Detmolder 90% Rye Bread

I recently received a comment on one of my posts from a reader who desperately wanted to make a bread with 100% rye flour: “Oh, how I wish that I could bake rye. Rye, true 100% rye, just eludes me and always comes out with a dense, compact (but not rock-hard) crumb.” So, I went to work trying to find a 100% rye recipe that would not be ‘dense’ and ‘compact’. I re-learned and discovered a lot of interesting things about rye, mainly from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread. I’ll share a bit with you … it’s important to understand the unique qualities of rye in order to produce rye breads of high quality.

Mom’s Sourdough Waffles (or Pancakes)

When I was a child my mom would make sourdough waffles most weekends. They were always light and airy, soft on the inside, but with a good golden crust, and perfect with some maple syrup and butter. She started her sourdough starter before I can remember, carefully maintaining it for many years. It was an integral part of her kitchen and our family’s weekly bread. It was and still is (Mom is still quite the baker) a unique starter, fed with milk and white flour instead of water. It has a pleasantly tangy flavor and is perfect for sourdough waffles. My own starter now is the child of my mom’s. I took a bit from hers a few years back and made it my own, feeding it with water instead of milk and coaxing from it many loaves of bread. I like it this way. A bit of Mom’s love and care is in each of my loaves.

Sprouted Wheat Sourdough

I opened my cabinet this past weekend to peruse what pantry items I had on hand and was greeted by jars and jars of grains … brown rice, wild rice, millet, quinoa, bulgur, rye berries, hard winter wheat berries, soft wheat berries … the list could go on. I felt pleased seeing all of those jars in a neat row, but I also felt a little like a squirrel, hoarding tasty treats for leaner days. I decided that I needed to use up some of my stores and searched for some bread recipes to do so.

Rye Sourdough with Sunflower Seeds

Upon completion of my undergraduate studies, I set about accomplishing several important tasks that had been delayed for too long. Firstly, I went to a local coffee shop that also sells used books. There, I bought myself an au lait and perused the shelves of worn novels, poetry collections, biographies, and short story anthologies for my summer reading … that is, reading material chosen by me and for my own pleasure. It felt sinfully indulgent and positively exquisite. Next, I gave my best friend from high school a call and caught up with her. I found out that she is moving nearby next year and am eagerly anticipating her good company once again. Lastly, I made a comprehensive list of all the breads that I would like to be able to make consistently at a high level of quality. This list turned out to be rather long, varying from the simple classics of baguettes or enormous miches to the more complex fruit and nut loaves or those with beer and wine in the ingredients. I gathered ideas from blog entries that I had read, my library of bread books, and my backlog of bread fantasies that I occasionally daydream about.

Bread in Busy Times

I must apologize for not writing much lately. I am in the last few months of my senior year in college, furiously working to finish my thesis and making sure that I leave the university with everything in order. I have been baking bread the past few weeks, but have not been doing much experimenting, sticking to the old recipes that are familiar and comforting to me. I promise that by the beginning of May I will be finished and will return to my regular updates on new breads from my oven.

Amidst all this work, I find relaxation in preparing simple, satisfying meals. Basic, but rich and flavorful ingredients are what my body and mind seem to be craving at the moment. The other day as I was poking through the freezer, figuring out what winter leftovers needed to be cleaned out, I came across a bag of saved bits of bread that had gone stale before we had a chance to eat them. I recalled a simple meal I had in Florence years back of tomato-bread soup or Pappa al Pomodoro and decided at once that I was going to try and recreate it.

Annie’s Bread

I have a good friend named Annie. Our dinners together usually involve making a big pot of soup  while eating crusty bread, sipping on wine, and catching up on our lives. I bring the bread and she provides the wine. It is really quite lovely.

