Rye Dill Bread

On my day off last week I was eager to make bread and to use two ingredients: rye flour and dill seed from my garden. I used two Joy of Cooking recipes as my guide and made plenty modifications.

Here's what I ended up with.

Rye Dill Bread

Combine the following in a large bowl or mixer.

1 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup rye flour
1/2 whole wheat flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp dill seeds
1/4 cup chopped onion
I package yeast ( 2 1/4 tsp)
1 1/4 tsp salt

Mix dry ingredients together.

Add:
3/4 cup warm water (115-125 degrees F)
1 large egg

Mix together with spoon or dough hook on mixer. Add 1/4 cup of all purpose flour at a time for a total of 3/4 to 1 cup, until dough is smooth but not sticky.

Knead 10 minutes until elastic.

Place in oiled bowl and let rise for 30-45 minutes until doubled in size. Punch down and place in greased loaf pan. Let rise again for 30-45 minutes until doubled again. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 450 degrees F. When loaf is risen, brush top with melted butter and sprinkle with dill seeds and salt.

Bake 10 minutes at 450, then decrease oven temperature to 350 and bake 35-40 minutes more. Loaf is done when crust is a deep brown and sounds hollow when knocked on the bottom. Turn out of pan and cool on wire rack.

My loaf made a nice brown crunchy crust because I used a stoneware baking pan. The rye flavor wasn't pronounced, I may increase the rye next time. I was conservative with it because I know it can negatively influence how much the bread rises. The dill flavor was definitely there, but not too strong.

Dill Seeds

The dill seeds I picked three weeks ago have been dry on the stalk for a week now. Today I pinched them off, and shook them in a strainer to get rid of some of the stalks. At first I thought that this was a lot of dill seeds, but then I realized that I put a tablespoon of them into a jar of dilly beans and these wouldn't go far.
I also picked the rest of the dill from a garden before we pulled up the plants in our fall clean up.

Squash

Today's harvest focused on the squash and dill. The winter squash were dying back and they weren't getting any bigger so we decided to have them for dinner. Each plant only produced one. Both are rather small because I crowded the squash and because my soil could have used more improvement this past spring. Here is the delicata off the vine.
And here it is sliced open. The buttercup squash, And the beautiful orange interior. We also cut a few tiny Zucchini (For some reason my plant is only putting out female blossoms right now). I also harvested some of the dill seeds today.
This small section was picked green a few days ago, and the rest should look that way soon.