Beetroot, Dill & Caraway Rye Bread

Joanna over at Gourmet Green Giraffe has a painful account of struggling with the directions to make this wonderful bread which she found in New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant. This is a beautiful bread to look at and to eat, the beetroot pieces glisten a vibrant ruby when you slice it. With the fragrances of dill, caraway and molasses, it can be difficult to decide if this is a sweet or savoury loaf - you choose, either way it is delicious. My apologies to everyone involved for further simplifying the method, I don't think it compromises the finished product too much and it is certainly easy to make doing it like this with the Thermomix. The most difficult part of the recipe is waiting for the dough to prove for two hours. And thanks to Joanna for bringing this one to the light of day. For a lighter bread grind up whole wheat, but if you are a dedicated rye lover then go with the whole rye grain and enjoy a heavier texture.

 

Beetroot, Dill & Caraway Rye bread

Ingredients

100g rye grain (or any other whole grain eg wheat or spelt)

1 beetroot (150-200g) peeled and quartered

15g fresh dill

2 teaspoons of caraway seeds

300g bakers flour

100g rye flour

40g blackstrap molasses

100g boiling water

100g room temperature water

20g olive oil

1 sachet of instant yeast (7grams)

1 teaspoon of salt

Method

Measure grain into your thermomix bowl and mill on speed 10 for 40 seconds

Put the resulting flour to one side in a bowl.

Place your dill and beetroot in the Thermomix bowl and grate on speed 5 for 2 seconds or until it is coarsely grated.

Add blackstrap molasses, all the water, caraway seeds, flour, oil and salt (all the remaining ingredients) 

*Make sure you add the yeast last to avoid killing it with the boiling water

Mix on speed 5 for 10 seconds

Knead on interval setting (the wheat symbol) for 4 minutes

Add a tiny bit of room temperature water if you need to, but only add a small amount at a time, as it is easy for this dough to become quite sticky. 

Tip out the resulting dough and form into a ball by hand, clean the Thermomix blades by pulsing on turbo and collect the flicked out dough adding to the main mass.

Lightly oil a large mixing bowl, put your ball of dough in and cover with cling wrap (oil the cling wrap to prevent the dough sticking to to it. Leave in a warm spot eg a sunny windowsill for an hour. 

After an hour your dough should have doubled in size, knead it by hand briefly and slice the dough into three equal pieces. Form into three balls and tuck these into a large bread loaf tin. Sprinkle liberally with caraway seeds. Leave the tin for another hour covered by cling wrap that has been brushed or sprayed with olive oil on the inside surface. 

Preheat your oven to 200˚C and leave a heavy baking tray in the bottom to heat up as well.

After the second hour, the balls should have risen considerably, remove your cling wrap, splash with water. Handle the tin gently so as not to deflate the bread. boil the kettle.

As soon as you put the bread in the oven, pour a cup of boiling water in the hot baking tray at the bottom of the oven, shut the door quickly to keep the resulting steam inside.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 200˚C until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it and when a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Turn the loaf out onto a cake rack to cool. Don't slice this until it is completely cool.