Sunday therapy! Tossed some seeds to the birds, chatted up my sisters for a bit, I'm on my 2nd cup of coffee, and cake is caking in the new bread machine.... 💜
Last year I picked up a 30 year old bread machine at a yard sale. I used it a couple times, had one over-risen-bread based disaster, and had to put the machine away for a while.
Grocery prices have driven me to cleaning off the burnt remnants from inside the baking box and to start over. I’ve been trying out a bunch of different recipes, and I even got a whole book of them. Even though I’m really just dumping the ingredients into the pan and letting the machine do all the work, there’s something about making your own bread that’s just so… satisfying. I feel like the most powerful witch when I shake another fresh loaf out of the pan.
I need to find a sharpie. I’m going to draw hieroglyphs for “bread offering” on the machine. Anything that comes out of it will by default be an offering. Holy. Blessed.
High me was right when I started writing romantic poetry to my bread machine. The little churning noises it makes are like a cat purring and if it wasn’t so heavy I would probably put it on my lap while it’s baking and warm and give it pets and scritches
This is only the second time I’ve tried this particular recipe. My first attempt was very much a fail loaf. Delicious, but fail.
This is the recipe in question:
Scandinavian Rye Bread
1 1/4 cups beer
1 egg
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp packed brown sugar
1 tbsp shortening or vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups all-purpose or bread flour
1 cup rye flour
1 tsp orange zest
1/2 tsp anise seeds
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast
Measure ingredients into the bread machine in the order recommended by manufacturer. Cook on basic (white bread) cycle.
(Recipe is from 250 Best Canadian Bread Machine Baking Recipes by Donna Washburn and Heather Butt)
So... what did I try changing to get a loaf that would hold together better? One thing I noticed is this recipe uses a good bit more rye and less white flour than most of the other recipes in this cookbook. Most of the rye recipes only call for 1/2 cup (or less) of rye and between 2-3 cups of white. At the time of the prior attempt I noticed how the dough was more like a batter after the initial mixing cycle (rye does tend to make muddy doughs). I decided to decrease the rye and increase the white, so for this loaf I tried 2 1/4 white to 3/4 rye. Left the yeast measurement as-is since I didn’t want to tweak too many things at once. I also let the bread cool in the pan briefly before turning it out.
The loaf came out okay (and is still delicious), but it still has some minor problems, including:
the loaf has good loft (yay), but the top was noticeably springy/spongy before turning out, and as the loaf cooled the top and sides sucked in. Both are signs of the bread having over-risen iirc, so it probably needs a little less yeast for a denser crumb; most of the rye recipes call for 1 1/4 tsp so I’ll try that instead next time.
There’s a visible (small) amount of flour that didn’t mix in properly, and has left some ugly patches of partially moistened flour on the surface and in little inclusions at that end of the loaf. Since my change to the flour ratio added 1/4 cup more flour in total to the loaf, that’s most likely the cause, and I should instead try 2 cups white to 3/4 rye to maintain the original total quantity.