You can see the most popular posts on the right sidebar.
The list looks good, but we all have different taste preferences, so my list looks a little bit different.
You can see the most popular posts on the right sidebar.
You can see the most popular posts on the right sidebar.
Bread recipes on this blog are usually my own. But, the exception confirms the rule. I simply must publish this classic recipe which almost every baker here in Finland knows, because Islander Bread is The Christmas Bread here in Turku and all over Finland. Everyone must have a loaf or two waiting for the dinner on Christmas Eve.
Islander Bread is a perfect match with smoked ham, fish, home-made fresh cheese or gouda. Or, why not to try it with blueberry jam and goat cheese?
Islander Bread is a perfect match with smoked ham, fish, home-made fresh cheese or gouda. Or, why not to try it with blueberry jam and goat cheese?
2 breads
1 l (1030 g) buttermilk
75 g fresh yeast
1 tbsp salt
3 dl (420 g) Scandinavian dark syrup (or light molasses)
3 dl (60 g) wheat bran
3 dl crushed rye malt
3 dl (165 g) rye flour
10 dl (650 g) wheat flour
For the drizzle: 1 dl (0,5 cup US) syrup water (half and half)
Stir the yeast, salt, syrup, wheat bran, crushed rye malt and flours into the lukewarm buttermilk. Pour the mixture into two greased 2-liter tins.
Cover and leave to rise at room temperature for 1,5 hours.
Preheat the oven to 175°C. Bake for 1 hour. Cover with foil if necessary. Bake for a further 30 minutes. Drizzle the loaves with syrup water. Bake for a further 30 minutes without the foil. The loaves might be fully baked at this point. If not, take them out of the tins, drizzle with syrup water and bake for a further 10 minutes.
Cover and let cool on a wire rack. When cooled, wrap the breads tightly and store in a cool place for 2-3 days. If you are in a hurry, you can serve the breads the next day. The taste is irresistible!
Store in a cool place where Islander Bread will keep up to 8-9 days. Storing Islander Bread in the freezer is a great solution too.
I always have home-made granola in my kitchen. I simply cannot start a day without some crunchy granola on creamy yoghurt in a beautiful bowl. Ingredients and amounts vary depending on my mood, but often my starting point is an old granola recipe by Anna Bergenström.
Why this breakfast food came to my mind now? I'm writing a bread blog, aren't I? Well, it's not nearly as strange as you might think. Granola is part of my weekly baking day. It goes into the oven just after breads. And, the recipe has been a huge success among my friends. I cannot remember how many of them has asked (and got) the recipe. Everybody loves it! Granola is also a great last-minute Christmas gift and a perfect beginning for those lazy Christmas mornings. There are lots of good reasons why I got sidetracked and decided to share this coveted granola recipe instead of a new bread recipe this week. Enjoy!
This mango-raisin granola is one of my favorites, linseed-almond-cranberry granola is another.
3 dl (100 g) large oat flakes
2 dl (100 g) oat flakes
1 dl (40 g) rice flakes
4 dl (250 g) cashew nuts
1 dl (50 g) hazelnuts
2 dl (200 g) sunflower seeds
2 dl (100 g) pumpkin seeds
1 dl (35 g) shredded coconut
2 dl (170 g) cane sugar
2 dl (200 g) water
0,5 dl (45 g) canola oil (or other vegetable oil, not olive oil)
raisins
dried mango
Combine the flakes, roughly chopped nuts, seeds, shredded coconut and cane sugar in a large bowl. Mix the water and oil and pour it into the flake mix. Stir well. Line a large baking tray with a baking paper sheet and spread the granola on top.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the baking tray on the center rack of the heated oven. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until the granola is a light and golden brown.
Allow the granola cool for 30 minutes. Sprinkle raisins and dried mango (cut in raisin-size pieces) on top. Stir well. Cool the granola completely.
Store in an airtight jar. Enjoy with yoghurt.
Is this a Christmas gnome? Little hands can never resist the cooling granola on the oven.
Is this a Christmas gnome? Little hands can never resist the cooling granola on the oven.
I always have whey and mash in my freezer, because I make cheese and home-made beer.
If you don't have them, you can replace whey with water and mash with malt and hot water.
2 breads
5 dl (500 g) whey
1 dl (0,4 cup US) mash
25 g fresh yeast
1 tsp salt
25 g fresh yeast
1 tsp salt
1 dl (140 g) Scandinavian dark syrup (or light molasses)
1 dl (60 g) graham flour
1 dl (55 g) coarse rye flour
1 dl (60 g) graham flour
1 dl (55 g) coarse rye flour
2 dl (110 g) bolted rye flour
5 dl (325 g) wheat flour
8 pcs. dried, soft dates
Cut the dates into raisin-size pieces. Put them into a bowl and sprinkle some wheat flour on them. Shake until the pieces are covered with flour. This way the chopped dates won't stick to each other and you can easily use them in the recipe.
Stir the yeast, salt and syrup into the lukewarm whey and mash mix. Gradually mix in the flours. Add the dates. Knead the dough for 6–8 minutes.
Cover and leave to rise at room temperature until doubled in size.
Put the dough into two greased tins. Cover and leave to rise at room temperature for 40 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Bake for 50–60 minutes. The bread is ready if it sounds hollow, when you knock on its base.
Cover and let cool on a wire rack.
- the breads of Metsämäki Farm in the 1930's
My grandmother's sister, Tyyne Metsämäki, recalled baking bread for the first time at the age of ten in the 1930's. She was born in Huittinen, a small agrarian village in Satakunta, the oldest historical province in Finland, located on the southwest coast of Finland. 'Kakko' (basic white sourdough bread) and 'ruisleipä' (rye bread) were typical breads of the region.
