Dark rye bread turns out OK

I was hoping to post sooner, but life intervened.  My daughter had a bad asthma attack over the weekend that sent us into the Emergency Room on Sunday.  I think she plans these to always fall on weekends.  Seriously.  I still managed to bake bread, just not report on the results.

So, 4.0, which was two parts (two cups) whole rye and one part white bread flour turned out alright.  It was dense, but I didn’t get pumpernickel-like consistency, like I worried.  Next time I plan to use more water and a smidgen more yeast to get a bit more pop.  My dough was not wet enough, so it didn’t rise as much and the loaf was compact and chewy (but not too hard).  The yeast was working hard though, when I retrieved the dough at 18 hours, it was crackling like pop rocks.

The final result looked like this:

This is the bread that used the slightly less coarse, but still whole grain rye from Bellingham’s Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill.  In this loaf I also used aromatic Desert Mesquite Honey from Trader Joe’s.   My daughter enjoyed it very much (her standard breakfast consists of one slice of bread with honey smeared on it and one scrambled egg), and even my husband, who is not into “European tasting” (meaning, having a more complex flavor) breads liked it.