Answer: Rye-bread lovers do it for the tangy flavor, chewy texture and those tasty caraway seeds. They do it because baking one’s own bread is satisfying. Just as gardening does, bread-baking connects us to the food we eat.

I’ve been baking bread at least once a week for 36 years, but I’m a late convert to making rye bread, which I loved to eat even as a child. My mother wasn’t a baker. She bought the bread at the local bakery.

I learned about souring bread from “The Tassajara Bread Book,” a standard text among us back-to-the-landers in the 1970s. Tassajara No. 1 taught the sponge method of baking, which called for making up a sponge with all the liquid but only half the flour, letting that rise overnight and completing the process in the morning.

There are rye bread recipes that call for incremental steps over a 48-hour period, but that seems extreme. A 24-hour process will make a good sour rye loaf.

Because rye bread doesn’t rise as much as wheat bread, it doesn’t dry out as fast either. That gives rye bread the edge for still-fresh second-day eating.

Don’t seal crusty bread up in a plastic container or plastic wrap until after the second day. You’ll ruin the texture of the crust and you won’t help the interior texture either. The traditional bread bag made of paper works better.

The great rye breads of my youth were a mixture of white rye flour and white wheat flour. White rye flour can be mail-ordered from King Arthur at www.kingarthurflour.com, but the cost is high.

My recipe, making a loaf both darker and denser, uses roughly 60 percent Hodgson Mill wholegrain rye flour and 40 percent unbleached white (wheat) flour.

I’m presuming I’m not the only person baking rye bread in Charleston. Kroger wouldn’t give rye flour shelf space at several local stores if someone wasn’t buying.

For years, I baked all my bread at 350 degrees. That was wrong, wrong, wrong, as the Gazette’s editorial writers used to say. Artisan breads, it turns out, get their great crusts by starting at 425 or 450 degrees, then scaling back to 375.

If you bake bread regularly, buy yeast by the half-pound or one-pound package. If you use the sponge method, it takes only the tiniest bit of yeast to get the process started. Give yeast moisture, flour and time, and it multiplies quickly.

Source: http://sundaygazettemail.com/Food/200809230809

Mary Ann Ford of Cockeysville, Md., sent in a recipe given to her by her mother-in-law when she was married in 1967. Her mother-in-law told her that it came from a box of Grape-Nuts cereal in the 1940s. Ford says it is still a family favorite.

The only change I made to the original recipe was to substitute buttermilk for sour milk. This bread is wholesome-tasting but a bit plain. I suggest serving it with cream cheese or jam.

If I were to make it again, I would add 1 teaspoon or so of orange or lemon zest and maybe some nuts or raisins.

Grape-Nuts Bread

½cup Grape-Nuts cereal
1 cup sour milk
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon shortening
1 egg, slightly beaten

Dash of salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups flour

**

Mix first 6 ingredients together. Sift together the last 3 ingredients and add to first. Put into a greased loaf pan. Let rise for 20 minutes. Bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Makes 1 loaf; serves 8 to 10.

Per serving (based on 10 servings): 213 calories, 4 grams protein, 2 grams fat, 1 gram saturated fat, 44 grams carbohydrate, 1 gram fiber, 23 milligrams cholesterol, 246 milligrams sodium.

BY JULIE ROTHMAN

Source: http://www.kansas.com/living/food/story/538663.html