Cookbook #44: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2007.

Finally, one of my contemporary cookbooks! 2007! I bought this book to learn more about a new way of making yeast breads, called the “no-knead” technique.

No-knead yeast breads are prepared by mixing flour, yeast, and water into a wet dough and letting the mixture stand at least overnight. The dough is then shaped gently into a free-standing loaf and baked on a stone or in a crockery pot in a very hot oven. The result is an artisan-type bread, like you would buy from a good bakery in your town. The crumb is uneven and creamy, the crust is thick and chewy and dark brown. It’s amazing. I experimented with  bread baking for forty years but never produced an artisan loaf until I tried this new method.

The method is not only new to me, it’s new to the world of baking, according to this 2006 article in the NY Times: The Secret of Great Bread, let time do the work. I read that article, and Jim Lahey’s recipe that goes along with it, sometime in 2007, but did not try the technique until I saw a recipe in a King Arthur Flour catalog for “The Almost No-Knead Baguette“. I studied that recipe, and re-read the NY Times articles, and then tried the baguette. It turned out great.

I bought the cookbook Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day from King Arthur Flour after my success with the baguette. I tried several recipes from this book, mostly with success. Then I saw a class on no-knead breads offered by the Culinary School of the Rockies – I signed up for it. It was a great class. Today, in 2013, I am totally hooked on this technique. So much so that I wrote about it on my other blog: A Lovely Loaf (2011).

Traditional bread making employs the process of kneading to “develop the gluten”. This means, the gluten molecules move into a side-by-side alignment and then bind to each other to produce the elastic network that gives yeast breads their lift and their texture. No-knead bread making uses time and a wet dough to the same end. Since the no-knead dough is wet, the gluten molecules can move about on their own, but it takes some time (at least a few hours).

Now, I never hand-knead breads anyway, I always use my bread machine for that. So why would I want to try the no-knead method? First, it sounded like a good experiment. Second, once I did it, I found the result quite different from kneaded bread. Usually there are (desired) uneven pockets of air in baked no-knead bread, and the crust is always thick and chewy. No-knead breads just look cool. I still make both kinds of yeast breads; one method is not better than the other – each has its place in my repertoire.

No-knead bread advantages:

• if you are used to kneading your bread without a machine, these breads use less of your hands-on time
• they bake up like artisan loaves
• great for pizza dough and focaccia
• can store the dough in the refrigerator for two weeks

Kneaded bread advantages:

• you can use a high proportion of whole grain flour in your breads
• the crust is soft and easy to cut through to make sandwich slices
• the texture is smooth and uniform (sometimes nicer for sandwiches)
• you don’t have to start your bread the day (or week) before

The recipes I gleaned from the cooking class call for mixing the ingredients for a loaf of bread the day before baking. In the Artisan Bread book, you can bake the bread the same day, or you can let it sit in the refrigerator for up to a couple weeks. This is an advantage, especially if you have a full schedule of work and family and play. Time in the refrigerator also helps develop the bread’s flavor. The disadvantage is that the dough takes up a chunk of refrigerator space.

I made the “Deli-style Rye Bread” from the Artisan Bread cookbook. Since this is a recently-published book, I’m not going to scan in the recipe (copyright issues). Briefly, this cookbook has a plain design, with some black and white photos in the “how-to” section and a few glossy photos in the center. It is clearly written and friendly. I highly recommend it for the adventurous bread maker.

(In addition, there are recipes for items that go with or use bread: Tuscan White Bean Dip, Bruschetta, Spicy Pork Buns, marmalade, kebabs, and more.)

My version of the recipe below is a little different from the book’s, and the directions are written to explain how I make this bread in my own kitchen.

No-knead Rye Bread
makes 4 1-pound loaves

Mixing and Resting

• 3 cups water
• 1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 3 tablespoons caraway seed (I like lots of caraway; use less if you don’t)
• 1 cup rye flour
• 5 1/2 cups bread flour (you can use all-purpose flour)

Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. You can used a stand mixer, or you can do it by hand. Mix only until all the flour is incorporated. It’s really, really sticky. It took some work to get all the dough off these beaters:

Let the dough stand at room temperature a couple hours (covered lightly).

Note: I left the dough in my mixer’s metal cooking bowl and it (1) rose up over the top and (2) stuck to the bowl, making it hard to clean. I suggest moving the mixed dough to a glass, plastic, or enamel bowl that is lightly oiled and large enough to allow the dough to rise to double its bulk.

