While trying out various rye bread recipes in a quest for the perfect New York Jewish rye, I finally settled on a few techniques which work great. Here they are: For the recipe: add 2 - 3 T red wine vinegar to your dough - this gives the final product the "bite" it needs so it doesn't taste flat. Caraway seeds - 2 T plus (for anyone objecting to the seeds, just use the crushed caraway) Crushed caraway - 2 T Baking technique, with apologies to purists and the no-knead community: Place a 3 1/2 qt. cast iron Dutch oven w/o the cover (must not have any plastic parts and must handle 500F) into the oven. Heat the oven to 500F and allow the Dutch oven to heat up for 1 hour. Place dough on a 24" piece of parchment paper. Remove the Dutch oven and place on a surface which can withstand the heat. Lower the parchment paper/dough into the Dutch oven and place cover on top. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover, and bake until crust is as desired - 10 - 30 minutes depending on how you like it. The trick is in the size of the Dutch oven. The dough will likely be a bit much for the oven and will push up a bit, then rise more once in the hot oven. A 7 qt. Dutch oven is way too big, as the rye dough will have ample room to spread out - you'll get a much lower loaf in the end. I've never tried the 5 qt. size, but that could be interesting. Your rye bread will sing.

• Reply