Rye Bread

Grandma baked a lot of it in her day. It was a staple food for her family, and one of her favorite snacks with a cup of tea. “As long as you have bread, you won’t go hungry,” she used to say. This did not mean much to us as kids who had never known real hunger, but I suppose it meant more to her, someone who had lived through the depression. Grandma also used to say that she wanted to be buried with a loaf of bread. (Her daughter made sure that she was, in November 2006.)

Grandma made a lot of whole wheat bread, and some cracked wheat bread. She also baked rye bread from time to time. I found two rye bread recipes among the stack of recipes that I inherited. Fall is a great time for baking, so I selected one of them to test out this past week.

Grandma used to clean house after she and Grandpa moved to town. I think she wrote this recipe on the bottom of a note from one of the women she had probably worked for, though the recipe itself comes from Mrs. Stan Evans, as noted at the bottom.

I halved the recipe and made one large loaf with the following ingredients:

1 cup lukewarm potato water

3 teaspoons yeast (the equivalent to half a cake of yeast, based on my research)

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup shortening

2 cups rye flour

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, or enough to make a soft dough

I mixed all the ingredients together and allowed the bread to rise until double, about an hour and a half. After shaping it into a loaf, I let it rise about an hour, but it probably should have been a bit longer.

There weren't any baking instructions on this page, but I looked at a few other recipes and decided to bake the loaf at 375 degrees. It was done in about 30 to 35 minutes, as verified by an internal temperature of 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

The bread was surprisingly sweet to our boys. The teen thought it would be good with honey on it, but most of us think it's just fine toasted with only butter.

In memory of Grandma, I think I'll have a piece of this bread toasted with my next cup of tea.