Despite the fact that I’ve been with The Man for years and years, he still has the ability to take me completely by surprise.  Before you go all gooey and starry-eyed, you might want to hear this story first ‘cause it actually resulted in a lot of work for me!

The Man travels often for work, and after one recent work trip while we were making dinner, he turned to me and out of the blue said “I want you to learn how to make rye bread.”  There was a moment of blinking on my side, followed by a slow nod of acceptance, and then the most obvious question – “Where did this come from?”  See, it wasn’t the baking request itself that surprised me.  I love to bake cookies, bread, pies, muffins, you name it.  It’s just that I’d never seen him eat rye bread.  We’d never brought it home from the grocery store, and I’d never seen him order it from any menu when it was an option.  His preference had always been for refined flour bread, so much so that it had been a bit of a challenge getting him to accept the half whole wheat flour, half refined flour bread I’d been baking over the last few months.  Heck, he didn’t even like the whole white wheat bread from the grocery store the first few times around, saying the flavor was “off” though I thought it tasted just like refined flour bread!  So where was this random rye request coming from?

As he explained, he was working in his hotel room one night with the TV on when he happened to catch a bit of news about Finns and rye bread.  The Man, being predominantly Finn himself, perked up at hearing that and quickly learned a thing or two about his heritage and his people’s well-documented love of rye bread.  In Finland, it’s estimated that each adult eats approximately 50 kg (about 100 lbs) of bread every year, and one-third of that is rye bread, most commonly made from whole grain rye flour.  Finns also enjoy good digestive health, and it’s been thought that there has to be a correlation between the consumption of whole grain rye bread and digestive health.  In fact, a 2000 study showed in part that the traditional place of prominence of rye bread in the Finnish dietary pattern, white bread consumption has been associated with an unhealthy lifestyle.  As a result, Finns who admit they are concerned about their health avoid white bread, but – and here’s the kicker – few seem to associate rye bread with a healthier lifestyle!  Since rye bread is the norm in Finland more often than not, it’s just what they eat regardless of the health benefits.  

As The Man put it, he felt like a light had turned on inside his head, a true “A-ha!” moment.  Over the past five or so years, he’d struggled with frequent bouts of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), including seeing doctors (which The Man hates) and taking medication (which The Man hates more).  Although he’d been relatively stable for a while, onset of IBS symptoms could and did happen at regular intervals, causing him discomfort and a whole slew of other symptoms, including embarrassment.  Hearing this news brief, The Man realized that maybe a part of his IBS troubles could be mitigated by adding rye bread to his diet in addition to making other changes in diet, stress, and exercise.  And, since I enjoy baking bread and especially enjoy using our recently purchased, super awesome stand mixer, it seemed natural to bring this theory home and put it to the test.  Considering I work at Oldways and believe in a “eat what your body evolved eating” approach to life (and I had that stand mixer!), I was only too happy to oblige.

So began what can only be called an intense period of trial and error.  Not because rye bread is all that hard to make, but because sometimes I’m hard-headed.  I remember thinking, as I prepared for my first rye bread attempt, “I’ll just use half rye flour, half regular bread flour in a regular loaf recipe, ‘cause that’ll work just fine!”  Um, no.  What came of that failure could only be considered the perfect crostini bread under the most generous circumstances.  I basically made a thick, dense loaf of soft crackers.  At least I learned my lesson: instead of winging it, look for actual recipes!  What a concept!  I then proceeded to work my way through about a dozen different rye bread recipes from bread and general baking cookbooks, from web sites, even recipes Emailed to me from friends.  And although I continue to experiment with rest times, liquid ingredients and number of rises, we finally settled on a rye bread recipe that works really well both as a shaped loaf and as a pan loaf.  Surprisingly enough, it’s from the recipe book that came with our stand mixer, and I’m including it below in case anyone out there also shares space with a Finn and thinks a little rye bread might be in order.  Enjoy!  (Kara)

Light Rye Bread

Ingredients:
¼ c. honey
¼ c. light or dark molasses
2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp caraway seeds
1 c. boiling water
2 pkg. active dry yeast
¾ c. warm water (105°F to 115°F)
2 c. rye flour
3 ½ – 4 c. all-purpose flour

Directions:

• Place honey, molasses, salt, butter, caraway seeds, and boiling water in small bowl.  Stir until honey dissolves.  Cool to lukewarm.
• Dissolve yeast in warm water in warmed mixer bowl.  Add lukewarm honey mixture, rye flour, and 1 cup all-purpose flour.  Attach bowl and dough hook to mixer.  Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 1 minute, or until well mixed.  Stop and scrape bowl if necessary.
• Continue on Speed 2, add remaining all-purpose flour, ½ cup at a time, and mix about 2 minutes, or until dough starts to clean sides of bowl.  Knead on Speed 2 about 2 minutes longer.
• Place dough in greased bowl, turning to grease top.  Cover.  Let rise in warm place, free from draft, about 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk.
• Punch down dough and divide in half.  Shape each half into a round loaf.  Place on two greased baking sheets.  Cover.  Let rise in warm place, free from draft, 45 to 60 minutes, or until doubled in bulk.
• Bake at 350°F for 20 to 45 minutes.  Cover loaves with aluminum foil for last 15 minutes if tops brown too quickly.  Remove from baking sheets immediately and cool on wire racks.