Application Guide
Table Of Contents
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
- America’s New Bread Box
- Orientation
- Batterie de Cuisine: Know Your Bread Machine
- Making Bread
- Daily Breads: White Breads and Egg Breads
- White Breads
- Egg Breads
- One-Pound Loaves
- Pasta Doughs from Your Bread Machine
- Earth’s Bounty: Whole Wheat, Whole-Grain, and Specialty Flour Breads
- Whole Wheat Breads
- Rye Breads
- Specialty Flour Breads
- Multigrain Breads
- Gluten-Free Breads
- Traditional Loaves: Country Breads and Sourdough Breads
- Country Breads
- Sourdough Breads
- All Kinds of Flavors: Breads Made with the Produce of the Garden, Orchard, and Creamery
- Herb, Nut, Seed, and Spice Breads
- Savory Vegetable and Fruit Breads
- Cheese Breads
- Mixes and Some Special Breads Created from Them
- Stuffing Breads
- Circle, Squares, and Crescents: Pizzas and Other Flatbreads
- Sweet Loaves: Chocolate, Fruit, and Other Sweet Breads
- Breakfast Breads
- Coffee Cakes and Sweet Rolls
- Chocolate Breads
- Holiday Breads
- Express Lane Bread: No-Yeast Quick Breads
- Jams, Preserves, and Chutneys in Your Bread Machine
- Appendix 1 Bits and Pieces: Crumbs, Croutons, Crostini, and Toasted Appetizers
- Appendix 2 To Eat with Your Bread: Spreads, Butters, Cheeses, and Vegetables
- Appendix 3 Resources
- General Index
- Recipe Index
RYE BREADS
Rye has a characteristically bitter-strong, earthy flavor. It contains only a small
amount of a gluten that is more fragile than the gluten in wheat. This gives a loaf a
moist, dense quality. A loaf with rye flour in it will ferment more quickly than a loaf
that is all wheat and, if overkneaded, can get very sticky due to natural gums in the
grain called pentosans. The presence of acid in a rye dough makes it more manageable,
so you will see rye breads with ingredients like vinegar, beer, and sourdough.
There are quite a few baking products made from rye. The whole
grains, known as groats or berries, are ground into light, medium, and dark rye flours,
distinguished by their varying proportions of bran. Pumpernickel flour, also known as
rye meal, is the coarsest grind, with the most bran and germ left in. Rolled rye flakes
and cracked rye are also good additions to breads; they can be used as substitutes for
rolled oats and cracked wheat. With a range of rye flours, you can make all your fa-
vorite rye breads in the bread machine, from a chewy pumpernickel or a light Swedish
rye to a dark Russian rye, or even pretzel dough. Super-markets will vary in how many
rye products they carry, but natural food stores and mail-order flour sources carry most
of them.
Because of the saplike gum that appears naturally in rye, and because
of its water-binding capacity, rye doughs will always feel moist and sticky when you
test them with your finger. This makes it easy to add too much flour during kneading,
so be careful not to add more than a tablespoon or two more than the measurement
given in the recipe.
When I am teaching people to make bread by hand, I always recom-
mend rising rye doughs in tall narrow plastic buckets rather than wide bowls, as this
grain has a natural tendency to rise horizontally rather than vertically. The bread ma-
chine handles this beautifully with its baking canister. The warm environment of the
bread machine is also perfect for rising rye doughs, as they can easily become slack
and cold, especially in winter.
Rye is an incredibly healthful grain. It has vitamin E and rutin, two
premium antioxidants, is good for combating cholesterol deposits, and contains insolu-
ble fiber. Since rye contains a type of the gluten proteins found in wheat, it is not suit-
able for gluten-free diets or for sufferers of celiac sprue disease.
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