Reprinted from the Zingerman’s Newsletter, January-February 2009 Based on everything I’ve learned here’s what goes into a good Jewish rye bread: #1 A Good Rye Sour Starter The old style, Jewish rye starter is made by taking the previous day’s fully baked rye bread—what Michael and the bakers of the era in which he grew […]

Rye is a relative newcomer among foods; people have been eating it for only about 3000 years. Originally it was probably nothing more than a weed, intruding into the hard-to-maintain northern European wheat fields. At some point farmers must have given up fighting the stuff and switched to growing it. Today it is the third most important cereal grain in the world, after wheat and rice. Making bread from rye flour alone is difficult (though definitely doable) because it has none of the gluten you need to make a bread rise. Because it’s harder to work with and because it lacks gluten, rye flour is usually mixed with that of other grains—barley, millet, buckwheat or wheat—for bread making.