Some Things I Have Been Making Lately

I have been quite busy lately; mostly with baking. When my sister-in-law, Sherri brought me all those cookbooks, mostly on breads, I sort of parked myself in one of them, "The Bread Baker's Apprentice: by Peter Reinhart. I have been so enchanted with the recipes and all the instruction, explanation, theory, chemistry, all the why's and wherefores of bread making. I wrote about this a bit in my blogs of May 1st, and May 2nd, and sporadically since then. 

Caraway Deli Onion Rye

I started out making a "seed starter", meaning I mixed flour and water and let the wild yeasts that live in everything around us just come calling and ferment the starter with no help from commercial yeast. Once the starter was ready after 4 days, I proceeded to make the "Mother Starter" which is just a step further, making the starter usable for many of the recipes in the book. The first bread I tried after making the starter was a Caraway Deli Onion Rye. This bread was a fantastic success, doing everything it was supposed to do and the flavors were most amazing. I felt this was an auspicious start, so I proceeded to plan what else to make. One kind of bread I like is the really dense 100% rye. Rye does have some gluten in it, but not as much as wheat, so making anything completely from rye with no help from any wheat flour makes it a far more dense bread. Some groceries carry this kind of bread and I was buying it locally here for a while. 

Once I had finished with the starter, the barm and that first rye bread, and learning the barm could be frozen, I divided up the remaining barm and froze it to have ready at a day's notice and just took a break from the mess all over the kitchen for a few days. I then proceeded to read about more of the rye breads, as I had just bought a pound of rye berries. I decided on making the 100% Sourdough Rye. I got one of the frozen barm starters out of the freezer and let it thaw overnight, then divided that up, using one half to make the rye starter for that bread, and mixing more regular flour and water with the remainder to keep the barm going while I decided what else to make with it. 

100% Sourdough Rye: yesterday, loaves formed; today after 5 hours; loaves after baking

I will say, I am not having quite the "quick" response times as the book indicates when it comes to the rye. I mixed up the rye flour starter, and the book said it should take about 4 hours to double in size. I had the starter out the entire day long and it never really rose at all. It sort of relaxed and settled in the container but that was it. Finally late that night I put it in the fridge regardless, along with the refreshed barm. I mixed up the bread recipe yesterday, which indicated another 4 or so hours and the dough should have doubled or possibly gone to 1½ times its size  - NOT - Just wasn't happening. It grew a little. 

100% Sourdough Rye

After 6 hours I just formed the loaves and gave it another night refrigerated. At 6:00 AM this morning I got it out to come to room temperature and grow prior to baking; in a perfect world, 4 hours to double in size. That didn't happen either. Oh well. I left it out today for 5 hours and then baked just as indicated, using a very hot oven to start, with a pan of water for steam, opening the oven door after 30 seconds to spray the walls of the oven with more water, then after another 30 seconds, and after another 30 seconds. Then lowering the temperature, the loaves baked just as indicated, rising a bit, but remaining very heavy and dense. I expected heavy and dense, but it seemed the book indicated more growth than took place. Regardless, it is delicious.

Beautiful Challah loaves

While watching the 100% Sourdough Rye not doing anything all day yesterday, I decided to try making Challah. I have been making my Mom's (and Grandma's) bread recipe for more than 20 years. It is quite similar, in that it is a rich bread, using a fair amount of sugar, butter and eggs. Though I might have done things differently (as used to my Mom's bread as I am), but I followed the instructions for the Challah in the book to the letter; the dough came together just as stated. After kneading it stretched beautifully to create the "windowpane effect", meaning the dough stretched to a thin membrane without snapping. It grew just as stated, I formed one loaf into a braid and one in a loaf pan. They baked so beautifully I was in awe. They were the prettiest, lightest, most perfect loaves. I was in heaven. And, it tasted fantastic too. My husband said he could live on that bread just fine!

Today I made a batch of dough for pizza. I have been making my pizza dough from the same recipe for just ever. The Bread Baker's Apprentice has you making the dough up using ice water and then forming into individual balls and refrigerating for 1 to 3 days before using. Tomorrow, I am planning to make pizzas. My husband has a way of making his pizza that is certainly any Italian's nightmare. Tomorrow, he's going to have to put up with my idea of what a pizza should be, because with this dough I want to do my best to create a proper pizza. In a couple of days, with more of the dough, he can do his own thing.



