Real Jewish Rye

Well alright. I just need to stop apologizing for my absences here because they really do continue to happen. I really do want to be making more time to post here, but I'm still trying to work out a routine with all that's been going on here with the house, work, and the fact that it seems to have gone from a fairly mild autumn straight into the dead of winter in the course of, oh, one week.

So, in an effort to get back to some normalcy here, I'm going to tell you about this amazing rye bread that I made the other day. I'd been wanting to try making rye for a while and I finally got around to it over the weekend. I used a recipe from one of my favorite bread books- The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. All along, I could tell something wasn't right. Maybe I didn't follow the instructions well enough, but when I took it out of the oven it resembled, well, a brick. I mean, you could hurt someone with that thing.

I decided that I needed to try again. On Tuesday, I took a day off and tried a different recipe. This time, from another favorite book, The Bread Bible. This recipe was for "Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread. And let me tell you. It's amazing. I might even go so far as to say that it's better than Zabar's. I know, I know. That's almost hard to believe. But seriously, it's amazing. I'm not going to retype the whole recipe here, but I'm telling you that you need to try it. Go find this book at the library and make some bread. Now.

Oh, and ps...that's my new sweater too. I'll share the details on it after I can get some better photos.