I am currently reading Cooked by Michael Pollan, and I just started the chapter titled "Air", in which he goes into great detail about baking and the use of "air" in creating cooked food for ourselves. Although I have more than half of the chapter yet to read, I find it fascinating. So when I realized this coincided with the Easter European Rye recipe (in the Baking with Julia baking group), I became quite excited to use some "air" to make this delicious bread.
Luckily for me, it did turn out delicious. It appears to be a pretty forgiving bread as I left it to rise much longer than required for all of its rises. In addition to this, it was quite workable. I decided to hand knead it and give my mixer a break and was surprised at the ease of this process. (Maybe this had something to do with the shortening used in the mix.)
I am now looking forward to some Reubens either tonight or later this week. And of course, breakfast toast will be amazing.