My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Seed Starter Progress

I am still in the process of creating a "Seed Starter" from Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice", as I wrote of in the last two blog posts. If you are just now catching up here, I acquired a bunch of new (to me) cookbooks, a few of which are on serious bread baking, with a lot of the real science being taught alongside expert technique. One thing I had never done is make a seed starter.

A seed starter is putting together some flour and water and allowing it to set at room temperature and ferment using little wild yeasts that exist everywhere. This is the very beginning of making a sourdough starter. This process may be aided by the addition of a tiny amount of active yeast, and I had done this years ago. This time though, I am following the instructions in one of the books, using a time-honored method of allowing the wild yeasts found everywhere around us to do their own wonderful thing. It takes about 4 days to make the seed starter. I posted a photo of the first mixture and then the same mixture with the addition of the second day's flour and water feeding. The first day the book stated, there would be little or no activity yet; there was not! At 24 hours from when I mixed up the first day's starter, I mixed up  the second day feeding, combined the two and set this back into the jar. 

Starter mixture on Day 2, then the fermentation occurring later in the day and next day

By late that day, there was significant activity in the mixture, shown in the second of the series of photos above. The following morning, the starter was actively bubbling (photo 3 in the above series) and it had risen and fallen. The fact that the starter grew significantly and then fell is expected. There was not enough yeast and gluten built to hold the starter up just yet. On the morning of day three I discarded half of the starter. I made another batch of the flour and water feeding and combined it with the remaining seed starter. After just a few hours it had already risen by about a third of its original height (photo 1 in the series below). By this morning it had grown to fill the jar and the bubbling was very active (photos 2 and 3 in the series below).

Day 3 Starter: After 4 hours and after 24 hours, very active

Today is the beginning of Day 4, the final day of the seed culture. Today again I discarded half of the mixture. I again added the flour and water to feed the starter. It was advised that this last day's activity could be finished in as little as 4 hours and up to 24. Because my starter has been so very active, I anticipate the timing will be on the low side. The photos below show the starter at the level it began this morning, and then after only 2 hours. The new flour and water feeding has not yet been completely incorporated, but it is already bubbling merrily. My little wild yeasts are very happy, and so am I.

Day 4 starter just mixed, and after only 2 hours

Later today, if all goes as anticipated, I will be adding in a significantly larger amount of flour and water, allowing this to ferment at room temperature for 6 or so hours before finally having become what the book calls a "barm".  (This term was amended in later books by Peter Reinhart to be called Mother Starter, as "Barm" actually refers to another thing entirely - but for now . . .) This starter will be good for about 3 days, refrigerated before needing to be refreshed with more flour and water. I am planning to use one portion of this starter to make a caraway rye bread, and I will freeze the other portions so I can have this wonderfully fermented mixture ready within a day's notice.


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

New Books, Breads and Dreams

I have been cooking and baking a lot as usual. That said, I haven't got a specific recipe to share today. I could. I have made many good things that I could share. But everything today is taking a back burner. I am so excited.

Unidentified Bread Pan

To start with, a couple of months ago my sister-in-law brought me a bread baking contraption I had never seen before. Someone came and donated it at the museum, but they had no real use for it, and I am into the old, the new, the different. I have no idea at this time if I will ever use this device. It is a closed, two-loaf affair, making round loaves with ridges. My concern is twofold; first, what kind of recipe would be made in something like this, and second, as these hold a lot of dough, and as it is obviously closed for baking, how would I know if it is baked through? 

If anyone seeing this happens to know what it is for, specifically, or what sort of bread would be baked in this mold - please leave a comment!


When she brought this mold to me, my sister-in-law also noted that at some unspecified time she would have a set of glass tube bread molds to bring. This unspecified time happened to be last evening. In the past I had owned a set of glass tube molds for bread, though they were much smaller in diameter. The ones she brought last night are a far larger in diameter, probably a good 4½ to 5 inches. This would make a more normal sized loaf instead of a "tea bread" loaf. I am interested to try them out.

Stack of Books

Then last weekend, I was helping my sister-in-law to move some furniture out of a storage unit and I happened to notice she had Rose Levy Berenbaum's "Bread Bible" setting on a shelf! OMG! I asked if I could borrow it, and she said, "Certainly. Actually, you can have it." I was in love. I sat to start reading and got teary just reading the introduction. I can so identify with all the feelings about bread making. It enchants me. I have continued to read bits and pieces, along with looking through various recipes I find of interest. I have already learned quite a few things about the chemistry of bread making that I never knew. I have always made bread in the manner my Mom did, and her Mom before her. If I tried another recipe and it didn't work right, I continued to apply the methods I knew and went from there. All in all, with fair success.

