BBA Challenge (Week 19): Marbled Rye Bread

As you can see, I’m using the term “marbled” very loosely here, as the bread you’re looking at is not even remotely marbled.

Before I start making excuses, maybe I’d better tell you how we got to this point to begin with.

Last May (or maybe it was June) I accepted a challenge along with a group of bloggers, to bake our way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

With fervor, I baked light wheat bread, herbed focaccia bread and homemade English muffins.

I met a couple of roadblocks along the way, especially when an attempt at producing a flawless loaf of French bread resulted in Plan B: a trip to my local market.

Well, I know it’s been awhile since my last Bread Baker’s Apprentice post, so now it’s time for the excuses.

Between starting a quasi-new job and taking an apartment without a dishwasher, I’ve unarguably done less baking since my move to Chicago than I used to do.

But the real reason that it took me eons to bake marbled rye bread is that one of the key ingredients, light rye flour, was nearly impossible to track down at my grocery stores.

Yes, from the grocery stores in New Jersey to the grocery stores in Chicago, I found shelves populated with dark rye flour and shelves populated with rye bread mix, but Peter Reinhart did not promise that either of those would produce an edible rye bread.

Finally, I decided to attempt the bread recipe with organic whole grain rye flour.

Not a total fail (read: the bread was edible, albeit I wouldn’t have served it to anyone outside my immediate family) but it wasn’t marbled.

I’m going to blame the flour, well, because that’s just what I’m going to do.

If you’ve been able to find light rye flour, where did you buy it? Online or brick and mortar. I’d like to give this bread another chance!