Jewish Rye Bread

New York deli loaf of sour rye studded with caraway, its crust shining with a cornstarch glaze, sliced for a pastrami sandwich

Origin: Lower East Side, New York City, USA

From the journey of Rye.

Jewish rye is the bread of the New York delicatessen: an oval loaf of rye and wheat flours soured with a rye starter, studded with caraway seed, baked on a peel dusted with cornmeal, and glazed with cornstarch so that the crust shines. It is lighter than the rye breads of Eastern Europe, sour and aromatic rather than dense, and it is the bread without which a pastrami or corned beef sandwich is not the real thing. It arrived with the great Jewish migration. In the four decades after 1881, more than two million Jews left the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Galicia, and Romania for the United States, and a great many settled first on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They brought the sour rye breads of Poland and Lithuania, and the neighbourhood filled with small bakeries, most of them in cellars, baking rye, pumpernickel, challah, and bagels through the night. Katz's Delicatessen on East Houston Street, which dates its founding to 1888, is the best known of the delis that grew up alongside them. The heavier, sourer version of the bread is called corn rye in New York, and the name has nothing to do with maize. It is usually explained by the Yiddish korn, grain, which in the rye-growing lands of Eastern Europe meant rye. The bread crossed out of its community with the help of advertising. From 1961 the Brooklyn bakery Henry S. Levy & Sons ran a campaign, created by the agency Doyle Dane Bernbach with a slogan written by the copywriter Judy Protas, of posters showing New Yorkers who were plainly not Jewish, among them a Native American man and a Black child, above the line You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's real Jewish rye. The campaign is still cited as one of the landmarks of American advertising.

Ingredients

Rye Sour

150 g white (light) rye flour
150 ml water
30 g active rye sourdough starter

Dough

350 g bread flour
100 g white (light) rye flour
1 tbsp caraway seeds
12 g fine sea salt
3 g instant yeast
230 ml lukewarm water
2 tbsp coarse cornmeal, for dusting

Glaze

1 tsp cornstarch
120 ml cold water

Method

The evening before, mix the rye flour, water, and starter for the sour, cover, and leave at room temperature for 12 to 16 hours, until bubbly and pleasantly sour.
Add the bread flour, rye flour, caraway, salt, yeast, and lukewarm water to the sour, and knead for eight to ten minutes into a smooth, slightly tacky dough.
Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about one hour, until roughly doubled.
Turn the dough out, press it flat, and roll it up tightly into an oval loaf about 30 cm long, sealing the seam underneath. Set it on baking parchment dusted with the cornmeal.
Cover and prove for 45 minutes to one hour, until puffy but not fully doubled. Meanwhile heat the oven to 230 °C with a baking stone or heavy tray inside and an empty roasting tin below.
Bring the cornstarch and cold water to the boil in a small pan, stirring until clear, and let it cool slightly. Brush the loaf with the glaze and cut three diagonal slashes across the top.
Slide the loaf onto the stone, pour a cup of boiling water into the roasting tin, and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 200 °C and bake for a further 25 minutes, brushing again with glaze five minutes before the end.
Cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Notes

White or light rye flour is milled from the centre of the grain and gives the pale, mild crumb of the New York loaf. Dark or wholemeal rye makes a heavier bread closer to corn rye. For the classic deli sandwich, pile hot pastrami or corned beef thickly between two slices spread with brown mustard, and serve with a sour pickle. Seedless rye, made the same way without caraway, is also a deli standard.

The Gastrographer

Name: Jewish Rye Bread
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 40 min
Yield: 14
Cuisine: USA
Ingredients: 150 g white (light) rye flour; 150 ml water; 30 g active rye sourdough starter; 350 g bread flour; 100 g white (light) rye flour; 1 tbsp caraway seeds; 12 g fine sea salt; 3 g instant yeast; 230 ml lukewarm water; 2 tbsp coarse cornmeal, for dusting; 1 tsp cornstarch; 120 ml cold water

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control