One of our favorite breads here at the bakery is the Rye Sourdough that we sell on Fridays. The process of making the bread takes three days, with a very large percentage of starter used in the dough. For those of you who are not sure what a “starter” is, it is the basic foundation of all good bread. Simply water and rye flour are allowed to sit in a cool place to ferment and grow up to a period of ten days. Once the starter is ready to use, we feed it to make it grow, remove some starter, only to feed it again. We then make our dough from this, adding flour and the other ingredients, and it rests overnight. The following day we bake the loaves and present them to sell to our loyal customers.
A quick history of the rye bread goes back to the 12th century, when the Germans discovered rye because a round of wheat crops had failed. Rye tends to grow wonderfully in the cool, wet Northern European plains, and remains the favored grain of that area. Our rye continues that tradition, using a German Rye starter we grew over a decade ago. If you haven’t sampled this bread, give it a try. We are sure it will become one of your newfound favorites.
3 comments
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ryegirl
May 27, 2021 at 12:40 am
Rye was first used in Syria, near Eufrat river 🙂
James C. Gardipee
April 3, 2022 at 2:19 am
Thank you for your presentation on the history of rye bread. I have found that rye was being cultivated in Egypt in about 1491 BC . This is mentioned in the Hebrew history of Exodus 9-32. Note that rye is referred to as “rie”. This word is again used in Isaiah 28:25-29. Only twice does this word occur in this entire text.
If rye was being cultivated in Egypt it would seem that it was used as a food and perhaps prepared as bread.
In the book of Isaiah 28:25-29 the subject appears again. “Rie”- Rye was a primary food substance in the diet at that time or it would not have been mentioned.
Bread was mentioned in the New Testament of the Hebrew bible. Jesus broke bread. What kind of bread?
Ergot poisoning was unknown until about 600 BC and was not recognized as the result of the cause of hallucinations which occurred in those times so it can be concluded that rye bread had caused a tremendous chance of contamination of the food quality of those times.
For thousands of years the people grew grains for food and it appears that grain was used in the production of bread. History claims that grain has been cultivated for thousands of years so it is not unreasonable to consider that ergotism was at least an occasional problem.
I like rye bread !!!!! I’ll take my chances!