used the mixer throughout.

Once the mix was bubbly (sorry - couldn't upload the picture), then you make the dough by adding the oil and the salt. Then I used mostly the dough hook to stir in the rest of the flour. I used all three cups of whole wheat flour and was midway through the fourth cup, when I decided to use a little unbleached flour as well. Even at that and after kneading with the dough hook for 10 minutes, the dough was still quite sticky.



(Note: Blogger just couldn't seem to upload in the correct orientation tonight - I'll try to edit later).

Perhaps it was because I used the mixer and not a wooden spoon?

I used unbleached flour on the counter for the end of the knead and left it to rise in a greased straight sided container for about 1 1/2 hours. Then I punched it down and let it rise again for about an hour. This is recommended in the recipe. Shulman says the resulting bread without the second rise will be a bit denser than if it had been given the second rise.

Then I shaped it into loaves and put the two loaves into two greased pans. I used the egg wash to brush over both loaves and then sprinkled them with sesame seed. They rose for about 45 minutes before baking in a 375 degree oven for 50 minutes. I had already thrown out the egg wash, but for a tiny bit. The recipe says to brush the loaves with the egg wash about half way through baking, so I used the little bit to do that.

Even saved to disk, the picture would not upload in the correct orientation - I'm sorry you have to look at it sideways!


These loaves are beautiful but too hot to cut tonight. I'll report on the taste tomorrow.

Tastes delicious - light for a predominantly whole wheat bread. I really like this bread recipe and will make it again in spite of the day long effort.

Oatmeal Graham Bread from Hensperger

I was out of town over the weekend and didn't get home until late Monday so I baked my October oatmeal weekend bread on Tuesday. I picked Beth Hensperger's Oatmeal Graham bread from her wonderful book: Bread for All Seasons.

I love this cookbook and this bread appears in the February section. Personally I think it's perfect for fall as well.

Here is the ingredient list:

2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats (I always use McCann's)
1/2 cup honey (my own from my bees)
4 T butter - she calls for unsalted - I didn't have any and used salted
1 1/2 T active dry yeast
pinch of sugar (I used a dip of honey on a tiny whisk)
1/4 cup warm water
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups graham or whole wheat flour
2 2/1 - 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
extra rolled oats for sprinkling
1 egg yolk
2 T sesame seeds

As in many oatmeal breads, first you boil the water and pour it over the oatmeal, honey and butter. This has to cool in order not to kill the yeast in the third step.


Meanwhile you soften the yeast in the water. I stir the yeast with a whisk dipped in honey and then leave the whisk in the mix as the yeast begins to work.


Now that the oatmeal mix is cool and the yeast is up and running, you pour the yeast into the oatmeal in the mixing bowl. Add salt, whole wheat flour (I always use King Arthur's) and a cup of the unbleached flour. You beat this together well - about a minute.

Then you add the rest of the unbleached flour, 1/2 cup at a time. I switch to the bread hook after the mixture gets pretty stiff. Knead first by machine and then some on the counter before leaving it to rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.


When the bread has risen, divide the dough in half and shape it into two loaves. Grease the baking pans and sprinkle oatmeal all over the bottom and sides.



Before baking in a 375 oven, brush the tops of the loaves gently with the beaten egg yolk and sprinkle with 1 T sesame seed per loaf.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes and then cool on racks.

This is a beautiful and absolutely delicious bread. It is soft and honey-nutty tasting.

The crumb is pretty and the bread crust is tender. So far this is my favorite of the oatmeal breads. It would do well for sandwiches (tried it at lunch today) or as breakfast toast.

Steel Cut Oatmeal Bread

My book club is meeting at my house on Tuesday. We read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Stout. I really liked the book, but the woman it was about is a sort of tall, raw-boned woman and when she serves food, it's pretty simple - applesauce, baked beans.

We usually try to have food that fits the book. I have baked beans in the oven now. I also thought I'd serve pimento cheese sandwiches. Oatmeal bread is great for pimento cheese. I have a loaf from yesterday, but that isn't enough for the book club, so I made a different oatmeal bread today.

Today I made the oatmeal bread from King Arthur Flour's 200th Anniversary Cookbook. The recipe called for either steel cut oats or oatmeal and since I used oatmeal yesterday, I used steel cut oats today.

Here are the ingredients:

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled or steel-cut oats
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup butter (4 T)
1 T salt

1 T active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tsp honey
2 cups WW flour
3 1/2 - 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour.

First you mix the oatmeal mix (the first five ingredients) and let them cool to room temperature.

Then you soften the yeast in the warm water with the teaspoon of honey. When it is bubbling, you add all the rest of the ingredients. I didn't have any whole wheat flour so I used all unbleached flour. Of course, you add the flour gradually and end up kneading the mix with the dough hook.

Here are the steel cut oats, the butter and the salt, waiting for the honey and the boiling water!



After the first rise, you shape the dough into two loaves (8 1/2" X 4 1/2 " pan) and let the loaves rise about 45 minutes. Then you put the loaves into a cold oven and turn the oven on to 400 degrees for 15 minutes. By the end of the 15 minutes, my oven read 375 and wasn't up to 400, but you are then supposed to turn the oven down to 350 for 25 more minutes. So I did.



Here are the two beautiful loaves - and I wish you could smell them - they smell like the honey from my beehives. The little knobby steel cut oats add a nice texture to this bread. Can't wait for the pimento cheese sandwiches!



I LOVE this bread. The slices feel substantial - good for sandwich making - and the crunch of the steel cut oats is such an interesting addition.

Note: This bread makes good toast, but gets a little gummy when used for sandwiches. I used it for pimento cheese for my book club and it absorbed the pimento cheese in such a way that I found it unappealing.