Rye is it so?

I finally tracked down a bag of rye flour today.

Why rye?

I have this recipe for walnut bread that requires 20% rye flour to 80% white flour. I have made the walnut bread twice so far, and it is superb with cheese. This stuff costs you about $6 a loaf in a specialty baker, so it is worth trying to make it at home. But the two loaves where made with no rye flour, and I figured that maybe they would be even better with a bit of rye in them.

I'm not a huge fan of rye bread. I always find that it is too dry, even when smothered in cream cheese and topped with gravalax and caviar and dill. I love that topping, but find that I can never stuff myself with as much of it as I want to if it is on rye. If its on blinis however, I could eat a wheelbarrow full.

Since this recipe is only 20% rye, I figured it would not be too heavy - it would just add some flavour. So I thought I'd try it.

I tried the supermarket. No rye.

I tried the local health food store. No rye.

I tried a Balmain supermarket and then a Balmain health food store. None.

Cripes, if you can't buy it in Balmain, where do you get it from? Do I have to go to bloody Scandinavia to get it?

Then today, I am in Slurry Hills. I stop at an organic store. Do they have it? One of the other main centres of greendom?

No.

There is only one place left - Macro in Crows Nest.

I used to live down the road from Crows Nest, and was quite impressed when Macro opened. When you are thinking of health food stores, Macro is the equivalent in this market segment to Coles in the normal supermarket segment. The store is huge (for a greenie store). It stocks lots of interesting bread, and more importantly for me, really strong and stinky cheese. Rind washed cheese. French stinkers like Pont Le Veque, which usually retails for about $80 a kilo or more.

I always avoided their vegies and fruit - too blotchy and buggy and expensive for me. But the cheese - magnifique!

So I drove all the way to Crows Nest to visit Macro. I got no cheese, but I did get rye flour.

Now I normally buy flour at the markets in 10 or 12 kg bags for $8 to $10 a bag. Put it this way - I normally pay less than $1 per kg of flour.

Bloody rye flour was $4 for 750gm! What's in this stuff? White truffles? Saffron threads? How can you pay that much money for bloody flour? So what if it's organic - it's just bloody ground up grain!

Well, at least I will get at least 7 loaves of bread out of this bag - assuming that the bread tastes any good with up to 100gms of rye flour in it. I made a loaf tonight (without the walnuts). We'll have to see what it is like in the morning. I'll try the old Damien favourite - boiled eggs with toast soldiers. Love 'em.