Recipe of the Month: Whole Wheat Raisin Rye

OK, I realize it may be a bit of a cheat to use a bread recipe as my Recipe of the Month for December. After all, the original point of the whole exercise was to get more fruits and veggies in my diet, and each month's selection is supposed to be a recipe that features either veggies or fruit in a prominent role. This raisin bread does contain fruit, but it's hard to argue that it's fundamentally a fruit recipe. But on the other hand, my very first Recipe of the Month was also a bread—in fact, a sweet quickbread that was closer in spirit to a cake, and thus less healthful than this one—so if that was allowed, this should be too. More to the point, there are only a couple of weeks left in December, and we're spending the last week of the month celebrating Christmas with Brian's folks, which doesn't leave us much time to squeeze in a new dish that's more veggie-centric. So calling this bread my fruit-based recipe for December seemed like the safest play.

Technically, this isn't even a brand-new recipe. Brian has made a similar raisin rye bread before, which I quite enjoyed, but that one used a mixture of white and rye flour. This time he replaced the white flour with whole-wheat flour to make a heartier (and healthier) loaf. He was afraid this substitution might mess up the texture, but it came out fine; a little dense, but still agreeably chewy. The only downside was that the whole-wheat flour somewhat overpowered the rye, so it tasted more like a whole-wheat raisin bread than a raisin rye bread. But it was tasty all the same, with a hearty, wheat-forward flavor punctuated by the pops of sweet raisins. It worked quite nicely with our new homemade plant-based spread.

So how healthy is this modified recipe? Well, it depends on your priorities. If I were still on my low-carb diet, there's no way I'd be able to eat this on a regular basis; the three small slices I usually have for breakfast contain about 50 grams of carbs, including 15 grams of sugars (mostly from the raisins). But they also have 7 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein, both of which appear to be more important for me to keep my blood sugar within a reasonable range. And with all those raisins, this fiber-packed loaf still feels like a treat.

If you'd like to give it a try, here's the complete recipe:

Whole wheat raisin rye

Ingredients:

• 1.75 cups lukewarm water
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp yeast
• 1.5 cups rye flour
• 2.5 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 Tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 1 Tbsp caraway seeds, coarsely ground
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp oil (Brian used canola)
  
• 1 cup raisins

Directions:

1. Dissolve/suspend sugar and yeast in water and set aside for a few minutes. The mixture should start to foam up.
2. Combine flours, gluten, caraway, and salt in a large bowl. Add oil and yeast mixture and stir to mix. Cover bowl with a cloth and allow to rest for 5-10 minutes.
3. Knead dough for about 5 minutes, adding additional flour or water as necessary to maintain consistency. Knead the raisins into the dough, then continue to knead for an additional five minutes. Cover the bowl with a cloth and place in a warm, moist place (an unheated oven over or next to a pan of hot water works nicely) until the dough has doubled in size (about an hour).
4. Divide the dough into two equal-sized pieces. Shape the pieces into rough cylinders and place them in two bread pans. If you’re worried about the loaves sticking to the pans, you should grease and flour the pans before placing the dough in them. Return the dough to a warm, moist place and allow it to rise until once again it is doubled in size (about an hour).
5. Bake the loaves at 375 degrees F for 30 minutes. Turn out of the pans as soon as they're finished and cool them on a wire rack if you have one.