Imaging: 10 hours in the oven at night and then awaken to the aroma of the fresh rye bread!
As a child I loved this dark, moist rye bread, which in Holland we call Frisian Rye bread (‘Fries roggebrood’ or our version of a fine pumpernickel, however the structure is more compact and very moist). I never thought that one day I would make it myself and the result would be so rewarding! You have to be patient with this one, because it takes about 10 hours in the oven, but if you put it in before going to bed you will wake to a wonderful smell of fresh rye bread that has magically transformed itself while you were sleeping. I like it best with mature Dutch cheese with cumin or cloves. Rye bread is also eaten with bacon to accompany split pea soup, one of our proud Dutch culinary traditions. And did I mention it is very healthy too, one of the best ways to get that recommended daily doses of fiber…
makes 2 loaves
Ingredients for the Rye Bread
700 g broken whole grain rye (cracked rye)
200 g whole grain rye flour
50 g fine rye flour (can be substituted with wheat flour)
50 g wheat flour
2 tbsps date syrup or molasses
13 g sea salt
700 ml HOT water
approx. 200 ml water at room temperature
wheat germ for coating
Note: We understand if you do not want to use tin foil. We want to experiment with other options like pullman tins, Dutch ovens or maybe a tin with wet baking paper lid, securely fastened with string. If you use anything else, we would love to hear about it of course!
Making the Rye Bread
Before you start you need two pans of about 20 cm long by 14 cm wide and 4.5 cm high to put the loaves in when they go into the oven. We use (disposable) aluminum pans, the same ones that are used to make sugar loaves. These pans have different measurements (21x10x6) but almost the same volume, so they work great too, the loaves are just a bit smaller and higher than the pans originally used for this type of recipe. Just aim for a volume of about 1260cm³ / 76.89 in³.
Before their night in the oven the loaves get coated in wheat germ…more fibres please
Start with placing the 700 g broken whole grain rye in a (plastic) bowl and add the HOT water (just off the boil). Mix with a wooden spoon, cover and leave to rest/soak for 2 hours. The broken rye grains will absorb all the water and become soft, this is very important for the rye bread to become a success! Preheat your oven at 110° Celsius/ 230° Fahrenheit (yes, you bake this bread on a low temperature!). Now add the rest of the ingredients, including the 200 g of water at room temperature.
Note: the adding of the exact amount of water is a matter of experience and depends on how soft you want the rye bread to become. You will see what works best for you and your own ingredients as you make the recipe more often. Now knead well by hand or mixer until combined. Be careful a KitchenAid style mixer can handle it because the dough is very tough and sticky, use your hands if your mixer gets too hot or starts acting funny. We use a bigger spiral mixer, brand Hauessler from Germany, that is up to this sort of job. Divide in two equal portions and shape them into loaves that fit in the pans. Roll the loaves through the wheat germ until all sides are thinly covered and place them in the pans.
The finished product is lovely and moist and keeps very well in the fridge
Now cover the pans completely with 2 layers of aluminum foil so no moisture can escape. Place the loaves in the preheated oven and leave them there for 9 to 12 hours (we did 9.5 the first time and 10 the second run and they both got good results). Take the pans out of the oven but DO NOT OPEN until completely cooled to avoid losing moisture! This can take several hours, so curb your curiosity.
The baking period needs to be this long because the rye substance is very compact and contains almost no air, making heat transfer slow. This is a very old Dutch (Frisian) recipe, we think this bread was normally baked (cooked almost) during the night on the residual heat of a stove.
Cut into 3-4 mm slices with a wet bread knife (dip in water after each slice), the bread is very crumbly and sticky. You can make little packs of sliced rye bread that keep very well in your fridge for over a week. You can keep the rest for much longer in the freezer.
We like to thank ‘roggebrood fanaat’ at bakkerswereld.org for this excellent recipe.
Anna says
I line the inside of my loaf tin with baking paper (I cut it to the size of the tin, the long sides are covered with the paper, the short sides stay uncovered), put in the dough and then fold the baking paper over the dough, so the baking paper touches the dough and covers it.
Then I put 2 to 3 layers of aluminium foil on the outside of the tin and close everything up. This way the foil doesn’t touch the dough, the bread never sticks to the tin (I can take it out in a neat little package), and everything is still nice and moist.
