Monday, July 14, 2008

Dutch Oven Rye Bread

Or:

My Dog Ate My Homework

Like I said before, I’ve been trying a lot of different breads, trying to find the “dark side” to blend with a white bread in a marbled bread (which I’ll probably do sometime next week.

This week, found a cool recipe for a rye bread. I’ve always liked rye, ever since I was a kid. I’ve got some fun and fond memories of making sandwiches out of mom’s rye bread. I’d make a killer braunschweiger and swiss cheese sandwich that I love. My wife, however hates it. I understand, it does some nasty things to my breath. Still, it tastes great!

My mom also used to make these rye bread sticks and dad would slice them up at an angle and spread them out on this cookie sheet. He’s set them aside for a couple of days and they’d get rock hard. He’d slap some cheese on them and we could hear him crunching them all through the house.

Anyway, I found some rye flour, and a good recipe, and I tried it. I got it all baked up and it was smellin’ great. And I set it aside to go to church. When I got home, we found that the dog had gotten up on the kitchen counter and eaten the entire loaf.

So, next week, I’ll be writing about how to roast dog.

It’s a good thing he’s so dang cute… That’s pretty much all that saved him.

Anyway, here’s the recipe. We’ll see how well it goes next time I try it.

Dutch Oven Rye Bread

12” Dutch Oven
8-9 Coals below, 18-19 coals above

  • 2 cups hot/warm water (110 degrees)
  • 1 1/2 cups rye flour
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 envelopes dry yeast (or 4 1/2 teaspoons yeast)
  • 1 tablespoon caraway seed

  • 3 tablespoons corn oil or other vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 4 cups flour

This one is interesting in that there are three risings/fermentations. First of all, I started by making a “sponge”. This is a nasty gloppy goo that sometimes people use to start breads, especially sourdoughs. I mixed all of the first set of ingredients in a big bowl. That was set aside for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Then, I mixed the second set of ingredients into the first, and it made a dough. I started with only 3 cups of flour, though, and then added about a half cup at a time. As I began kneading it, it was very sticky, so I had to keep adding lots of flour to the tabletop. It kneaded out really nicely, once it wasn’t so sticky. You never know exactly how much flour you’ll need to make it all feel nice and smooth, so don’t just dump in the flour measure. It’s better to “sneak up on it”.

Once it was kneaded, I spray-oiled the mixing bowl, and set it in to rise, also spraying oil over the dough. It rose pretty well, though I don’t really remember if it was an hour or an hour and a half.
Once it had “doubled in bulk” (whatever that means), I dumped it out of the bowl, punched it down and formed it into a ball. I put that in the oiled dutch oven (I used a 12” deep dutch oven for this one), That set to rise for about another hour.

Finally, I set it on the coals to cook. It cooked for about 45 minutes to an hour. It was truly magnificent when I took it out to cool. I didn’t eat any right away, since we were going to some friends in the ward for dinner, and I had planned on taking it along. No such luck. As a result, I didn’t even taste a slice.

Well, my dog ate pretty well that day. I guess “a dog’s life” isn’t always so bad, eh?

5 comments:

  1. Mark, I've just created a link to this recipe in our newest "Cast Iron Around the Web" entry at http://www.cookingincastiron.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I would leave my first comment. I have enjoyed reading. Nice post. Can't wait to see your posting. Will try it out soon. Thanks so much for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How can i make this rye bread recipe using my 5 qt cast iron dutch oven ???

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If anyone can help me out with this., please e-mail me at maddogri@rocketmail.com Thanks

      Delete
    2. Halving the recipe would be easy, but cutting it by 2/3 would be better.

      Delete

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails