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American

8-Hour Quick Sponge Deli Rye

Rye %: 40%
Stages: 2-Stage quick sponge, Final dough
Leaven: Rye sour culture, Instant yeast
Start to Finish: 7-8 hours
Hands-on Time: 30-40 minutes
Yield: Two 1½ lb/700 g loaves

Deli rye – that light, open-crumbed, caraway-fragrant New York classic – is what most Americans think of when they hear “rye bread.” Without getting into the rightness or wrongness of that fact, deli rye is without question the bread to wrap around a thick layer of pastrami, corned beef or pickled tongue – with or without Swiss cheese, cole slaw, sauerkraut, mustard and/or Russian dressing. So when my wife went shopping one morning and came back with a package of heavily peppered, deep pink pastrami, there was no question about how we were going to eat it. Keep Reading

Rhode Island Brown Bread (USA)

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Rye %: 41%
Stages: Straight dough
Leaven: Baking soda
Start to Finish: 5½ hours
Hands-on Time: 20-30 minutes
Yield: Two 2 lb./900 g loaves

For me, Thanksgiving is always a time for celebrating New England’s food traditions. There’s turkey, of course, which roamed the deciduous forests of the Northeast; pumpkin and corn, mainstays of the Native Americans’ diet; and West Indies molasses, which came to the colonies via Britain’s system of triangular trade.

The first Europeans brought rye, which they mixed with cornmeal to make Rye and Indian Bread; later, the addition of molasses and wheat flour transformed the coarse loaf into Boston Brown Bread, which has become the benchmark New England loaf, to the exclusion of all others.

So I was both surprised and pleased to find another New England heirloom rye-and-corn bread, Rhode Island Brown Bread, in the 1887 edition of The White House Cookbook by F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Keep Reading

Heirloom Dixie Rye (United States)

DixSlice

Rye %: 82%
Stages: Sponge, Scald, Final dough
Leaven: Instant yeast
Start to Finish: 10-12 hours
Hands-on Time: 25-30 minutes
Yield: One 2¼ lb./1.0 kg loaf

Not so long ago, the food reporter from a South Carolina newspaper asked if I’d ever worked with Seashore rye. Actually, until that moment, I’d never even heard of it, but immediately went online and did some research. It turns out that this heirloom grain, which had been introduced into South Carolina, Georgia and northern Florida during the 1830s, was believed to be extinct. However, a food detective at Clemson University discovered a single stand of the grain on a family farm on Edisto Island, South Carolina, where it had been used for generations as windbreak between the tomato fields.
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