I love this recipe and come back to it time and time again. I hope this helps the people who, like me, don’t like the foil touching the dough.
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you so much for all your helpful hints!
Earl Kamps says
We use a Wolf Steam Oven to bake our Dutch Rye Bread. How would you change the cooking process when using a steam oven? We can use pure steam at 210 degrees or also a steam/convection setting at a higher temp. If we just use 210 steam how long would you cook it? Thanks for your help.
Maria says
Hello again from Colorado, USA! I wanted to take a look at your rye bread recipe, and it’s similar to how I make it. Though to respond to your musing about using other tins for this dense bread, I have had wonderful luck with using a lidded Pullman tin to produce a moist, consistently uniform, very slice-able loaf of rye. This is the Pullman tin I use: breadtopia.com/store…pan-small/
Pieter van Leeuwen says
Beste Ed and Marieke
Reasonable success with your recipe, given it was just the first time through. It just didn’t rise at all. Covered with foil dome, baked for 12 hours in a pan sitting in a crock pot set to lowest setting (“LO”) above Keep Warm, with water halfway up the sides of the pan. Slices easily and very tasty. To Americans — found the rye berries at Natural Grocers, then used a blender on pulse to crack them.
(via GT) Redelijk succes met je recept, aangezien het pas de eerste keer was. Het kwam gewoon helemaal niet omhoog. Bedekt met foliekoepel, 12 uur gebakken in een pan in een crock-pot ingesteld op de laagste stand (“LO”) boven Warm houden, met water halverwege de zijkanten van de pan. Makkelijk te snijden en erg lekker. Voor Amerikanen — vonden de roggebessen bij Natural Grocers en gebruikten vervolgens een blender om ze te kraken.
Groetjes uit Florida
Pieter
Nili Benazon says
Hello,
I notice there is no yeast in your recipe. I am wondering how the bread will rise with no yeast or sourdough?
Thank you,
Nili
Weekend Bakers says
No Yeast! Only expansion from the moisture!
Paula says
It doesn’t rise much at all, so it is dense – like pumpernickel but way better than that German variety you can buy. It is delicious. I have made it for my Dutch born husband and I’m going to make some more this week, that’s why I’m here again for the recipe 🙂
Paula says
Oh you do need a good, sharp bread knife, mine is a wide, serrated one Mercer Culinary Millennia Wide Bread Knife, Stainless Steel, Black, 10-Inch www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0…#038;psc=1
Nili Benazon says
Hello,
I am very eager to make this bread, but I cannot find cracked rye, only the whole rye wheat berries. Would it be a mistake to try it with whole rye wheat berries, must it be cracked? Can I crack it myself?? Is there another name for cracked rye that I could search? I am trying to buy this ingredient on amazon.
Thank you.
Paula says
Hi Nili Try Shipton Mill in the UK www.shipton-mill.com/flour…el-607.htm
I’ve also used their malted cut rye successfully. It’s a good recipe, do keep it tightly wrapped cooking and cooling. The whole berries are extremely hard so I only got a spoonful of rye powder after minutes in my food processor. You’ll need to find the cracked or cut stuff. Hope the UK link is useful. Paula
Hugo De Vries says
> Cut into 3-4 mm slices
3 mm (1/8″) is only the thickness of 4 credit cards, so good luck with that. Why would you even want to cut it that thin — are we such delicate creatures now? My “beppe” (Frisian for granny) would cut it in slices at least 8-9 mm, and even so, it would easily fall apart…
But thank you for the recipe and the tips, I now know what I have been doing wrong in the past.
Jennette says
Success! I wasn’t sure it would be. The ‘dough’ was very wet and sticky. And was difficult to roll in the wheat bran. I was tempted to add more flour to dry it up – glad I didn’t!
I ground whole rye grain in a food processor.
Baked as directed for ten hours, and it took half the day to cool.
Great recipe. Thank you!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Jennette,
So glad you followed the recipe as described and it turned out just as it supposed to!
Enjoy your baking and eating!
Sheri says
Where can I buy this bread. Izzio’s Bakery in Colorado had this bread and stooped selling it due to Covid-19. It was the only Bread I could eat. Just started eating it in July 2020 and the stopped making it at the end of July 2020.
The equipment is stored in their building and id now for Sale. How Sad😥😥I am a very busy Health Coach and do not have the time to do this.
