Rockin Rye Bread

Over this past week, my mom has graciously been teaching me how to make bread!  With yeast!

Yeast breads have scared me for so long, because I'm afraid of killing it and it takes a bit of effort to get it right.

Yesterday marked my first ever *made totally by me* rye bread!  Rock!

Here's how it all went down!

Step 1:  Growing
The Beastie Yeasties!!!!!!
You have to get em kickin'!
How's this done?  Feed em!

2 cups warmer then tepid water
2 packages beastie yeasties
1 tsp salt
1tbsp oil
1/2 cup brown sugar



Think positive growing thoughts for a while, and tada!  THEY'RE ALIVE!!!!!  AHHH!!!!!

LIVE BEASTIE YEASTIES!

Step 2:  Stirring
I added 2 1/2 cups white flour and beat it to death until I got bored/it looked like:

Step 3:  Kneading

Then I added 2 1/2 cups rye flour until it got nice and ballish looking and it needed some kneading!

I gotta say, I really love kneading bread now...it's extremely therapeutic!  Kind of a half punching someone in the gut mixed with giving someone a back massage....kind of in between the two.

Step 4:  Waiting!
Once it had that "je ne sais quoi" thing...I don't know what it is, but once it's there, you know and you stop kneading, I shaped it into a ball, slam dunked it in a bowl and covered that puppy up with a plate and proceeded to check my email about 100 times, read the news, looked for jobs and failed yet again at passing a level on Angry Birds...right after all that!  (2 hours) Step 5!

Step 5: Poking and Punching!

You poke it!  If it doesn't jump back at you, you get to punch it!

Step 6: Cut it in half, shape it into two balls, cover with a towel and wait again!

Then it looks like this!

Slitting the top can help give the bread balls of love room for growth while baking away.

Step 7: Bake it up!!!!!  Until it sounds hollow when you thump it!

We enjoyed my fantastical rye bread with some homemade soup for lunch:  Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!