Hello Fred,
Thank you for appreciating the recipe. We have hopped over the border a few times, to taste some German rye bread. It still is something bakers over here do not produce as well. Making your own is almost always the best option to get something you can truly enjoy (making and eating).
As for the raisins, it is indeed the second option you mention with the draining.
We have used a tangzhong on a few occasions quite a while a ago, but never with this recipe, only for the fluffy white version. We do not have enough up-to-date experience to say something really meaningful about it. Just that all these methods are fun to try to find out how it works, what the outcome is and if you like it enough to make it a staple.
We do have our own favorite white bread which is this one:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…wich-loaf/
One project could be incorporating a tangzhong and find out if it would improve the end result.
So much to bake and try, not enough time!

Enjoy your baking 🙂

wonderful recipe! I was about to create my own 70 % rye raisin bread since it is a speciality for the German “Münsterland” as well – well, I guess the borders are fluent here since not only for baked goods you can find a lot of similarities at the German-Dutch-Border.
Anyways, your recipe helps a lot!

I am just wondering: how much water do you use to soak your raisins? And does that need to be subtracted from the volumes you state in recipe above? Or is it more like an addition in the sense of “use an excessive amount of water, let the raisins soak as much as they can and drain the remaining water afterwards”?

Thanks and best
Fred

PS: have you thought about using a Tangzhong?

Hello Jack,
Yes this is indeed instant dried yeast and you can add it directly to the mix in stage 3.
(If it says ‘active dried yeast’ on your package, then you are dealing with a type of yeast that needs to be activated before use. But we assume you also have the instant dried type that can be used directly)
Hope you will give the recipe a go and you will like it as much as we do.

Enjoy your baking!

Hello Lilian,
Yes, excellent! The tin can work very well and we also get a few burned raisins and just take them off if needed.
Thank you for trying and liking this recipe and enjoy the upcoming (baking) weekend!

Thanks so much for another interesting recipe. I was a bit nervous about this one, but it turned out fine and tastes delicious – the raisins go really well – even though it was not easy to work with. Do you think putting it in a loaf tin might help to avoid handling after final proofing?

Next time I must remember to poke the raisins right into the dough to avoid burning.

Hello Michael,
Thank you for your nice words about the site and recipes.
This recipe is from quite some years back, and it slipped our attention that we did not state that we mean ‘white’ wheat flour or bread flour or as you call it all-purpose wheat flour. We use a stone ground organic all purpose wheat flour with about 12.5% protein ourselves for this recipe and many other bread recipes.
Do not worry about the slight sagging of the dough when turning it out of the basket or loading it, this is normal. With the right use of flour and point of proofing and use of steam in the oven it should bounce back. Otherwise you maybe need to tweak a few things like looking at possible over-proofing, the amount of protein in flour, depending on the recipe of course and the amount of steam you can create and the (initial) temperature of your oven. Make sure the temp does not collapse when opening the oven and loading it.
See our oven tips too:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…your-oven/
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…ven-users/

Enjoy your baking and experimenting!
Ed & Marieke
WKB

Your recipe calls for “wheat flour” but you don’t indicate if it’s whole wheat or all-purpose wheat (white). Thanks for the clarification. This bread is wonderful but my loaf always seems to collapse a bit when I load it. I hate that flattening effect. I’ll keep trying.

All the best!

Hello Hanna,
Thank you for trying and liking this recipe too! If you want to bake your bigger loaf the indication for the baking time is around 60 to 65 minutes depending on your oven.
Hope it will be great, together with the croissants you will have something more healthy and something just plain delicious to indulge!

Greetings,
Ed & Marieke
WKB

Thank you SLF for the excellent feedback, ‘sounds’ like you will bake some more. If you want to try a totally different rye recipe, take a look at this one:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…rye-bread/

Always happy to ‘hear’ about the results!

Thank you! I live in the USA, and want to try it.. will let you know what comes out!

Hello Dani,
In Holland we do not make this distinction, we only have whole rye and light rye. We can say that our whole rye flour is made by milling the whole rye grain into flour, so that would come closest to the pumpernickel we guess.
Hope it will be good!

Great Bea, always want to see results. If you want you can also share pics here:
www.weekendbakery.com/send-…your-loaf/

Enjoy your baking and the Easter weekend!

CHEERS! I´ll share the result

Hello Colleen,
Can you explain with what method you make your own yeast? If it is suitable for bread baking then it will be for this recipe too.