Weekend Bakers says
Hope somebody among your friends and / or family will be able to bake this delicious bread for you Sheri!
Alisa Cohen says
Still struggling to get this right…The first time it turned out very hard and dry. I always halve the recipe. I think the issue then, was that I baked it in a cast iron pan ,but there was a lot of space to the top. I did cover it well. The second time, came out too wet. I accidentally used the full amount of water (700 ml for 350 gr of cracked rye), but I used smaller loaf pans that were filled all the way up to the rim. They were 14.5 by 8.5 by 5 cm. The third time, I used the same pans, followed exactly the recipe, and covered them well with first wax paper then foil. I baked the loaves only for 6 hours, because the pans are small. AI let them cool completely. Again, the loaves were a bit dry, and hard on the outside. Do you think I baked them too long? Is there an internal temperature the bread should be at, or is it not a good idea to open the loaf to test that? I could go with the full measurements (not half) and see if that would totally fill a cast iron pan to the top, but it is such a pity if the bread then is not really eatable….Also, some people put a dish with steaming water in the oven, would that make it moister? Thanks. I ‘m persistent!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Alisa,
It is very hard for us to determine what exactly is the matter. The first two attempts you did not follow the recipe as described and the second time the amounts where not right too. So this will be part of the explanation. When the bread is too dry we sooner would think steam somehow still escaped while cooking the bread. It is not a good idea to open the loaf to test. We never do this. The steam and moisture is essential. We really hope you will be able to try the recipe as described with the right amounts and cooking and cooling times. If this is successful than that is the right starting point for possible small changes.
Hope you will give it another go!
Alisa Cohen says
Beste Marieke,
I live in the US, and was going to tackle this roggebrood as, to my big disappointment, Bolletje will no longer ship to the US. Anyway, I have run into the following problems:
1) I cannot find any cracked rye! I found whole rye berries, but now I have to grind them. I ground up a little in a pepper mill, but it is too much work for 700 gr., or even half as I was going to make one loaf at first.
2) how will the rye bread get so dark? Just from two tblsp of molasses? The cracked rye and flour are light in color….I just want to make sure that I have the right ingredients, before I start tackling this recipe!
Thanks for your advice!
Alisa
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Alisa,
Thank you for your comment. We understand what you mean. The darkness comes with the caramelization of the sugars in the flour and grain during the long cooking process. The whole grains, when they are cracked are in fact a grain in three or four pieces, so not ground to a flour consistency. Hope you can make it work!
Greetings from Holland and sorry about Bolletje 😉
G yel says
Looks delicious. Can you tell me what you could use, or would they have used traditionally, instead of aluminum foil to keep the moisture in when baking? I’d rather not use aluminum foil for the environment’s sake.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello G yel,
You are very right, we totally agree to look for an alternative and will do so in the future too. We just have not yet found the ultimate solution, but will try and use a pullman tin first or maybe some type of Dutch oven. Another suggestion would be to use a tin with a ‘lid’ made with (wet) baking paper tightened with string. We are not sure if moisture will escape because it is important to trap all the moisture for the bread to be good. We are open to suggestions of course and will update the recipe with this information so others will be able to have this option too.
Thank you and hope the loafs will be great!
sigrid says
Hoi Marieke en Ed,
Dank jullie wel voor dit recept. Ik heb de dadelstroop weggelaten en hem zonder zoetstof gemaakt en hij is perfect gelukt en smaakt ook zalig! Ik koop nooit meer roggebrood. Bedankt voor het delen van jullie kennis! Mijn familie denkt dat ik heel goed kan bakken, maar het geheim is het strikt volgen van jullie goed uitgekiende recepten!Ik heb al meerdere broodrecepten gebruikt van jullie website, zoals de desemboule, pain campagne en de crackers. Jullie techniek van een klein beetje desem aanhouden vind ik ook heel fijn! Dus veel dank hiervoor! Groeten Sigrid
Weekend Bakers says
Hallo Sigrid,
Je comment tovert direct een lach op ons gezicht. Heel fijn dat meerdere van onze recepten zo goed in de smaak vallen. Wij denken precies zo over het roggebrood. Geweldig om zelf te maken. En we hebben al veel mensen enthousiast gemaakt met de methode met het kleine desempotje. Geweldig dat het zo bevalt.