After two hours, use the dough immediately or better yet, put it in your refrigerator. (The refrigerating step makes the dough easier to handle when you go to bake it, and it adds some flavor as the yeast works with the flour and sours it a bit.) If you decide to refrigerate the dough, transfer it to a plastic container large enough to allow for the dough to grow in volume by at least 50%. Lightly cover the dough in the container.

Here is my dough (in the bright light of the morning), after a couple days in the refrigerator:

Baking

You will need:

• a pizza peel
• a large baking stone
• cornmeal
• flour
• a cornstarch/water glaze (microwave 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch in 1/2 cup water for 60 seconds)
• a baking pan with about a half-inch of water in it

Sprinkle some cornmeal on a pizza peel. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and dust with a little flour (just enough to make it less likely to stick to your hands). Grab about a quarter of the dough: if you weigh it, it should be about one pound. This is a messy process:

This is sticky dough! I had to keep washing my hands to take these photos.

(Put the rest of the dough back in the refrigerator. It keeps two weeks.)

Here’s what the dough looked like before forming the loaf:

Cloak the dough. This means that you take it in two hands, and stretch the outside of the ball of dough down to the bottom, rotating as you work around the dough. (I’ve used this method a lot of times to form rolls; it’s hard to explain. What you want is a smooth surface on top, with the ends are tucked down on the bottom side of the formed ball of dough. It takes about 30 seconds.)

Place the dough on the corn meal sprinkled pizza peel. I had a lot of flies in my kitchen, so I put some plastic wrap on top (with a tiny amount of cornmeal sprinkled on the loaf to prevent it from sticking).

Here is my formed loaf, before rising:

Let stand 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hour (I let mine rise 1 1/4 hours). Dough that has not been refrigerated will take the lesser amount of time. You won’t see the dough rise a whole lot, especially if it has been refrigerated. (In fact, mine flattened out.) Here is my “risen” dough:

At least twenty minutes before you bake the bread, put a baking stone in the oven and preheat to 450˚. Put in on the top oven rack.

Just before you put the dough in the oven, put the pan with water in it on the rack under the heated baking stone. (This helps develop a good crust.)

Brush the dough with the cornstarch/water glaze and slash the top with deep cuts using a serrated knife. I sprinkled it with more caraway seeds. Slide the loaf off the pizza peel onto the heated stone in the oven.

Bake 30 minutes. Voila! You are done.This bread makes great corned beef sandwiches. I used my own dill pickles – yummy. I sliced the bread after only an hour’s cooling, and found it easiest to slice the chewy crust with an electric knife. Since there is rye flour in the dough (whole grain flours break up air bubbles), the texture is more uniform than on my no-knead white-flour only loaves.

I had fun with this bread project. It was a hot day, so I wanted to bake it in the morning and have it ready for lunch. While it rose on my counter and the oven heated, I was off on a bike ride, getting exercise as advised by Jane Brody in her NY Times column (Jane Brody’s nutrition book was my preceding cooking blog entry). Bread baking doesn’t have to mean that you spend your whole day in the kitchen.

Cookbook #35: Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery, Vol. 2, Bea-Cas. Woman’s Day, Fawcett Publications, NY, 1967.

This is the second in a series of 12 food encyclopedia volumes. I discussed the first in an earlier post. Briefly, these cookbooks are interesting sources of information about food items and cooking methods. Sure they are dated, but I always find something in them that is interesting or odd. And a good recipe or two.

The first entry in this cookbook is “Bearnaise”. The first interesting entry is “beaten biscuit”. I have never heard of these, so I read on:

“This crackerlike Southern bread harks back to pre-Civil war plantation days when kitchen help was assured, for labor, not a leavener, softens the gluten of the flour in these biscuits. They are baked slowly, are of a pale gold color, and have a characteristically dry brittle texture … There were beaten-biscuit machines, consisting of a marble slab or a wooden box with a double roller and a handle to turn. The dough was put through the rollers many times, or until it blistered and became smooth. Beaten biscuits are part of America’s food folklore.”

Interesting! You can google “beaten biscuits” for updated recipes, if you are interested.

Continuing on to the B’s, I find “beef”. “Beef is the flesh of an adult animal of the Bovidae family of ruminants which has been killed for food.” The section goes on to discuss more beef history, then cuts of beef, cooking times and methods, and recipes. My mother tried and liked the meat loaf recipe, but not the beef with noodles one. At beets, she liked the pickled beets. At breads, she tried “limpa” (a round rye bread) and potato rolls.

