rye bread: a near disaster

sometime fails turn into gigantic successes and it's oh so delightful when they do.

sunday i made rye bread, planning to use it for tempeh reubans for dinner. actually, to back up a bit, i started the bread at about midnight on saturday night so it could rise overnight easy bread style. smart, right? earlier in the evening we spent some time getting to know the menu at smuggler's cove. then we went to get dinner and had some wine. then we went to a show where i started to get very tired. then we walked home and that's when i whipped up the bread dough. still smart? not so sure. either my yeast has gone bad or my measurements were very very off because when this bread came out of the oven it felt like it had a brick inside.

needless to say we bought a loaf of bread for our sandwiches, but we pondered what to do with the rye brick. not sure it was even worthy of turning into croutons, kris and i decided to have a taste and decide it's fate. holy goodness! dense, yes...but also bursting with absolutely delicious rye flavor! it deserved to be more than croutons, more than breadcrumbs, and luckily i have a smart husband who came up with the idea to use it as a base for "eggs" florentine, or benedict...whatever the one with spinach is.

we used a couple of components from vegan brunch - hollandaise sauce and then the omelet recipe for the egg. we heated up the bread and as it got soaked with the hollandaise it was just perfect. this was one super delicious dinner!

-d