We hopen dat je nog lang mag genieten van het bakken, eten en delen met familie en vrienden!
Ed & Marieke
Weekend Bakers
Ronda says
This looks fabulous! But what I would like is a recipe for
Sourdough Rye Crispbreads!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Ronda,
We have never made that ourselves, but if you do find a good recipe, we would love to hear about it! Maybe this one will be a good one to give a try? www.thebreadshebakes.com/2015/…ad-recipe/
Jeltje Gillian says
Thank you so much for the excellent recipe! It is just as I remember it. 😁 The Dutch ryebread we get here has preservatives in it which gives it a peculiar sour taste which I don’t like.. I milled the rye myself and baked it in the woodfired Rayburn stove. We just had a lunch of our farm -made sheep’s cheese between a slice of ryebread and a rusk! Can’t get more Friesian than that! 😃
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Jeltje,
That sounds absolutely fantastic. So glad this recipe has given you something authentic to bake, love and share. Great to read the woodfired stove gave good result too with this recipe. Excellent!
Greetings from Holland,
Marieke & Ed
Paula says
very happy to have found this recipe for my Dutch born husband. It’s about to go into my fan assisted oven, should I reduce the temperature or the cooking time?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Paula,
So great you want to make this recipe. We have to say we never made this recipe in a fan oven, but if we did, we would reduce the temperature to 100 C / 210 F and make sure the loaves are really, really well wrapped so no moisture can escape!
Hope it will be great, good luck with is.
Groetjes uit Nederland,
Ed & Marieke
Paula says
I was ready to bake so I reduced the temperature to 90c, triple wrapped in foil, baked 10 3/4 hours and left untouched to cool about 9 hours. My husband loved it and ate half a loaf that night 🙂 I think it was moister than the HEMA version he found at Stansted airport (airside), but our closest HEMA is 90km away, so I will be making this regularly, thank you very much. I think I will try 95c next time. For UK followers I found chopped rye at the shipton-mill website, along with cut malted rye grains, so I used 500g chopped rye, 200g cut malted rye and 3tbsp molasses to make it darker. Next experiment is to bake in a 1938 coal-fired Rayburn stove 🙂
Weekend Bakers says
Hi again Paula,
Excellent, sounds like you cracked the code and it will be all good and better from this point on. Happy husband, happy baking and very good tips for other bakers.
Hope your Rayburn version will be great too!
Chris Baron says
Really excited to try this, we had this growing us as kids, but it was always bought at the store. Making it right now, I will let you know how it goes in 12 hours.
Weekend Bakers says
How did it go Chris?
Chris Baron says
Amazing. It brought back years of great memories. I am working on my second batch!
Weekend Bakers says
Wonderful. Happy rye baking and a lovely (baking) weekend!
wilma Jonker says
Can this be converted to US measures?
Weekend Bakers says
For handy conversions please check our baking conversion page: www.weekendbakery.com/cooki…nversions/
Stephanie Boucher says
Lovely recipe which I am recommending to my Dutch friends in the UK. I couldn’t get broken rye grains, though, only whole ones, so although the taste was great, the texture was too crumbly and very chewy. Where do you get broken rye?
eva says
i believe it is called cracked rye in the US
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Eva,
Thank you, we have added this term to the recipe!
Jessica Borg says
Hi,
Can I cook this in a slightly hotter oven for less time? What would you suggest, its just that I’m not confident to leave the oven on over night or during the day when I’m at work
Would it be possible in a slow cooker I wonder?
Thanks, Jess
Weekend Bakers says
The whole idea of the rye bread is to cook it slowly so it turns dark of the long cooking process. We never tried it in a shorter period in a hotter oven. So we do not have any timings for you. If you do try it please let us know what works or does not work so can also learn.