The buffets entry is interesting:

“In French culinary language, a buffet indicates a good-size tiered table on which various dishes have been arranged in a decorative manner and, by implication, a restaurant that has such an arrangement. But even in French-speaking countries, the word is also used for an informal restaurant where a quick meal can be found, such as in Buffet de la Gare, “a station restaurant.” In America, the word buffet is used as a term for a meal where the guests help themselves from a table on which the foods are placed in a decorative array. Buffet entertaining has become popular in recent years for three good reasons. First fewer people have servants in this modern era … third, informality is the keynote of much of life today … but buffet meals do require careful planning and special equipment.”

(Fewer people have servants??)

On to cakes. I have enough cake recipes, but if I ever want to make the Chocolate Charlotte Russe cake, which includes ladyfingers, I’ll know that my mother tried and liked it. She also liked the Sweet-and-Sour Red Cabbage.

“Canadian Cookery” is followed by “Candies”. I don’t make candies anymore, but I’m making a note to myself that in this book, in this section is Mother’s divinity recipe that I could never find before! Divinity is a candy made from corn syrup, sugar, egg whites, vanilla, and chopped nuts. I remember divinity from childhood. She clearly used the recipe in this book, as it is marked with her notes. There is also a recipe for penuche, a brown sugar candy, although she did not mark this recipe. I remember penuche, too, from childhood.

Canning, carving, and finally casseroles round out this volume.

I decided to try the “Potato Rolls” from the section on breads. I like that it uses a potato rather than dried potato flakes, and my mother had marked the recipe as “Delicious“.

I will make a half-recipe but other than that, I plan no changes to this recipe.

Potato Rolls
makes about 10

• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water (105-115˚ F)
• 1 egg
• 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 tablespoons oil
• 3/4 cup riced cooked potato (boil or microwave a medium potato, then skin it and mash it well with a fork or masher or put it through a ricer if you have one)
• 1/4 cup dry milk
• 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups bread flour

Sprinkle the yeast into the warm water and let stand for 10 minutes, then stir until dissolved.

Put the yeast mixture and the egg, sugar, salt, oil, potato, and dry milk into an electric mixer and beat at low speed until well blended. Gradually add 1 cup of flour and beat well. Slowly add an additional 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups flour, first using the mixer, then by hand. Add enough flour so that the dough forms a ball away from the sides of the bowl. You do not need to knead this dough.

Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and let rise until double in size (less than an hour in a warm kitchen).

Press the dough out on a floured bread board until it’s about 1 1/2 inches thick. You can use a roller, but it’s hardly necessary. Cut with a 2 1/4-inch biscuit cutter, re-rolling the dough as necessary. Make about 9-10 rolls. Place the rolls in a buttered 8×8″ baking dish. Let rise again until they puff over the top of the baking dish; this will probably take a little more than a half hour if your kitchen is warm.

Bake at 375˚ for about 25 minutes.

Serve immediately with hot butter!

Comments

These turned out great!

You don’t need a potato ricer, I just used one for the fun of it. However, my ricer leaves a lot of un-riced potato stuck in the bottom, so to make the necessary 3/4 cup, I had to hand-mash what the ricer missed. Turns out, my dough looked a little lumpy. I suggest you mash the potato thoroughly with a fork, then mix it well during the blending step in the mixer.

Here is my lumpy, unrisen dough:

Risen dough:

I plopped the dough out onto a floured breadboard. Then I used a roller on the dough and wished I hadn’t. After brief rolling, the dough thickness was under 1 1/2 inches, and when I cut out a roll, it smushed down even further.

So, I ended up with about 12 rolls, and only 9 fit in the pan. I put the others in a separate pan.

Note that the above nine rolls are not quite touching. By the time they rose for about half an hour, they looked like this:

You can see the extra three malformed rolls in the other pan.

After baking, the rolls are golden brown and light and puffy:

I couldn’t resist. I just had to taste one. And they literally sang out butter! I put one on a plate and pulled it apart and put some butter on it. It took a lot of willpower to stop to take a photo before putting this roll in my mouth.

Soft and yummy and as good as the aroma promised. I’ll make these again.

