Cubby's Light Rye Bread

Rye bread is great, but heavy. Try this one for a light rye. This recipe makes a 1 pound loaf. Double all ingredients for a big boy loaf. Baking time and temperature remains the same either way.

There's a million ways to make bread. They are all great. Do what works for you, this is about the simplicity of getting a nice light rye.

Ingredients

• ¾ Cup spring water, room temperature (don't use tap water if it is chlorinated!)
• 1 ½ Tablespoon salted creamed butter, room temperature
• 1 ½ teaspoon granulated sugar (I use cane sugar, but white is fine)
• ¾ teaspoon Kosher salt
• 2 cups flour ( minus one Tablespoon )
• 1 Tablespoon dark rye flour
• 2 Tablespoons dry milk
• ¾ teaspoon yeast
• ¼ teaspoon fennel seed
• ¼ teaspoon carraway seed

Instructions:

• preheat oven to 350 degrees, optionally put an iron skillet on the lowest rack. Read the recipe for details.
• spray bread pan with non-stick cooking spray, ideally the kind with flour in it. You can also coat with crisco and flour. You know, prep the pan for bread.
• Combine ingredients like you do with bread. I use a bread machine for combining and kneading (but I don't let the machine bake it), but the same ingredient list will work for a hand roll. Here's how I do it:
  Add items in this order:
  • Add room temp water
  • Add butter, but cut it into at least 5 pieces and make sure it's kind of all over.
  • Add sugar
  • Add salt (kosher salt is a flake salt, it has nothing to do with religion)
  • Add seeds
  • Measure out 2 cups of flour. I use bread flour or an organic "all purpose" flour I get from a neighbor. Take one tablespoon back out and put it back in the bag or whatever.
  • Put 1 tablespoon of dark rye flour in with that flour.
  • Sift the flour into a bowl.
  • Add that flour to the water/butter/sugar/salt
  • Add dry milk (don't like make the milk with water, just put the dry stuff in)
  • Add yeast (I use bread machine yeast since I use a bread machine)
• Let the machine do its dough program, which on mine is knead, rise. Or do it your way, but get it into the final rise state now.
• when complete, remove the dough from the machine, punch down on a floured surface, roll it into whatever loaf you like ( I prefer my pullman pan to create a square loaf but whatever you like -- it's going to taste like bread in whatever shape it is.) Generally I need to sprinkle the top with more flour because it's a sticky dough and you want kind of a smooth, soft, ummm, bready feel. This isn't really a recipe for a first time bread baker. You should know how to get the dough like YOU like it. Do that now. If you don't know what that means just do this: put a bunch of flour down. Put your sticky loaf on there. Now sprinkle flour all over the top and punch it down. Remove it and flip it over, but before you let it land back on the counter, shove some flour in that sticky mess that now exists on the counter. Sprinkle a bit more flour on top so your hands aren't sticking to it. Now start pulling from the edges and making a dough ball. Just like pull a corner to the center, rotate 45 degrees and do the same thing over and over until it is a ball. Now roll it into whatever loaf shape you like.
• Put your loaf in the loaf pan of your choosing and place that loaf pan on a baking sheet. Put that pan on the front of your stove, where it should be kind of excessively warm. Cover it with a towel. I do this even when in the pullman pan. With me and bread it's all just conjecture but I feel like the towel helps to regulate the temperature. And baking bread is really about doing "your method" consistently and this is part of my method.
• Let this puppy rise longer than you would a white bread. I let mine go an hour and a half. Rye, and the seeds, retard rising, in my opinion. Plus it works out and I don't get flat rye. About every 30-45 minutes I'll rotate the baking sheet 90 or 180 degrees so no one side gets "baked" or whatever.
• I don't coat this one with butter or egg wash, also I don't put anything on top. My white breads I do but this one is ready to bake just like it is.
• Optional component: put an iron skillet in on the lowest shelf when you start the pre-heating. At this stage, get a mason jar (pint) full of ice cubes and put them in the hot skillet. This adds steam to the baking process and can make it a very soft loaf. I do this, even with the pullman pan. It definitely makes the crust and bread much softer.
• Bake, in the pan, on the baking sheet (the whole thing goes in) for 30 minutes, no more, no less. Set a timer. Set 2.
• Remove loaf, place it on the stove for 15 minutes. Don't do anything to it. It's finalizing it's internal bake. You can let it sit for longer than this, I usually let it sit for 20-30 minutes in this state. I let it sit until I can handle the pan without burning my hands.
• Remove loaf from pan and let cool completely on a cookie cooling rack
• slice and eat. I recommend a stone-ground mustard, a slice of cheese, and whatever meat you like. BBQ chicken is great, chicken salad is great. It's all great. Alternatively, toast it and put butter and jelly on it. It's like a white bread (soft and light) but has that rye taste.

I came up with this recipe by just trying different things after trying a "real" rye recipe and not really liking the heaviness. Let me know if you change it up and find something that works better. I'd love to hear it!