Auburn Rye Bread - Cleveland in the '50's

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Monica on 15 Jan 2008 at 08:02
Can anywone help me find a recipe for "Auburn Rye Bread?" Explainaton: Growing up in Cleveland my Mom whould come home from Eastern Market, and...a special stop at the Auburn Bakery for their signature rye. Before the groceries were unloaded us 5 kids ate the bread. It was a light rye, light to medium texture, round loaf, with a delicious flavor that has haunted me. Would anyone out there be able to help me find THIS recipe or one like it. All the rye I try are to heavey. Thanks. M

Monica,

I am not familiar with Auburn rye bread but I have made a number of different kinds of rye breads and, of the one's I have made, the rye bread in Rose Levy Beranbaum's book The Bread Bible ("Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread pg. 324) sounds close to what you're looking for.  It's a light rye (1 part rye flour to 3 parts bread flour) and she uses a pre-ferment which gives it a nice flavor.  This recipe delivers a nice light rye with good crust and a light interior/crumb. It can be made with or without caraway seeds, shaped into a boule or oval loaf.  She ruggests using a La Cloche bread baker, which I don't have, so I let it rise in oval willow baskets and placed my loaves (her recipe is for 1 loaf so I doubled the recipe) on a large sheet pan lined with parchment, sprinkled with semolina and they came out great.  However, there is a correction to her recipe (in her book), which is very important if you are scaling (weighing) your ingredients.  On page 326, "Flour Mixture" ingredients on the first line: Bread flour (under the heading "Measure") she indicates 2 1/4 cups (that's correct)  and next to it under the heading "Weight" she indicates 4.5 oz. This is an ERROR and should read 12.3 oz.  She published a correction on her site.  Anyway, I made 2 loaves and really found it to be an excellent light rye bread.  Check her recipe and see what you think.  If you decide to try and if you're scaling your ingredients don't forget the correction to bread flour "Weight".  Good luck'

holds99

I would second the recommendation to try RLB's Jewish Rye recipe. It is fairly easy to make and tastes good. One hint: try making the dough in a breadmaker the first few times so you have the satisfaction of getting a good loaf before you tackle hand-kneading rye dough.

Once you have the basic recipe down, you can try:

  • Scaling it up somewhat. I use a factor of 1.2 to get a bigger loaf
  • Using different seeds, including celery, poppy, and (small amt!) cumin either partially or fully replacing the caraway
  • Instead of using packaged yeast for the preferment, around 9 PM mix the preferment only (not the blanket of flour Rose describes) with 20-30 grams of sourdough starter, cover tightly, and leave out on the counter overnight. The next morning mix, knead, and process per instructions.
  • The combination of the sourdough preferment and about 25% celery seed gives a very tasty, tangy crumb. I blast mine with high heat for the first 15 minutes to get a good crust too.

HTH

sPh