Cookbook #30: The Bread Machine Cookbook II. Donna Rathmell German. Bristol Publishing Enterprises, San Leandro, CA, 1991. (Nitty Gritty Cookbooks)

This is a great little cookbook for anyone who has a bread machine. When I first started using a bread machine, I learned as much from this book as I did from the instruction manuals that came with the machines. The first chapters have straightforward instructions and questions and answers about what to watch out for when using a bread machine to make yeast breads; the rest of the pages are recipes for over 100 different breads. This cookbook is especially helpful for making bread from many different types of flours and grains. I am glad that I re-discovered this book for my 250 Cookbooks project!

I cover bread machine basics in my recipe for “My Daily Bread“. Just so you know: I use the machine to knead and rise my yeast breads, and then bake them in a conventional oven.

I decided to try “Rye Beer Bread”. This particular recipe is half rye flour; my old favorite recipe is only one-third rye flour. That fact and the addition of beer should give this bread a nice flavor and hearty texture. I’m adding caraway seeds too – what’s a rye bread without caraway seeds?!

Note how the above recipe simply gives the amounts for different sizes of loaves; I usually begin with about 1 cup of liquid so I chose the middle size. Instructions for using the machine are given in the introductory pages of The Bread Machine Cookbook II and are not repeated in each recipe. The version below indicates how I adapted the recipe for the way I always make bread.

Rye Beer Bread
makes one 8½ x 4½-inch loaf

• 1 1/8 cups beer (I used a good local microbrewery pale ale)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds
• 1 1/2 cups bread flour (8 ounces; I included a little gluten flour)
• 1 1/2 cups rye flour (6 1/2 ounces)
• 2 1/2 t yeast

Put all of the ingredients in a bread maker and set to the dough cycle. (Choose a cycle that both kneads and rises the bread.) Watch the dough as it kneads and add a bit more flour or a little water if necessary to have a smooth, non-sticky ball of dough.

When the dough/rising cycle is done, take the bread out of the bread maker and form into a loaf. Place in a small loaf pan (8½ x 4½-inch). Bake at 385˚ for 25 minutes.

My dough was a little sticky, and I should have added a little more flour. This is reflected in the photo of the baked loaf; it fell just a little as it baked, you can see some deep dimples on the top. It was still excellent.

Sliced, the bread looks great. I used it to make corned beef sandwiches for lunches several days in a row.

And yes, I am going to keep this cookbook!

Cookbook #26: Diamond Walnut Recipe Favorites. Diamond Walnut Growers, Stockton, CA. No publication date given.

There is no date in this booklet, but my guess is that it was printed sometime in the 80s or 90s. It was my mother’s. Since it was produced by the Diamond Walnut Growers (in California, where I grew up), I think it is mostly a gathering of recipes that had appeared on the packages of Diamond Walnuts over the years.

My mother did not mark a single recipe in this book. I had a hard time finding a recipe to cook since most are high in calories (even the few entrees). I’m not going to keep this book, it will go to the recycle pile. Someone might appreciate it. The recipes are not bad, they just aren’t very different from the many cookie, cake, and bread recipes that I already have.

I decided to make the “Walnut Lemon Muffins”. I will substitute vegetable oil for the melted shortening, add vanilla, and add a bit more lemon juice and rind. Also, I learned from Alton Brown’s Good Eats that sugar is to be treated as a liquid, so I added it to the wet instead of the dry ingredient mixture.

Walnut Lemon Muffins

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2/3 cup chopped walnuts
• topping: 2 tablespoons sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel (to top the muffins)
• optional: 12 whole walnuts for the tops of the muffins

Prepare 12 muffin cups, either by lining the cups with paper muffin cups, or by spraying a non-stick pan with non-stick cooking spray. Heat the oven to 400˚.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat the egg lightly, then add the sugar and beat well. Mix in the milk, vanilla, 1 teaspoon lemon peel, lemon juice, and oil. Stir in the dry ingredients just until all of the dry ingredients are moistened, then add the walnuts. Do not over mix.

Put into the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle the muffins with the sugar-lemon peel mixture and then top each with a walnut half. Bake at 400˚ for about 20 minutes, until browned.

These are very good! We had them (first) for Sunday breakfast. Even with my extra lemon, they aren’t very lemony-tasting, but the walnuts make them great. Don’t skip the lemon-sugar topping – it really brightens the flavor and appeal of these muffins.

These reminded me of how much I like my own Lemon Poppyseed Muffins. It’s a recipe I tweaked until perfect, then added to my old 1990s Blog. It includes 1/4 cup of lemon juice, and they are definitely lemony-tasting.