Ineke Berentschot says
ha Marieke en Ed, ik heb heeeel dankbaar gebruik gemaakt van jullie Engelse beschrijving van zwart roggebrood. Benta Vos uit New York zocht het recept van dat heerlijke brood, dat haar opa altijd bakte. Dank, groet, Ineke
Anna says
Ik ben een geboren en getogen Fries, gek op ‘brea’ en een enthousiast amateur bakker. Ik móest dit recept natuurlijk proberen! En daar ben ik blij mee, want het is ‘spot on’ Frysk roggebrea. Ik werd een beetje bang gemaakt door wat commentaar hieronder over ‘hard en droog’, dus ik heb goed gebruik gemaakt van de adviezen en mijn standaard bakblik bekleed met alufolie. Daar heb ik het deeg in gedaan en de boel er goed overheen afgesloten, zodat ik in principe zo dat pakket weer uit het blik had kunnen tillen. Dat heb ik niet gedaan, en ik heb nog twee extra lagen folie over het bakblik gedaan om er zeker van te zijn dat er niks uit kon. Tien uren op 110 graden celsius en 12 uren laten afkoelen. Het resultaat is perfect: smaakvol en een beetje kleffig. Precies zoals Fries roggebrood hoort te zijn. Bedankt voor dit recept en de (zoals altijd) uitgebreide en goede instructies!
Weekend Bakers says
Hoi Anna, ik denk dat personen die klagen over droog, inderdaad het pakketjes niet goed lucht dicht hebben gemaakt. Er mag geen vocht ontsnappen gedurende het bakken. Fijn te horen dat het recept in de smaak valt. Happy baking!
Ineke says
And that would be bean soup 🙂
Ineke says
My guy friend baked your Fries roggebrood for me! He had never seen nor eaten Fries roggebrood but I told him that, when in Holland visiting my parents, I catch up on my roggebrood crave by exclusively eating Fries roggebrood for breakfast and lunch! Also I had shown him your recipe. Imagine my surprise yesterday when he served me bean soap with roggebrood! The loaves turned out beautifully, moist, with the bread’s structure and chewiness just right. Great tasting bread. It is essential to leave it tightly covered and cool it completely before attempting to slice it. He used the disposable alu pans as you suggested. And he told me it was actually fun to make and easy too if one carefully followed your instructions. He appreciated your explanations with the instructions.
Weekend Bakers says
Good to hear the roggebrood was a success. We love a thin slice of roggebrood with a slice of dutch cheese, especially the Beemster cheeses. Happy baking!
Jaime Mas says
He descubierto este blog y la verdad que estoy encantado. No solo por las recetas que las hay excelentes, sino también por todas las explicaciones de los distintos
procesos de la panificación.
Felicitaciones y gracias,
Jaime
Weekend Bakers says
¡Hola! Jaime,
Our Spanish is not very good but with the help of google translate we understand what you are saying and we thank you very much for your compliment and for liking our recipes and tips.
Happy baking / Hornear feliz,
Marieke & Ed
Ev says
I’m disappointed. I followed the recipe precisely (using a scale) but halved it as my husband doesn’t care for roggebrood. This morning, I was all set to cut into it and have a slice with butter and medium Gouda (my fave way of having roggebrood) and I couldn’t even cut it. It is as hard as a rock.
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Ev, for sharing your result with us. As you can hopefully judge from our picture this bread needs to be soft and moist. The challenge, next to carefully weighing like you did, is to keep ALL the moisture in, both when baking and when cooling completely. If any moisture escapes the bread will become dry and hard! That is why we emphasized this particularly in the last paragraph of the recipe. Hope you will give it another try because the recipe does work. As a consolation we can tell you that many recipes we make the first time turn out less than perfect. It always takes time and effort and adjustments to make it your own for your ingredients, equipment, climate and hands, and this is especially true in bread baking we have found.
Greetings,
Ed & Marieke
Ev says
For now, I’ve wrapped the loaf in a damp tea towel and put it into a plastic bag in the fridge. I’ll see if that helps.
I will definitely be trying it again, perhaps with a smaller loaf pan. I noticed in some of the comments that the size of the pan may be a factor. I found one website that didn’t even use pans; the loaf itself was wrapped in a double or triple layer of foil and sealed before baking. I might even try it that way.
Weekend Bakers says
I think your last suggestion could do the trick very well. Hope it will turn out nice and moist!