Annie appreciates good bread, but is especially fond of those loaves that are grainy with a hearty crust. (I must admit I am partial to those myself…) The other day I made a recipe that I adapted from Nancy Silverton’s ‘Multigrain Bread’ in Breads from La Brea Bakery. Upon biting into the first slice, I thought to myself, ‘This is a bread for Annie.’ I liked the crunchiness of the millet and flax seeds in the pleasantly light crumb for a whole-grain bread. I also liked the tangy sourness that the wet rye starter gave the bread. It crust was crunchy, but not too thick or too chewy.

Annie hasn’t tried this bread yet, but I decided to name the recipe after her anyway because she will be the person I think of when I bake it. We do have a dinner date coming up though and I am planning on baking this recipe. I’m looking forward to breaking this bread with her. I hope that there will be many more loaves shared between us in the years to come.

Whole Wheat Boule

I enjoy fancy breads, replete with various grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, and spices. But, there’s something to be said for returning to the basics and getting rids of the frills. The other day I was wanting a loaf of a simple, but well-done sourdough. Something with good flavor, crumb, and crust, but no extra additions to hide the inherent quality of the loaf. Here is a recipe that I adapted from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery for a whole wheat boule that does just that. It focuses on bringing out the wheaty flavor while keeping the crumb light. The ingredients are fairly basic. Its preparation takes time, as all good sourdoughs do, but it is certainly worth it in the end. I cannot think of much more to say about this loaf. It is good and simple and satisfying and that is enough.

Multigrain Sourdough

A good whole grain sourdough has eluded me for a while. I’ve tried multiple recipes, but they turned out too dense or the flavor was off or the mix of grains didn’t seem appropriate. So, I decided to turn to the most scrumptious multigrain sourdough I know and try to figure out how it was made. Hands down, the best multigrain sourdough and, for that matter, the best bread in Vermont and possibly in the Northeast is baked by the Red Hen Company out of Middlesex. Their breads are made with only with organic ingredients and leavened slowly with sourdough starter. While I am enamored with all of their varieties, my favorite of theirs is the Mad River Grain. The crust is thick, but not overly chewy. The crumb is light and open. And the flavor, well, it’s just incredible. It is simultaneously sour, nutty, and wheaty without any of the flavors overpowering the other. They are in perfect harmony.

Red Wine, Fig, and Chestnut Loaf

As it is Valentine’s Day, I decided to bake something special for the love of my life. Devin enjoys good bread and particularly relishes in a well-crafted plain sourdough or a rye with caraway seeds. But, aware that it was a special day, I wanted the bread for him to be a bit more decadent, with ingredients that I don’t usually use. So, I posited the question to him, “If you could have a loaf of bread with any ingredients in it, what would they be?” I added the extra constraint that he couldn’t just ask for a white sourdough or solid rye. He finally settled on a fruit and nut loaf with red wine, similar to the red wine, fig, and pine nut loaf in Dan Lepard’s The Art of Handmade Bread. But, what would the fruit and nut be? Devin particularly likes figs in his breads; the crunch of the seeds, their soft, but toothsome texture, and their mature sweetness. As for the nuts, that decision came to us while at the grocery store. Pine nuts were too expensive and the almonds and walnuts seemed too mundane for this bread. Then, I came across a can of whole chestnuts packed in water. Only familiar with whole chestnuts that required roasting and peeling, I had never tasted or baked with chestnuts package liked these before. I plucked them off the shelf, consulted with Devin, and decided together that they would be a fun experiment to try.

Black Bread

This weekend I am heading to New Hampshire to enjoy some cross-country skiing in the White Mountains. Driving there takes about five hours from where I live. It is a long enough road trip for me to deem ‘extra provisions’ necessary, especially in the wintertime when unpleasant weather conditions and their associated delays are often unforeseeable. I realized late yesterday, however, that I would not have an extra loaf of bread to take with me. (Bread, in my book, is always included in my list of obligatory provisions.) My sourdough starter had not been refreshed in a while and I would not have time anyway to let a naturally leavened loaf proof sufficiently. Thus, a search for a quick, but tasty as well as ‘road-trip durable’ loaf ensued.