Rye Bread using my breadmaker

I love my bread.

Whilst we are on this journey to better health, a helpful but challenging step has been to lower our intake of carbs. This has moved two of my favourite things, bread and potatoes, onto a list of occasional treats instead of everyday yumminess.

As we have used Dr Michael Mosley's books as references, his recommendation of dark rye bread gave me some hope that I could still partake. However, once I went searching for this type of bread in the supermarkets, if I did find a rye loaf I found the proportion of rye flour was so small, the majority being just white bread flour. Not happy, Jan! It became obvious I needed to bake my own.

I felt a little pressure because moving to healthier food doesn't necessarily come with a cheaper price tag, and rye flour is no exception, so budget-wise I didn't want to muck up too many times. (In hindsight, that probably came because my first effort was pretty woeful) 😜 The dough was way too wet, and there was no way it would have stood on its own (which it was supposed to be able to do).

As you do, I googled recipes and discovered lots of positive comments and suggestions surrounding a New York Rye Loaf posted by Doug on allrecipes.com. I decided to work through this, and with time and perseverance and I'm happy to be able to share my successful take on Rye Bread with you.

GREAT DIVIDING RANGE RYE BREAD

1 1/4 cups warm water

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups rye flour

1 2/3 cups wholemeal bread flour

1/4 cup vital wheat gluten (aka gluten flour)

2 1/2 tsp dry yeast

My dry yeast was still within its use-by date but I didn't want to risk the bread failing in case it wasn't the best. I used a tip I had picked up from Rhonda Hetzel on her blog Down To Earth for testing that the yeast was active I put ¼ cup of the warm water and 1 tbsp honey in a cup and mixed well, then gently added the yeast and waited for it to bubble up. This bubbling showed me the yeast was good. 

I added the remaining cup of warm water to my breadmaker, carefully added the dry ingredients to it,  then added the wet yeast mixture last of all. I set the breadmaker to its dough setting, and off it went. 

As the dough was mixing, it initially seemed very dry, with quite a bit of flour remaining in the base of the tin as the dough moved around. I was tempted to add water but was glad I waited, as all ingredients did mix in and extra liquid would have made it too watery. 

                                 
The dough looked a little like wet sand once it was mixed. I placed the dough into a bread tin lined with bake paper, covered it with a tea towel and let it rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes as I preheated the oven to 225 degrees celsius (440 degrees F). The dough did spread a little more into the tin and rose slightly. 

I placed the bread into the oven, immediately lowering the temperature to 200 degrees celsius (390 F), and baked it for 30 minutes. At 30 minutes I removed it from the oven, turned out the bread and then placed it back into the tin for a further 5 minutes with the top of the loaf now at the bottom of the tin. After 5 minutes I took it out, finding that the bread sounded a little hollow when tapped. I turned out the loaf onto a cooling rack and let it cool there under a clean tea towel. 

   

As the loaf kept its shape in the tin, I think it will do just as well as a free form loaf, shaped into a round and placed in the centre of a baking tray. Will try that next time! 

Once the bread had cooled, then came the important tasting. I was very happy with the consistency, it was a heavier loaf of course, due to the rye and wholemeal flours but thoroughly satisfying, easy to slice and then freeze.  I was so chuffed to have a good result!

So yum! I did sprinkle a few sesame seeds into the base of the tin prior to adding the dough, but this is optional. 

Next time I would like to add carroway seeds, which is a traditional touch to many rye bread recipes. The comments as people experimented often centred around the amount of carroway as it lends quite a distinctive flavour that isn't up everyone's tastebud alley. The original recipe suggested 2 2/3 teaspoons of carroway for this loaf, so if you aren't sure, perhaps start with 1 teaspoon into your dry ingredients and see what you think.

I tend to use my breadmaker mainly for dough mixing as I have an issue with my hands that can make kneading a challenge.  Hubby also has an aversion to the great gouge left in the finished loaf when you removed the dough hook after baking. So, dough mixing and then the traditional oven work well for us. However, the recipe was designed for both options, so if you are using the breadmaker for the whole process I would suggest choosing the 'wholemeal' setting on your machine.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

For making bread, what more appropriate song than this? 😉 Head back to a very relaxed 1970 and enjoy Make it With You by Bread.  

Tracey 🍞


PS I'm not sure what's happening with Blogger today, but I have different fonts and different font sizes popping up all over the place, and titles under photos that won't centre. No idea why, perhaps blogging platforms have bad hair days too. Hope all is still readable!

With thanks to the YouTube channel of peruven