23 February 2026

That Rye Flour

 


The rye flour bought for £2.40 from the Farmers Market to make a medieval/Tudor maslin* loaf - just out of curiosity, then needed the purchase of a different blade for the bread-machine, which I'd not realised.

So I bought a spare ordinary blade at the same as they came in a pack of  one of each for £5.99.  AND THEN ........even sillier, when I came to set the menu for the loaf on the bread-machine I found my model didn't have that setting, which of course is the very reason it didn't come with a rye flour blade....Duh!

 I let the machine do the dough making and then bunged it in a loaf tin and cooked in the oven.....curiosity can be more complicated than it was meant to be!



It's taste? Deliciously nutty and different. 

Below is info I found from a blog called Breadclub20. (My loaf didn't include floor sweepings!, just rye and wholewheat flours)

*Meanwhile, down at the other end of the social ladder.....and, really, you couldn't get much lower, the peasants and the lower orders ate Maslin, a bread originally made using barley and pea flours and a fair bit of millstone grit. Not necessary for roughage, but probably accounted for all manner of dental problems as people moved into adulthood. Add to that, chaff, straw and the sweepings-up from the bakehouse floor, and you had a bread fit for only the very poor. 

By the time we reach Tudor times, the 'best' Maslin was made from a blended flour of wheat and rye often grown together. 

27 comments:

  1. It really looks like great bread!!

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    1. Very nice taste - quite different to what I usually make

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  2. I bet that tastes good. You have led me down a delightful research path - I have found how to get a tight top on bread so it rises well, and then looked up this Maslin bread link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzLAZB2EfWA and was fascinated to see that the 600 year old thatch removed from a cottage roof contained TWENTY different types of wheat, all grown together. The Rye was essential in wet summers as it would grow when the ordinary wheat didn't, and it also kept a loaf fresh (unwrapped of course) for a week or so. Plain wheat loaves go stale after a couple of days. I must experiment now!

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    1. Thank you for that fascinating link. I added my comment and link to blog there!

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  3. The rye bread looks delicious and glad the machine did the mixing for you with the new blade.

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    1. Catriona-sorry!

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    2. Foolishly I didn't make a note of what setting I used or oven temps so will try it again and make sure to write things down

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  4. Best laid plans and all that! Still it looks good and tasted good and you enjoyed it. I love rye bread.

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    1. I feel I'm very late in life to be trying Rye Bread!

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  5. I made rye bread last week, as well. My son gave me his thrifted bread maker and a book with bread machine recipes. The book said to use the whole wheat setting. It turned out very nice.

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  6. I always forget to write useful things down too! Looks very tasty bread.
    Alison in Devon x

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    1. It's like when I find out how to do something on the computer and have no idea how I got there

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  7. I make (when I can find rye flour around here; not often) a raisin-rye bread with rye and whole wheat flours. The trick for hand-kneading is to keep dipping the hands in water, but for my kneading machine (a large one, kneads 20 cups of flour) I add an extra half-cup or so of water as it goes. -Kate

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  8. My recipe, should you choose to accept this mission: http://stubblejumperscafe.blogspot.com/2014/09/raisin-rye-bread.html

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  9. The loaf looks great, I love rye bread. Well done for persevering, I would have put it in the too hard basket.

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  10. I love Rye bread but have only had store bought loaves. Your homemade must be delicious. It looks like an excellent dark loaf of bread. The nutty flavor of rye bread makes a great deli style sandwich.

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  11. I have in the past bought some rye flour and experimented in a blend and yes, how sticky does it get! Glad you had success.

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  12. That looks delicious. We love rye bread. It almost makes me wish that I still had a bread maker.

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  13. I know this is a bit off message, I don't make my own bread at the moment (I'm looking into a small bread maker), but my favourite bread of all time is M&S Wholemeal with Rye. It's probably a poor second, I know.

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  14. Your bread looks like a perfect rye loaf. Delicious.

    God bless.

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  15. The bread looks lovely. What an interesting bit of history. Not sure I'd like eating the bread made from bits off the floor lol

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