visiting with bernard and james

another bread baking day is upon us and this months foray is hosted by tangerines kitchen.  for the challenge, we were asked to bake a loaf of whole grain bread.  sounds simple enough but if you have ever tried to get a loaf of whole grain bread that has all of the texture of a loaf of white then you know that it can be tricky to work with.  since i am trying to improve my bread baking skills, most pastry chefs don't do a lot of bread work-thats a bakers work, i turned to two old pro's; james beard and bernard clayton.

my husbands idea of bread baking is to use the bread machine-i can hear you cringing at the thought.  however, it has provided me with the selection of sourdough rye since he had a bag of stoneground rye flour in the fridge.  to start, i used the onion sour for rye from bernard's book.

after a few days, i took out the onions and proceeded with the recipe using the recipe for sourdough rye in james book.  the onion flavor somehow was lost but the sourdough tang made up for it

not the prettiest loaf of bread-just not enough gluten to work with.  next time, and there will be a next time, i will use bread flour or add gluten rather than just using all purpose flour with the rye flour.  it was fun to visit with my two old friends, james and bernard.  my thanks to rachel at tangerines kitchen, see you next month!