Cookbook #21: Sunset Cook Book of Breads. By the Editors of Sunset Books and Sunset Magazine, Lane Publishing Co., Menlo Park, California, 1978.

I opened this book and immediately knew I’d keep it. I found many recipes I wanted to try. It was published 35 years ago, so that’s pretty amazing. Why haven’t I marked it up and tried a bunch of these recipes?

Oh, I see. I gave this cookbook to my mother Christmas 1979, she wrote a note to that effect on the inside front cover. She was more interested in baking pies and cookies and casseroles than breads. I was always the one with a passion for yeast breads.

I organize all the recipes that I clip from magazines, newspapers, and other sources by entering them in a database I began in the 1990s. (Over 800 entries!) Thinking that several recipes in this Sunset Cook Book of Breads look familiar, I checked that database. Sure enough, ten of this cookbook’s recipes are referenced there. So before I gave the cookbook to my mother back in 1979, I must have copied several pages of recipes to try, and I still have those copies today.

The bread recipe I will bake this week is “Spicy Zucchini Wheat Bread”. It is not one of the recipes I copied all those years ago, but it appeals to me now. I like incorporating vegetables in breads; the zucchini will add fiber and nutrients and keep the loaf moist. I like the inclusion of whole wheat four and wheat germ too. Cardamom is the spice: Wow! Cardamom usually pops up in ethnic cuisines, not American bread cookbooks from the 70s. I’m tempted to substitute with cinnamon, but I’ll stay with the cardamom. Live dangerously.

Here is the original recipe:

I will use my bread machine and write my own version of the recipe incorporating my changes. If you don’t have a bread machine, follow the original version for mixing and rising.

Spicy Zucchini Wheat Bread

• 1 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1 1/2 cup (7.5 ounces) whole wheat flour
• 2 1/4 cup (10.5 ounces) bread flour (or use all purpose flour mixed with 2 ounces/1/4 cup gluten flour)
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 t grated orange peel
• 2 teaspoons cardamom
• 1 1/2 cup grated zucchini
• 3/4 cup currants or raisins
• 1 tablespoon yeast

Combine all ingredients in the bread machine and set to the dough cycle. (The dough cycle should mix and rise the dough.) Check the dough during the first few minutes of mixing to make sure that the dough is coming together into ball of dough; add a little more flour or water as necessary.

Take the risen dough out of the bread machine. Form into 2 loaves and place in lightly greased 4 1/2 x 8 1/2-inch loaf pans. Let rise until the dough is 1/2-1 inch above the rims of the pans.

Bake at 375˚ for 30 minutes.

This bread turned out great, and I will definitely make it again. I like it best toasted with a little light cream cheese or jam or apple butter.

Cookbook #5: Beard on Bread, James Beard, 1974. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, NY.

I pulled this book off the shelf and happily tucked into it. Bread is my passion. I have baked at least a loaf a week for twenty-five years. My bread-making techniques have changed over the years, and I have learned from both successes and failures. I am still learning, and am always willing to try something new. But when I try a new yeast bread recipe from one of my 250 Cookbooks, I will not follow the recipe exactly as printed in the book. Instead I will incorporate my hard-earned bread-making knowledge.

Let me explain. First, I include “gluten flour” in all my loaves. This is a high-protein flour that gives a loaf its stretchiness as you knead it, and that gives a cooked loaf the structure to stay together rather than crumble apart. Gluten flour helps tremendously when you want to include whole grain flours in a recipe.

Second, I use a bread machine set on the “dough” cycle to knead my breads and take them through the first rise step. The machine does a great job of kneading, and I can go off and do other things. Maybe this is “cheating” in some people’s opinions, but in my years as a working mom, the bread just wouldn’t have been made if not for the bread machine. And the machine keeps the temperature perfect for the rising step, so I’ll know exactly when to come back and get the loaf ready to bake in my oven.

Reading James Beard’s introduction, I don’t think he would pooh-pooh bread machines (he wrote it before home bread machines were available). For instance, he writes that using a mixer with a dough hook is okay. I heartily agree with Beard’s love of bread: “Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” He enjoys “. . . the sensual pleasure in smelling a yeasty loaf baking in the oven, the sense of accomplishment in offering a real bread at a meal – to say nothing of the knowledge that each loaf is full of goodness instead of being just a starchy filler.” He writes that including multiple flours and meals just to make a bread more nutritious fails if you end up with a loaf that has a terrible texture. I agree with this too.

