Sunday 6 May 2012

Old World Rye Bread

D has been on a bread-baking kick the last few weeks, since he discovered that Sainsbury's no longer seemed to be selling the organic wholemeal loaf that he likes.

I thought I would take advantage of his current enthusiasm for bread making and get him to bake a bread recipe that I had bookmarked a while ago but not got around to baking yet. This was the Old World Rye Bread recipe from Dolores Casella's A World of Breads, which I came across on Natalia's blog
Gatti, Fili e Farina.
The recipe was also blogged about on the One Perfect Bite blog.

In the photos the bread looked like a lovely black loaf, similar to the Pumpernickel Bread from The Good Cook: Breads which I had made years ago, but without the fuss of having to boil potatoes and prepare polenta.

We made a few minor changes to the recipe:

D used 2 teaspoons of active dried yeast intead of 2 Tablespoons,
1 Tablespoon of caraway seeds instead of 2 Tablespoons,
Just slightly more than 1 teaspoon of salt instead of 2 teaspoons,
and white bread flour.

He used American Grandma's molasses because we happened to have some on hand. In the absence of American molasses I would probably use a 50:50 mixture of black treacle and golden syrup.

The result was a loaf with a wonderful rich dark brown color and a great flavour, which we will definitely make again.


May Bank Holiday Weekend 2012

Bank holiday weekends have a reputation for being washouts over here. We get few enough sunny days, but it's almost like you can bet that the weather isn't going to cooperate when you have a long weekend.

This one is no exception, but not only is it grey, it's freezing cold, with a maximum around 9, and the weather forecasters yesterday saying that it had been warmer on Christmas Day!

I told people last week that we were planning to have our bank holiday picnic/barbecue indoors. I have been trying to conjure up the image of blue skies and warmer climes by playing my Compagnie Creole tape that I bought when I was in Paris in the '80s.