2025, Family, Food, Uncategorized

The Last Rye Bread

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When Husband moved to Winnipeg for graduate school in 1978 he was immediately captivated by the rye bread from the City Bakery, a venerable institution that made wonderful baked goods. City Bakery rye had just the right texture for Husband, neither mushy nor hard, with an open but fine grain. He has spent the last 47 years trying to replicate it.

For all the years of our courtship and marriage I have watched him try scores of different rye bread recipes. Some sour dough, some not, some with dried yeast, some with fresh yeast, some with caraway, some with no herbs, some successful, some true disasters. They have been baked in a variety of pans. Last weekend he declared that he had finally found the last rye bread recipe, which he made yesterday. He also declared that he would throw out seven rye bread recipes and keep seven rye bread recipes.

We shall see how long this lasts, and when I shall have to see him fuss over some new rye recipe. It is hard to be a perfectionist.

What is your favorite bread? What have you tried to emulate or perfect?

28 thoughts on “The Last Rye Bread”

  1. Hands down- Great Harvest Bakery Honey Whole Wheat. I’ve been eating it for decades. I’m also extremely fond of their white cinnamon chip. If we’re talking about bread I’ve made myself, I have an oatmeal bread recipe that I’ve also been making for over thirty years. This one I make in the bread machine. It’s too dense for me for sandwiches unless it’s an open face, perhaps with peanut butter and jelly. Also EXCELLENT warmed up or toasted and slathered in butter or cheese.

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  3. Favorite bread? One I really shouldn’t have these days, the olive loaf from Rustica (Seward Friendship Store doesn’t stock it anymore and instead have an inferior olive loaf from Rose Street, boo hiss!). So good, and SO much sodium! My favorite way to eat bread is probably the toast at Cecil’s Deli, which I first had as an undergrad at St. Kate’s–a big slice of their pumpernickel and one of rye. Blackberry jam always goes on the pumpernickel and marmalade on the rye. I haven’t tried baking bread in a long time, but I make good pita according to my roommate, though it doesn’t pocket (not that I care, my pita is a delivery system for hummus/baba ghanoush, as the Gods intended. I just call it “Greek style”).

    As for emulating things, I am always trying to make curries that taste as good as restaurant curries, and inevitably fail, perhaps because I’m not ambitious enough to buy, toast, and grind all the spices myself, IDK.

    –Crow Girl

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  4. I’ve learned to make a pretty decent Swedish Cardamom Wreath bread for Christmas… but I stopped baking yeast bread decades ago now.

    There are some good bakeries around here, and one from Galesville, WI, right across there river – run by folk dance friends. They have a marvelous sourdough, etc. – I find it at the co-op.

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  5. We mostly buy a sourdough loaf from our nearby Turtle Bread. That’s the bread Robin specifies. I don’t really care as long as it’s good bakery bread. I mostly use bread for toast, seldom sandwiches. When we buy a loaf, we usually freeze half. Otherwise it goes stale before we get around to eating it.

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    1. YA favors sourdough as well but she’s not too particular about where it comes from. She does occasionally ask for the sourdough from Breadsmith and also Sunstreet. I’m not making sourdough or friendship bread. Sorry Ben. Those are a little too futzy for me..

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  6. I like a good sourdough loaf. My go-to sandwich bread these days is Brownberry Oven’s Health Nut bread. Good nutrition and tasty. I can’t point to a specific restaurant, but Italian joints that get their bread right are faves. Va Bene in Duluth comes to mind as having excellent bread. Especially when dipped in EVOO and balsamic vinegar.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  7. You are all so fortunate to have so many bakeries nearby! We have no bakeries in our town. There may be a decent one in Bismarck, and I know there is one in Fargo.

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  10. I love rye bread . I tried making sour dough & I did the same. Recipe after recipe. My hubby and I found Rustik sour dough that actually has a nice flavor so I quit looking. Lol. When he decides that rue bread recipe is good, have him post it.i would love to try it. Love rye bread toasted.

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  11. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I love bread of many kinds. My fave for 10 years now has been the Norwegian Rye I encountered in Norway Continental Breakfasts. It is a very heavy whole grain rye bread that stays with you after breakfast. I cannot find any bakery here that makes it, so I found a recipe and reproduced it. I make it in large batches, then I freeze it. It has molasses in it, so is very dark with pumpkin seeds on the outside. Toasted, then slathered in butter and jam, it makes a divine breakfast.

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  13. Years and years ago, when I was still milking cows, somehow I got connected with a woman that had a bakery. I can’t remember if it was Romanian, or what she called it. She begged me for raw milk and I wouldn’t do it. it’s illegal. But I would bring her eggs, and she would give me a loaf of some kind of round loaf of bread. And it was really yummy.

    I have a memory of the biscuits from KFC: warm and grape jelly and being really good! I haven’t had KFC in year. But I want to stop there just to get biscuits.

    Otherwise, I’m not enough of a bread snob… just plain wheat. Not whole grains, I don’t like all the ‘stuff’ on the top.
    Kwik Trip sells a bread… I forget what it is, but it’s wheat and tastes good.
    If i’m making toast, I want a piece of bread that makes it worth the job. I hate the little puny size slices.
    We buy extra bread and put it in the freezer. Nothing worse than a fresh loave smushed in the freezer so it comes out all wrinkled and squashed. 🙂

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    1. Butter Bakery here makes fabulous (and large) buttermilk biscuits.. big enough that they could call them catheads. I have a Tupperware that is exactly the right size for two biscuits. I always take it with me to save getting one more cardboard box that practically goes from the bakery to the recycling bin at my house.

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  16. I make my own bread in a machine. After getting the basic recipe “down” some decades ago, I no longer look at recipes, and vary the ingredients on a whim. Back before there were machines I once made rye by hand, using the recipe from Joy of Cooking. It was good, but too much work to ever try again, so, I haven’t made rye bread since June of 1980.

    My favorite bread, which I’ve NEVER tried to do on my own, is sourdough. I also don’t eat it very often, because it is generally more costly than what I’m willing to spend for a loaf.

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