But the thing that really threw me into the stratosphere was that she brought over 6 cookbooks, 3 specifically on breads and the rest on other baking subjects. The bread books are large hardback books, with beautiful color photos so very evocative and enticing. They make you want to take a big bite right out of the book, the photos are so wonderful. There are few things that I love more than great books. So, this morning I started reading one of these new books on bread. Reading about the varying types of flour grinds was enlightening. The chapter on making a starter batter from scratch was a revelation.

Oat Groats front, Wheat and Rye berries behind

Long ago (back in the 80s) I made a sourdough starter and used it to make breads, pancakes, cakes. The starter dough was made using a tiny amount of yeast to jump start the batter. This use of commercial yeast is done often, making it very easy to get a nice batch of soured dough to use to make a loaf. I kept the starter going for some time, but eventually lost interest and tossed it out. In this (new to me) book, there was a recipe for a "seed" starter where you are truly starting from scratch, waiting for wild yeasts to invite themselves in. On reading some of the theory, they explain that rye carries more natural yeasts on the grains than does wheat, so if possible they advocate using rye flour for the initial starter mixture, then adding wheat flour to "feed" this over the next days. Once this mixture has caught the yeasts and is fully alive, it is called a "seed starter." 

Caraway Rye Bread

I do not keep rye flour or whole wheat flour as they tend to go rancid so easily that most times they already taste off before even using them. I do, however, keep whole wheat berries and whole rye berries in the freezer. I own both a hand grain grinder and a grain attachment for my Kitchen Aid. I found that to make a Rye Bread recipe that caught my fancy, I would need a total of 3 cups of rye flour; one for the initial "seed" starter, one more for the rye bread starter using the barm (the seed starter plus additional flour and water, yet to be made), and another to add later to the actual bread dough recipe. Unfortunately, once I ground the rye berries I still had, it only yielded just over a cup. That's okay though. I ordered some more today and in the meantime it will take at least 3 or 4 days to get the seed starter and then the barm going. The barm does not have a time limit. Once it is made, all that needs be done is feed it occasionally. The rye bread can be made at any time. 

I have made variations of rye breads many times in past: Caraway Rye Bread, Swedish Limpa Rye Bread and others.

Swedish Limpa Rye Bread

Makes 4 round loaves

Swedish Limpa Rye Bread

2 packages regular dry yeast
½ cup warm water
2 cups sifted rye flour
¾ cup dark molasses
½ cup shortening
2 teaspoons salt
2½ cups boiling water
6 cups bread flour

Mix the yeast into the ½ cup of water; set aside. Combine the rye flour, molasses, shortening salt and the boiling water and blend well; allow to cool to lukewarm. Add in the yeast to combine, once the temperature is cooled. Begin adding the 6 cups of bread flour to make a soft dough. Turn out onto a well floured surface, cover and allow to rest for10 minutes. Knead the dough for 15 minutes, place in to a lightly greased bowl and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1½ to 2 hours.

Punch down the dough, cover and let rise again for about 30 minutes. Turn out the dough and divide into 4 sections. Shape the sections into round loaves and place on greased baking sheets, well apart. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

NOTES: If you are using Rapid Rise, or Instant Yeast, just add all of the water called for into the second step when mixing the rye flour, molasses, shortening and salt. Add the packets of instant yeast to part of the white flour and mix before adding to the cooled mixture.

If you have a Bread Dough Enhancer, a mixture with a combination of ingredients, including extra gluten to help with rising, add according to directions, into some of the white flour before adding in to the cooled mixture.


Now and again I just get the yen for some nice caraway seed rye bread and I enjoy it for breakfast with jam as much as at lunch for a sandwich. I have used King Arthur Flour's "Sir Lancelot" flour, now simply called King Arthur "High Gluten" Flour when making rye breads in the more recent past, as it has a far higher gluten content and helps with the rising. Rye may have more yeasts, but it has less gluten, necessary for rising. King Arthur Flour also had a product called Deli Rye Flavor, now called King Arthur Rye Bread Improver, which gives more of that real bakery rye flavor to your bread. I have used that also to great advantage. But for the first time ever, this time I am making a real, true starter, waiting for those little elusive wild yeasts to come calling and do their magic for me in the seed starter. For the first time, I will make a starter sponge before diving in with the dough. And for the first time, hopefully, I will be able to create a real, true, deli rye bread that rises properly and tastes great without the enhancement of added flavors. I am just dreaming, totally on cloud 9, waiting for this event to happen.



My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.