SIX YEARS AGO (but who’s counting?) I wrote about this incredible (and easy to make) Salt-Crusted Currant Rye Bread,
from Patrick O’Connell of The Inn at Little Washington. My reason then was the dreary, drizzly early-spring weather. But LittleBird Janet suggests that the wintry blast forecast for this weekend might be just as good a reason to light the oven.
Now, as then, here are some tips: Before you decamp to the kitchen, first a quick trip to the supermarket, unless you already have rye flour, currants, caraway seeds and pecans in the pantry. And yeast! Don’t forget to buy yeast! Try to get the caraway seeds at a place that sells them in bulk: Otherwise those precious little jars will run you a fortune because you’ll probably want two of them.
Assemble, mix, let rise (only about an hour), form long, slim loaves, bake and then make sure the butter is out of the fridge because a sheen of butter on a slim slice of this party-size rye bread is going to make your weekend a whole lot brighter.
You can find Chef O’Connell’s recipe here. And if you’d like to discover that, yes, you really can make Rabbit Braised in Apple Cider or Miniature Caramelized Onion Tartlets, you can buy his book—the one I keep going back to—here.
—Nancy McKeon
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