Gerry Schultz says
Many years ago my husband was stationed in Bad Kissingen, Germany, and we fell in love with the European breads we bought while living there. The very small commissary on the base sold a rye bread that was the best I have ever tasted–but they only sold it occasionally and usually did not have many loaves at a time. This bread had a ‘chewy’ crust and was a very dark and heavy loaf of bread–no raisins were in the loaf. The interior of the bread was soft and somewhat moist but not extremely moist–difficult to explain. I have looked for years for a recipe for this bread and have had no luck…have gone to several different German stores here in the United States looking for a similar bread. Most of the rye breads we have bought were nothing comparable to the taste/texture of the bread we remembered from our time in Germany. Do you have an idea what type of rye bread this might have been? Or do you think it was something only found in that one area of Germany? We loved the fresh Brötchen we were able to buy there, also, and have had no luck finding anything similar here in the U.S. The breads you have pictured look so delicious and I definitely am going to try some of your recipes. I find I have more luck using weight measurements instead of volume measurements that most of the recipes here use. Thank you for all the wonderful hints you have shared for making breads.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Gerry,
Thank you for sharing your memories with us. I am sorry but we are not very familiar with the German types of rye bread, only the Duthc ones, and they are not very similar. We can recommend this very dark and moist ryebread from our province of Friesland: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…rye-bread/. and for the German rye we can recommend contacting the lady behind this blog: hanseata.blogspot.nl/ (Of German origin, living in America). Hope she can help you find your beloved recipe.
And we always applaud people who use scales and weigh ingredients. Sometimes it’s odd people spend a lot of money buying all kinds of kitchen gadgets but will not ‘invest’ 20 dollars or so in a scale. It is such a big help when baking (bread), because after all it is more or less an exact science and a scale aids your baking and above all baking consistency.
Greetings from Holland,
Ed & Marieke
van says
Hello, I’d really (I mean: really) love to make (and eat, of course) this kind of bread, I have all the ingredientes BUT I’ve realized I have a standard oven where I’m not able to set the temperature, if I Ieave the bread in it all night I guess it’ll burn out. ¿Do I have to resign to not doing it? Is there a any other way to bake it? If I set the oven to minimum temp and leave the door ajar, could it work? I’d appreciate any suggestions…Gracias!! Vanina.
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Vanina,
We have to guess you are right and it will be a real challenge. You say you can still set your oven to a min. temp so the closer you can get to that 110 the better. It would be wise to measure the temp with an oven thermometer.
Make sure the loaves are really well wrapped so no moisture can escape.
Good luck with it and happy baking,
Ed & Marieke
Bart says
Dit weekend het roggebrood gemaakt. Erg lekker qua smaak. Wel behoorlijk sticky. Hebben ruim 10 uur in oven gestaan. De melasse heb ik vervangen door ahorn siroop.
Weekend Bakers says
Hoi Bart,
Ja, dat sticky klopt inderdaad en daarom moet je ook echt snijden met een nat mes. Maar misschien dat de ahorn het nog wat plakkeriger maakt dan wanneer je de dadelstroop gebruikt, want die is echt een stuk dikker. Misschien dat het iets uitmaakt maar het zal vast geen groot verschil zijn.
Jessica says
Hi,
I was born and raised in Holland and roggebrood is one of those things I miss the most. It’s not as easy to bring back enough in suitcases 😉
So yesterday I made my first attempt at making this recipe. The taste is very good, but the edges of the bread are sort of dry and hard (just like if you buy it at the store, and don’t eat it fast enough and it dries out). The inside is very moist.
There are a few things that might have gone wrong
1. I used a glass bread pan since I didn’t have an aluminum pan on hand. I did cover it with 2 layers of aluminum foil (and didn’t open it until completely cool) I was thinking that next time I’ll line the glass pan with aluminum foil, and sort of wrap the dough inside to keep the moisture in better.
2. The pans are a standard US bread pan size, so there was a considerable amount of “air” above the dough.
3. I live at a very high altitude of 5500 feet.
After reading all the previous comments I think the consistency of the dough was spot on. It was tacky, but still workable.
Do you have any ideas on how to avoid the bread turning out hard and dry on the outside edges?
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Jessica,
I think you already made a pretty accurate assessment of what might have caused the edges to dry out.
This loaf, in order to be completely moist, has to be steamed rather than baked and for that the bread pan used has to be completely air tight so absolutely nothing can escape. In your situation you also had the ‘air’ above the dough where moisture could escape instead of staying in the bread. So your solution to wrap the loaf in alu foil could be the next best thing if the alu pans are not to be found.
I hope your rye bread will be perfect next time and you can enjoy it thinking of Holland and hopefully good memories of the time you spend here.
Happy baking!
Marieke