bread of heaven

I really really like making bread. I should do it all the time. I should give up my day job and become a baker. Or possibly I should just make bread more. I had a shitty day today but at the end of it there is crunchy chewy home made bread, so life ain't all bad. Even if the above picture *is* mainly out of focus and I deleted all the others.

This is rye bread which is denser than straightforward bread due to its lower gluten content. The up side of this is that it needs less kneading and only one rise, so it's a bit quicker. Plus it tastes of rye which I happen to think is delicious. If you don't like the taste of Ryvita then you should probably give it a miss.

10 oz rye flour
10 oz white bread flour
1 tsp salt
20g fresh yeast
1 tbsp sugar
14fl oz warm water
caraway seeds (optional)

• measure out the flour, pour it onto a clean worktop and make a hole in the middle.
• add the yeast to the warm water, then stir in the sugar until it dissolves (or alternatively forget to stir it like me and resort to scraping it soggily from the bottom of the jug and mixing it into the dough later)
• pour a little of the yeasty water into the hole in the flour and combine with the flour.
• continue like this until all the water is mixed with the flour. The dough will be sticky and wet.
• knead for about 5 minutes .The dough will get more manageable and less sticky but it won't really go all stretchy like normal bread dough does.
  
• shape the dough, cover and leave until the dough has roughly doubled in size. Mine took about an hour and a half.
• sprinkle caraway seeds on the top in the certain knowledge that they will fall off and go all over the kitchen floor (a bit of milk would stick 'em on).
  
• Cook at gas mark as hot as possible for 10 mins, then reduce the heat to about 7 and cook for a further 30-40 minutes, until you can knock on the bottom and it sounds hollow. My oven always takes at least 40 mins, which may be due to the gaffer tape holding it together.
• Resist the temptation to eat the entire lot in one day.