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Rye Bread
(American) 1 cake compressed yeast 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled 2 cups lukewarm water 5 cups rye flour 1½ cups sifted white flour 1 tablespoon melted lard 1 tablespoon salt Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm liquid; add two and a half cups of rye flour or enough to make a sponge. Beat well; cover and set aside in a warm place, free from draft, to rise about two hours. When light, add white flour, lard or butter, rest of rye flour to make a soft dough, and last the salt. Turn on a board and knead, or pound it five minutes. Place in greased bowl; cover and let rise until double in bulk-about two hours. Turn on board and shape into loaves; place in floured shallow pans; cover and let rise again until light-about one hour. Brush with white of egg and water, to glaze. With sharp knife cut lightly three strokes diagonally across top, and place in oven. Bake in slower oven than for white bread. Caraway seed may be used if desired.
By adding one half cup of sour dough, left from previous baking, an acid flavor is obtained, which is considered by many a great improvement. This should be added to the sponge.
A straightforward two-stage sponge rye, but the original assumes you know your own oven and your own yeast cake. The numbers below fill in what the text leaves out.
- The yeast cakeOne cake of compressed (fresh) yeast is about 0.6 oz, equivalent to roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolve dry yeast in part of the lukewarm water rather than in the scalded milk.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no figure, only 'a slower oven than for white bread'. In practice that suggests something around 375F rather than the hotter oven usual for a white loaf. Rye browns faster than wheat, so the lower heat helps keep the crust from setting before the crumb is done.
- Baking timeThe original gives none. Two loaves of this size need 40-50 minutes; go by an internal temperature of 200-205F and a hollow sound when the base is rapped.
- The flourThe rye called for was most likely a medium rye rather than the dark pumpernickel meal sold today. Whole dark rye will absorb more water and give a denser, wetter loaf, so hold back some of the rye until you see how the dough behaves.
- Salt lastThe recipe adds the salt after the flour and fat. Whatever the reason, a sponge does ferment faster without salt, and salt held back until the dough stage will not hurt. Do add it, though, and mix it in thoroughly.
- Knead or poundRye dough will never come smooth and elastic like wheat dough; it stays tacky. Five minutes of firm work is genuinely enough, and overworking it does nothing useful. Keep hands and board lightly floured rather than adding flour to the dough.
- The sour dough optionThe half cup of dough saved from a previous baking is an old-style starter and belongs in the sponge, as the text says. It may shift the timing of the first rise either way; the two-hour estimates assume the yeast cake alone.
- The lardA tablespoon of melted lard is a tenderizer, not a flavor. Butter is offered as an alternative in the text; a neutral oil works equally well at this quantity.
- YieldThe quantities come to roughly 3 lb of dough, enough for two shallow-pan loaves or one large free-form loaf; the recipe says only 'loaves'. The egg-white wash gives the thin shine associated with deli rye.
American rye bread of this sort sits between two traditions: the dense, all-rye sour loaves of northern and eastern Europe, and the soft wheat breads of the American bakery. The recipe's label, "(American)", is the giveaway — nearly a quarter of the flour is white wheat, which lends the gluten structure that pure rye cannot supply, and the caraway and the optional sour flavor are treated as improvements a cook may take or leave rather than as defining features. The practice of saving a half cup of dough from the last baking, noted here almost in passing, is a survival of how bread was leavened before compressed yeast became widely available in America from the later nineteenth century.