I enjoyed re-reading his discussions of flours, kneading, and baking methods. Beard on Bread was one of the books I studied as I developed my own yeast bread techniques in the 70s and 80s. Making bread is an ancient art and most of his information is timeless.

The recipes in Beard on Bread begin with a basic white bread with his observations and notes. If you have never made a yeast bread from scratch, you could learn how to make bread from this book alone. I scanned this book cover-to-cover, lingering on many recipes. I like his historical notes on each type of bread. I noted about ten recipes for my own personal “to try” list. I was pleasantly surprised to find a section of quick breads; I had never thought to look in this book for that type of recipe. This book is a keeper!

I decided to make Sourdough Rye bread. It’s a little “out there” from my usual style of bread, so I might learn something. I’ve made sourdough bread in the past, from home-passed or purchased starter, but it’s kind of hard to keep a sourdough starter fed and growing, and eventually I always forget them and they dry up and die. This recipe calls for a simple starter that you begin from ingredients on hand 4 days before you make the bread. I can manage that – and it should be enough to add a touch of sourness to the bread. I also like the good proportion of rye flour in the recipe, and I like the addition of poppy as well as caraway seeds.

Recipe: Sourdough Rye
five stars

“This sourdough rye appeared in the columns of The New York Times several years ago. I tried it, made some changes in it, and discovered that it was one of the best recipes I have ever used. The bread has a nice crumb, slices well, and keeps extremely well. I enjoy it for sandwiches and find that, thinly sliced and well buttered, it’s delicious served with smoked fish and oysters or other shellfish.” [James Beard’s note.]

My note: The recipe below is for half the original recipe: it makes one loaf instead of two. Other changes from the original are the inclusion of gluten flour and the use of a bread machine.

• 1 package active dry yeast (1 tablespoon)
• 1 1/2 cups plus 1/4 cup warm water
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, approximately
• 1 cup rye flour
• 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds
• 3/4 teaspoon poppy seeds
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
• Cornmeal
• 1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water

Four days ahead of breadmaking, prepare the “starter”. Combine 1 1/2 teaspoon yeast, 1 cup warm water, and 1 cup all-purpose flour in a plastic bowl or container. Cover tightly and let stand at room temperature for 2 days.

Note: I put it in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap like this:

After the 2 days at room temperature, put the starter in the refrigerator for at least another day.

The day before preparing the dough, combine 1/2 cup of starter, the rye flour, and 1 cup warm water in a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature overnight. (Note: You will have more starter than you need for this recipe. If you want to keep it going, replenish with equal parts of warm water and flour, let stand again at room temperature, and then refrigerate. Continue the process each time you use some of it.)

Here’s how it looked the next day, just before I stirred it down:

The next day stir down the dough, then put it in a bread machine* and add rest of the yeast (1 1/2 teaspoons), dissolved in 2 tablespoons water, salt, caraway seeds, poppy seeds, butter, and sugar. Add 1/3 cup vital wheat gluten and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. Set the bread machine to the “dough” cycle. Watch it as it kneads and add more all-purpose flour as necessary to keep the dough from being too sticky. You want it to form a nice, round ball of dough. I added enough flour so that it was still “tacky” feeling but not “sticky”. Leave the dough in the bread machine through the rise cycle.

*Hand kneading directions: Add the flour a little at a time, to make a stiff but workable dough. Knead for 10 to 12 minutes, then shape into a ball. Place in a buttered bwol, turning to coat the dough with the butter. Cover and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours.

Take the risen dough out of the bread machine (or bowl, if you hand kneaded) and punch it down. Shape into a round loaf and place on a buttered baking sheet generously sprinkled with cornmeal.

Cover and let rise again until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour (mine rose in 30 minutes in a 73˚ kitchen).

Here’s the risen loaf. You can see how much bigger it is compared to the last picture (above).Brush with the egg wash, and bake in a preheated 375˚ oven for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned and the loaves sound hollow when rapped with the knuckles. Cool, covered with towels to prevent the crust from hardening.

Here’s the baked loaf. I wish you could smell it too!

Next time I’ll be a little more careful when I form the loaf, you can see that it did not bake perfectly round. If I had been more careful, I would have had a prettier picture! Plus I cut the loaf when it was still kind of hot. But let me tell you, it tasted wonderful. We had it with a good homemade beef barley soup, and slices of cheese that melted into the warm bread.