Honey Rye Bread

For many years Jerri has occasionally added some rye flour to her basic white bread. It makes a flavorful variation on an excellent white bread. When she adds enough rye flour, the bread takes on a grayish cast, and so we call it Graubrot, which translates literally from German as gray bread.

Graubrot is the popular name for Mischbrot (mixed bread) in Nordrhein-Westfalen. It describes a bread that is made with both white and rye flours. Bakers vary the proportions to create many different kinds of bread and may add spices such as caraway, anise, fennel or coriander.

I remember eating Graubrot nearly every day when I studied in Münster (in Nordrhein-Westfalen). A baker at the farmer’s market sold it by weight, like meat or cheese. If you asked for a pound, he would cut a piece off a loaf, weigh it, wrap it in paper and tell you how much you owed. The loaves were large and round, weighing four or five pounds. A half loaf weighed about a kilogram and would last me for a week.

The recipe below does not produce authentic Graubrot, but it is a delicious rye bread much different from the versions sold in most bakeries and supermarkets in the United States. It makes two medium-sized loaves and a pan of dinner rolls. The milk and honey give it a slightly sweet taste.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup warm water (105 degrees or so)
1/4 tsp. sugar
2 1/4 tsp. (1 package) active dry yeast
2 cups milk
3 T butter
3 T honey
1 T salt
5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups rye flour

PROCEDURE:

First dissolve the sugar and yeast in the warm water and set it aside to proof. Melt the butter and warm the milk to about 105º and pour them into a large bowl. Stir in the salt and honey, beat a cup of white flour and a cup of rye flour into the milk, then stir in the yeast. Add the second cup of rye flour and beat well.

Add more white flour one cup at a time, beating well after each addition. When you have added enough flour, the dough will become hard to stir and start to come away from the sides of the bowl. The exact amount of flour needed depends on the humidity, kind of flour and other factors. When it is sticky but stiff, it is ready to knead.

Let the dough rest for five minutes, then turn it out onto a well-floured surface. Knead the dough until it is smooth and silky and is no longer sticky, seven to eight minutes. Grease the bread bowl with butter or shortening. Make the dough into a ball and put it in the bowl, turning it to cover it with grease. Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel and put it in a warm, draft-free place. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk.

Grease two 4 1/2 by 8 1/2-inch loaf pans and an 8 or 9-inch baking pan.

Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it five or six turns to remove the gas. Cut the dough into three equal pieces. Form two of the pieces into loaves and put them into the loaf pans. Roll the remaining dough into a half-inch thick rectangle and cut it into nine pieces. Shape each piece into a roll and put them into the baking pan.

Cover the pans and let the dough rise again until it nearly reaches the tops of the pans. You can tell when the bread has finished rising by gently poking the top of the loaf. If the dimple remains, the loaf is ready to go into the oven. If it puffs out in a few seconds, the bread is not yet ready.

When the dough is nearing the tops of the pans, preheat the oven to 375º. Bake the rolls about twenty minutes and the loaves thirty to forty minutes. I suggest that you turn the loaves out of the pans after thirty minutes to test for doneness. Loaves are done when they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. If they do not sound hollow, bake them on the oven rack for an extra five or ten minutes. Remove them from the oven and place on a rack to cool.

For a shiny top crust, brush the loaves and rolls with an egg wash before putting them into the oven. Make the wash by beating a tablespoon of cold water into the white of an egg. Or you can brush the tops of the hot loaves with butter after you take them from the oven.

You can devour the rolls still warm from the oven with plenty of butter and jam, but the loaves slice better if you let them cool completely. This bread makes delicious toast too.

Aunt Dorothy’s Cabbage Hotdish

Before my mother met and married my father, she played guitar and sang with her brother Basil (nicknamed Blackie) in a small band that played at taverns and supper clubs around Hayward in the late 1930’s and early 40’s. When I asked her how she learned to play, she told me that a neighbor had taught her the basics. Then she had practiced with Blackie and the other musicians who formed their band. She would listen to the radio, write down the lyrics, learn the melodies, and work out the chords, then teach new songs to the band.

In going through old photos I found this one of Mom and Uncle Blackie with their guitars when she was a teenager.

Mom-Blackie-guitars

I remember her playing and singing on the front porch when I was a kid. She could yodel too, which really impressed me. I loved her singing and yodeling in “Cattle Call” and “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” “Red River Valley” and “Old Shep” were two more of my favorites.

The closest I came to musical stardom was my rendition of “Old Shep” at one of the PTA evenings at Blair School. It’s a wonderful tearjerker. I still sing it to irritate my wife. It opens with “When I was a lad and old Shep was a pup” and concludes, “If there’s a dog heaven, there’s one thing I know, Old Shep has a wonderful home.” To get the right audience reaction, you have to drag out the last few syllables.

Mom had taught me the song and coached my performance. There was no prize, but everyone clapped. Elvis Presley won $5 when he sang the song. Years later, when I learned that, it made me feel proud to have shared something with one of my early heroes.

Dad didn’t sing very much, but he did play the harmonica. On hot evenings in the summer, he would go in the bedroom, bring out the box with the harmonica and say, “Let’s make some music.” Mom would get her guitar and notebook with the words to the songs she knew, and we would all go out on the porch.

One of my favorites was “Little Red Wing” with Dad playing the harmonica and Mom on guitar with the vocal. I can still almost hear those words about the Indian maiden who lost her warrior lover:

“Now the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing,
The breeze is sighing, the night bird’s crying….”

Sometimes my sisters and I would join in on the choruses. More often we just listened to music we liked a lot more than anything on the radio.

I don’t remember hearing Uncle Blackie play music with my mother, but I wish I had. When he came back from the war in Europe, he married Aunt Dorothy and they settled down at Hayward. They had a family like ours with kids that she needed to cook for. She still cooks and bakes a lot, and she obliged when I asked for some of her recipes. Here is one of them. Vegetables, hamburger, and starch in one dish. Very tasty too. Try it.

INGREDIENTS:

4 or 5 cups of coarsely chopped cabbage
1/3 cup rice
2/3 cup water
1 lb. hamburger
1 medium onion (2 1/2 inch diameter)
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 cans tomato soup
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp. sugar

PROCEDURE:

Remove any damaged leaves and rinse the cabbage. Chop about half a medium head into a two-inch dice. You can parboil it in a pot of boiling water for three minutes or steam it for about four minutes. Drain any liquid from the pan and put the cabbage into a large mixing bowl.

Rinse a third cup of rice, then put it in a small covered saucepan with two-thirds cup of water, cover the pan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to very low and cook until all the water has been absorbed, about fifteen minutes. Turn off the heat and put the rice into the mixing bowl with the cabbage.

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Peel a medium onion and chop it into a quarter to half-inch dice. Wash and remove the seeds and white membrane from about half a medium green bell pepper. Chop it into a half-inch dice. Peel the paper from two or three cloves of garlic and mince them.

Brown the hamburger over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it is translucent. Season the meat and onion with the salt and pepper, then stir in the garlic and green pepper and add the meat mixture to the bowl of cabbage and rice.

Pour two cans of condensed tomato soup and a quarter cup of water into the bowl, add a half teaspoon of sugar and mix everything together. Spoon the mixture into a three quart casserole and bake it covered for an hour.

NOTES: You can use two or three extra cups of cabbage and a full cup of green pepper to make the hamburger go farther. If you do that, add a little extra salt and pepper.

This is a good dish to bring to a potluck.