This is a recipe I've made a hundred times.
You can make it with or without caraway rye seeds.
I use my bread machine for the mixing and first rising, because it's easier on my hands.
This is how the bread pan looks, after I've taken the bread dough out. That thing in the middle is the paddle that mixes the bread.
This gem is my mother's breadboard. It's probably about 50 or so years old, and no I've never gotten sick from anything on it after all these years. People worry too much about junk on their counters, and the cracks in a bread board. I don't.
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My mother made all her bread on this board, plus coffee cakes and pie crusts. I was always fascinated and watched intently as she made all this stuff. She never let me do it, but I have it imbedded in my minds eye, and that's how I knew how to do the same things she did.
These are my two loaves- these are small- in 8 x 5 breadpans. You can make one loaf in a larger pan, like a 9x5 or 6, but I tend to like the smaller loaves.
This is how they come out.
Here's the recipe and instructions:
I used the dough setting on my machine to mix and do the first rising. You can do the same thing, using your kitchenaid or sunbeam countertop mixer with bowl- I forget what they call those things--and do the first raising in that bowl in a warm place.
Recipe:
for a 1 1/2 pound loaf
1 cup warm water
1 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 egg
Place these wet ingredients into bowl first. Make sure your water is rather warm, but not so hot that it will kill the yeast.
Now place in the bowl:
1 cup rye flour
2 cups white bread flour
3 tablespoons gluten
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 or 2 tablespoons caraway seeds (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoon dry yeast (like from a jar)
Now let your bread machine do the mixing and kneading, or you can let your mixer do that, with the bread hook on it. OR you can mix it yourself, by hand, if you like.
Make sure it is a nice moist mixture, but not too sticky. It should be smooth when it's done with kneading. Leave the bread mixture in the machine til the beeper goes off (that will take about 1 hour 22 minutes (that's when it's done raising.) If you are raising the dough without a machine, cover your bowl with a towel or plastic wrap and place in a warm spot to raise. It will take about 2 hours to raise. Some ovens now have a "bread proofing" setting, So you can set your bowl in there to raise.
After raising, take the dough out and divide it into two equal portions, flatten into a rectangle, and roll it like a long cookie roll, I don't know how else to describe it, and place in a bread pan THAT HAS BEEN COATED WITH VEGETABLE OIL. I usually roll the roll in the bread pan so that all of it is coated in oil, and leave the seam on the bottom.
Set in warm place to rise again, for about 20-30 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Farenheit, and then bake bread for about 20-22 minutes.
Let cool on a rack, then take knife about edge of bread in pan, and the bread should just slide right out. I have learned to place more vegetable oil in the pan, rather than less, but not swimming in it, so the bread will come out without sticking.
Let it cool for the most part, before slicing.
As, I said, I've made this recipe hundreds of times and it's always good!
Good luck!!