Rye bread was eaten at mealtimes. Kakko was part of breakfast or coffee break. Fresh buns were the delicacy of Sundays. Good housewives were always prepared for unexpected visitors too. They had rusks (twice-baked buns known as 'vieraskorppu') for the neighbors and strangers who stopped by the farm.
Home-baked bread was the rule. Crispbread, which was a commercial bread, was a rarity. Tyyne was in her teens when she bite crispbread for the first time.
Sunday treat
If the work load at the farm allowed, the weekly baking day was Friday or Saturday. This meant fresh bread for Sunday.
But, it all started in the middle of the week, when someone carried flour sacks from the cold granary to the warm kitchen. All flours were homegrown. Every two weeks one of the men took a horse and drove to the Korkiakoski Mill, which grinded the grains of the farm to bread flours and animal feed.
In the evening women took out a large, poorly scraped wooden baking bowl and mixed some flour and water in it. The dried dough from the previous baking day on the sides of the bowl worked as a sourdough starter, when the bowl was covered with a cloth and let stand in a warm place. The starter dough was ready in two days. If the weather was cold, as it often was, it was difficult to start the process. It was time to put some commercial yeast into the starter dough. If it was late, the grocery was closed. Fortunately, the local shop owner let bakers come to his home and led them through his kitchen to the grocery and sold them the much-needed yeast.
Couple of days later, early in the morning, 2 – 3 women started to bake by pouring two buckets of water (20 liters) into the baking bowl. Then, no measures, just the rule of thumb when they were measuring flour and salt. Sometimes they added some anise seeds into the dough, but spices were valuable rarities because they were something they had to buy. Honey, syrup or other sweeteners were never used.
The dough was huge, but one vigorous baker tackled the task all by herself. It wasn't customary to take turns.
Tyyne always shaped some pieces of the dough into loaves "because they tasted better, or so we all thought", but most of the dough were shaped into round, more or less flat breads with holes in the middle to facilitate storage on long poles hanging near the ceiling. This was understandable because they baked four bread boards in a day and one board took 30 breads, total 120 breads per day. An inconvenient place to store the breads? Not really, some breads were always stored in the plaited root basket in the red kitchen cabinet, where they were easily available.
Baking oven baked 30 breads in one go
The wood-fired brick oven was heated with two chambers of wood. If the oven was "lazily heated" they threw bunch of birch leaf fodders into the chamber, after which the kitchen smelled great.
When the coals were swept out and the chamber was cleaned with a birch twig broom, it was time to bake the first test breads. An experienced baker was usually capable of estimating the heat of the oven and the first batch of breads went into the oven right after the test breads. If the oven was too hot, it was swept with a wet broom before the breads on the first board were loaded into the oven.
In the Autumn fish dealers were driving around countryside from one farm to the next selling salted Baltic herring in barrels. It was a valued delicacy, which explains the fact that almost every baking day the last bread they took out of the oven was the Baltic herring bread. In the falling heat of the bread oven they cooked rosolli casseroles, potato casseroles with Baltic herring, Karelian hot pots and pearl barley porridges. Two weeks before Christmas men slaughtered a pig during the baking day and women made sausages stuffed with pork and pearl barley.
There were no such thing as food waste
There were lots of workers on the farm, the regular maids and farmhands as well as occasional hired workers in harvesting and other labour-intensive agricultural production phases. It was quite common that there were 20, often more, eaters around the table.
Bread was an integral part of every meal and 120 breads were quickly dwindling away.It was common to put butter and fried pork on the bread. "Lettuce was for sheep". Cucumbers and tomatoes were not eaten until the 1950's, when they started to grow these vegetables on the farm. Fresh cheese was placed on the plate, not on the bread.
There were no such thing as food waste. If there sometimes were a bread or two left on the next baking day, they were treats for horses and cows.
Bread and hospitality
Freshly baked bread was an essential part of hospitality. Workers often got a warm bread for their families. Two neighbors got three breads each and "father always took a bread for the shoemaker, who lived at a distance from us". If somebody unexpectedly dropped in on the baking day, they got a bread too.
Not a day went by without guests and visitors when harvesting and other autumn tasks were done. The weeks before Christmas were particularly buzy, because it was important to spin all the linen before the New Year. But, they went to see neighbors and received guests all the time anyway. Guests were welcome delays. It was time to put a coffeepot on the stove, serve kakko and rusks and talk through the latest news from the village.
Nobody was left without freshly baked bread. Old and sick people who lived alone and others who were unable to bake got bread from their neighbors. If someone didn't want to depend on neighbors, Iita Paunu, a well-know village banquet caterer, came over to their house to bake bread for them.
Bread was the Facebook of the 1930's, a social networking service, which brought family, friends, acquaintances and strangers together and provided them with a possibility to communicate and tell the latest news.
Not a day went by without guests and visitors when harvesting and other autumn tasks were done. The weeks before Christmas were particularly buzy, because it was important to spin all the linen before the New Year. But, they went to see neighbors and received guests all the time anyway. Guests were welcome delays. It was time to put a coffeepot on the stove, serve kakko and rusks and talk through the latest news from the village.
Nobody was left without freshly baked bread. Old and sick people who lived alone and others who were unable to bake got bread from their neighbors. If someone didn't want to depend on neighbors, Iita Paunu, a well-know village banquet caterer, came over to their house to bake bread for them.
Bread was the Facebook of the 1930's, a social networking service, which brought family, friends, acquaintances and strangers together and provided them with a possibility to communicate and tell the latest news.
Chain of bakers
When I'm baking I have this lovely feeling of being part of the long chain of bakers in my family. I started to bake with my granny at the age of five and now I'm baking with my 6-year-old son, who loves to bake.
