Frank's Rye Bread

 Mom and I enjoy an automatic bread maker though we've been known to use it to simply produce the dough and then bake the bread manually in our oven. I prefer a horizontal loaf (our bread maker produces a vertical loaf) and I enjoy working with the warm, raw dough. But sometimes (most times) we're lazy and just pour all the ingredients in the machine and come back four hours later.

When my weather buddy in Wisconsin talked of taking his homemade rye bread to work, Mom told me to ask him for the recipe. He also makes his bread in an automatic bread maker.

 Rye has been a bit of a sticking point with us. In the past, we've had problem loaves - those that seemed to inflate normally and the deflate at the last moment like a stuck balloon (I later found out that this is due to adding too much yeast). So we tried Frank's recipe.

Just sliced - steamy hot - ready for butter

 Frank said he once forgot to add the stirring blade when he made rye bread. "I had loaded everything but the blade was not there," he said. "Disaster!"
 "The recipe is from Toastmaster," Frank said, "and asks me to use the Basic program which takes three hours."
 Our basic loaf takes an hour longer.

Frank's Rye Bread (for Bread Machine)

1-1/2 cups bread flour
3/4 cup medium rye flour
3/4 cup water
4 teaspoons olive oil
4 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

 Even with this "known good" recipe, the rye bread seems much more dense, much less inflated than a white loaf. That's normal, though.

Frank makes a large loaf where our machine will hold only a one pound loaf. The recipe above is modified for a one pound loaf. "With my larger recipe I can simply use an entire 1/4 ounce package of yeast," Frank said. I needed to cut back.

Finished loaf, just out of the bread maker, and not yet sliced

 "Usually, my loaf of bread lasts for a week and makes good sandwiches for work. Rye bread does crumble more and I'm going to switch to white bread which rises higher, stretches better and will allow me to put more on the sandwich," Frank added.
 I'm going to add caraway seed next time. This recipe doesn't taste strongly rye so something is needed to ramp up the flavor. It is quite brown, however. I may also experiment with slightly more sugar and salt.
 But that will come another day.