Mother's Brown Bread
9 c. lukewarm water
1 1/2 T. dry yeast
4 1/2 c. whole wheat flour (preferably a coarse variety)
9 c. rye flour
3 T. salt
3 T. dark molasses
4 1/2 c. white flour
Put water into a large roasting pan; the dough rises a lot. Add yeast and stir until dissolved. Add the whole wheat flour and half of the rye flour. Stir well, cover and leave on the counter for about 15 hours (a bit more or less will not hurt.) Next, add salt and molasses and mix well; add the remainder of the flour. This gets stiff and must be mixed in very well. Let it sit about 4 hours. This will rise a great deal, forming a loose sticky sponge. Flour a pastry cloth very well with white flour, leaving some excess of flour on it. Prepare 6 bread pans, using a spray or grease well. Pre-heat oven to 425°. Scoop up enough dough to half fill a bread pan and put on floured cloth, turning to coat with the flour so it can be worked. (The stickiness will be contained once it is coated with flour.) Knead enough to form into a nice loaf and put in pan. Continue with the rest of the pans. When they are all done, wet your hand, and with it, wet the tops of the loaves and press into the corners of the pans a bit. Let sit 10 minutes, then bake 1 1/4 hours. Take out of pans and put on racks to cool. Loaves freeze very well. Recipe can easily be halved.
When I growing up in a little Upper Peninsula town, there was only a small Jewish community and none of the conveniences which families now have for keeping kosher. Our meat came 250 miles by train from Milwaukee and Jewish rye bread was only an occasional treat, when my father made a rare trip to Chicago. Most of the Jewish families made all their own bread to make sure no dairy products were in the bread. Besides, it was much better than the local store-bought variety. My mother made brown bread and white bread, plus bagels,
onion rolls and even kaiser rolls every week, but the brown bread is right at home in the new "natural foods" environment of today. Yield: 6 loaves
