I’m taking the Advanced Essentials series of classes at Home Chef right now. I don’t think I really need cooking classes, but I like to take them to get new ideas about what to cook and how to cook. Last week was the first class, on breads. We made brioche and an olive bread. I make it a practice during these classes to always do “homework”, so this weekend I made a marbled rye bread. I left out the caraway seeds because Larry doesn’t like rye bread that’s too “rye”.
Larry got me this cookbook for Christmas a couple of years ago. It’s really well written, a gorgeous cookbook. The recipes are easy to understand, with lots of sidebar notes for clarification. The dough for this bread was a dream to work with. Really easy to make. I put one loaf in the refrigerator before the final proofing, and I’ll bake it in the next couple of days. My dark marble isn’t as dark as I’d like it, because I used a cocoa powder paste for the coloring instead of actual caramel color (I have some on order, though).
The bread turned out really yummy. We just had a slice with some butter, very very tasty.

• Marbled Rye Bread, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Peter Reinhart, p. 183)