Milwaukie Rye

One is much more likely to report one’s successes than one’s failures.\par
\par
However, I feel compelled to admit to the world (or the 5 or 6 people who read my blog, anyway!) that I have recently had a rather spectacular failure in the realm of breadbaking.\par
\par
I wanted to learn a good recipe for rye bread that I could make regularly. In the bread cookbook that I borrowed from the library there was a rye recipe that especially intrigued me because it involved… you guessed it.. a starter! Well, actually a sponge, I think. Anyway, you mix up some of flour, water, caraway and all of the yeast and let it sit for 6 hours to 3 days. Naturally, I opted for 3 days. When the day arrived to finish the dough and bake it, it was too hot. So I put the sponge in the freezer. I’ve read that you can do this. However, in this situation, it did not work. I made the bread on Friday (even though it was hot.. I just couldn’t wait any more to try it!), and, well, you could kill a man with bread that dense and hard. It was sweet and tasted strongly of rye, but the texture was such that I didn’t even want to eat a whole slice of it. So… I guess I’ll try it again during a cool spell this summer, or in the fall – without freezing it!