Simple Rye Bread

Over the Chinese New Year, we decided to try something new with the bread making. We wanted some variety and rye seems to be the "next to try" choice. Having no experience making this bread and only read about it, i set forth to experiment, with a lot of caution to ensure a successful end product.
This is the recipe to make with a breadmaker. Measurement used via a 250ml cup and this recipe will give you 1kg worth of bread (in weight).
Water - 1 & 1/3 cups
Vegetable oil - 4 teaspoon (you can use corn for a more neutral taste, or olive for a more herbal taste)
Molasses - 5 tablespoon (i use blackstrap molasses, which turns the whole bread dark brown)
All purpose flour - 2 & 2/3 cups (organic)
Rye flour - 2 cups
Salt - 1 teaspoon (i use mountain salt)
Yeast - 1 packet or 11grams
Put the ingredient (in the order above) into the breadmaker. Use cold water or chilled water and from experience, no matter how much they say you only need a teaspoon of yeast, just go with a whole pack. You can't keep yeast for long after you open it, so don't waste it.
On the breadmaker's menu or function, choose the bread making function that allows the longest baking time. Usually it is the Wholewheat function.
So, why Rye? Rye is actually similar to wheat and barley and it is actually lower in gluten compared to wheat. SO those looking for a low gluten diet, Rye is a good option. Rye too, has higher portion of soluble fiber which is something that Malaysians don't eat enough. It sort of make the whole "rye" approach a good choice if you are into bread.
As this was the first time i am using Rye, i was looking through the breadmaker and keeping my fingers crossed. You will be forgive me too when you start to see your bread looking like this.

Molasses make it look like these

The bread looked really promising mid cycle and then it went flat. I supposed it could be the molasses and also yeast reacting violently. Not one to write it off yet, i let them mixes and throw in a handful of sultanas and raisins.
About 3 hours later, the bread was done and i removed it from the breadmaker's pan. It was what looked like a chunk of brick.

Like seriously...

I proceed to let it cool down a little bit and sliced it up. To my surprise (and wifey's too), the inside was soft and moist! The crust was hard and crunchy much like those western bread. We helped ourselves to a slice each as we skipped dinner earlier to prepare the home for guest the next day.

PASS!

Tweaking - Next round will be to reduce the amount of all purpose flour by 2/3 cup and replace it with equal amount of rye. Will reduce molasses by a spoon and see what we can get. Fingers crossed.
Calculated, a serving (of two average slices) will work out to be about 140kcal or almost similar with the usual 1 serving of commercially available bread. The usage of oil which were kept to absolute minimal help to reduce the caloric count.
The bread was shared with guest at our home yesterday and i think it did impress some of them.
Here to a healthier Dragon Year!