Swedish Rye Bread

This is a bread my mother used to make when I was a child. I remember fondly the wonderful smells that this bread produces and the Melody of flavors this bread brought to the table.
I have not had this old fashion bread since my mother passed away almost 15 years ago and I thought that the recipe had been lost back then; however, my sister recently surprised me with the very recipe card that had been my Greatgrandmothers and the very one that my mother would use to make this bread.

1 Pint Milk (2 cups)
1 cup Shortening
3 T Dark Molasses
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t. salt
2 packages active dry yeast
1 1/2 T. orange zest
1 t. anise seed
1 1/2 cup rye flour
3 cups all purpose flour, approximate

Scald milk, add shortening, molasses, honey, brown sugar and salt. Stir to dissolve sugar and melt shortening. Let cool. Add yeast, orange zest and anise seeds. Stir in rye flour . Let rise 1/2 hour. Then add enough white flour to make a stiff dough. Turn onto lightly foured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Put into a greased bowl and turn once to gease top of dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour of double in size. Punch down and turn onto lightly floured surface. Divide in half, knead each half, place into 2 greased bread tins.

I have to say that I am not very excited about the fact that this bread takes a whole cup of shortening; however, I plan to play with it and maybe replace the shortening with olive oil, I know that olive oil is not very Swedish, but is shortening.

Making this bread also gave me a chance to start to teach the kids how to knead bread. We all had a blast squishing the dough down and pulling it up again; however, the kids got tired very fast.