Swedish Rye Bread

Is is just me, or has anyone noticed how hard it is to find good rye bread anymore? Well, not anymore, with the help of this great recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown. It was chosen by Astrid, of Paulchen’s Foodblog?! for this months Bread Baking Babe challenge earlier this month. Since I am a new “buddy”, we get until the end of the month to complete it. Of course, I waited until the last minute, but only to post about it in this case. I made this over a week ago to rave reviews by my husband and little girl. This is one fine bread.

The dough is made in 2 stages. You begin by making a batter and letting it rest for 45 minutes

Then you add the remaining ingredients and knead away. You can do this by hand but thank god for my old Kitchenaid!

I made a few  slight changes to the recipes. First, it called for the zest of 2 oranges but when I started to make this I realized I didn’t have any! So to improvise I used meyer lemons (and the juice as well). While it was rising I noticed on the bag of rye flour that it said that lemon juice naturally improves lightness and volume in rye bread!  The recipe  calls for whole wheat flour at the end for kneading, which I did not need. I live in a dry climate and usually have to cut back on the flour department anyway. I also didn’t have an entire cup of dry milk powder so I used half milk powder and half potato flakes. All wonderful in the end!

So hurry up and head over here for this very tasty recipe.

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