Some Sunday things

Last Saturday, when I went to the natural-foods store, I found rye flour (Bob's Red Mill "dark rye" flour). It's hard to find here, and I remembered liking Limpa break (Swedish rye, though other Scandinavian cultures have their version) and had wanted to make one.

Hunting around in my Finnish-American cookbook (long story but: my mom grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and while she is not of Finnish heritage, many people there are, and especially one of her friends from there was, Joyce wound up as the editor of the cookbook in question). It's a pretty good cookbook though most of the recipes are not specifically Finnish.

But a few are, like this one. The "real" name of it is Pääsiäisleipä (Finnish is, IIRC, closer to Estonian and some of those languages than to the other Scandinavian languages).

The main virtues of the bread is that it was seasoned the way I wanted (cardamom and orange peel) and also it was a small batch (1 cup of rye, 2 of plain flour, so it only makes one loaf- ideal for someone who lives alone. I will still have to slice and freeze or at least refrigerate most of the loaf; break without the typical preservatives goes moldy fast in this climate)

I think it's "Easter," because it has 2 eggs and 1/4 cup of butter and 1/2 cup milk - I don't remember if the Finns did an egg-and-butter fast during Lent but that might be what makes it "Easter" bread.

So what you do is this:

combine 1 packet yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons) with 1/4 cup of warm water and a tiny pinch of sugar to feed the yeast, put that aside.

Heat 1/2 cup milk with 1/4 cup of butter in it so the butter at least softens. (canned evaporated milk works fine for this; my mom usually uses that - she said her grandmother ALWAYS used that, I suspect because of lack of a refrigerator or even icebox, and canned milk keeps better)

Put the milk and butter in a large mixing bowl and add 1/4 cup sugar,  2 teaspoons of ground cardamom, and 1 teaspoon of dried orange peel (could probably use a smaller quantity of fresh, or dried lemon peel). Add 1 cup rye flour and stir.

Then add 2 beaten eggs and the yeast mixture to the batter.

Add the plain flour gradually - the recipe calls for 2 cups but I needed a tiny bit more. Then you turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead (I did 7 minutes. Most breads you do 10, but that's a little much for breads with eggs - typically for an all-white-flour bread with an egg you only do 5 minutes, but I think rye is slower to develop gluten? Anyway, 7 minutes worked for me). 

Then you put it in a greased bowl, cover, let rise for about 90 minutes (they gave no instructions on this so I checked elsewhere - it seems like 90 minutes to 2 hours depending on the warmth in your house). Then I punched it down, shaped it, and put it in a greased loaf pan (standard sized, I use the Pyrex ones) for about an hour. (I think I did an hour and 15 minutes). Then I heated the oven to 350 (do 375 if you are using a metal pan) and brushed the top with a beaten eggwhite. (Traditionally they sprinkle slivered almonds on top and the egg is to make them stick, but I didn't have any)

It needs to bake a while - I baked it about 30 minutes and put an aluminum foil over the top (it browns fast) and then did it for 15 minutes more. It sounds hollow when tapped.

Be SURE to grease the pan well, it wanted to stick in mine. 

But it turned out well, and it makes a very nice textured bread:

You can see how the egg wash makes it browner.

It's a slightly-sweet bread but not SWEET like danish. It would probably work for some sandwiches, or would be good with jam on it.

While the bread was rising, I went out and pulled some of the weeds (mostly what I think is Himalayan blackberry, an invasive species) out of the garden. I'm happy to see that the marjoram and sage and oregano survived our extreme cold snap. 

I also saw what was either a bee or a bee mimic fly. I couldn't get a good picture of it and it was never still enough for me to count wings (bees have four, though the front and the rear wings hook to each other so it looks like a single set in flight; flies have two) but it had a really distinctive orange face:

I kind of think from the body shape it was actually a bee-mimic rather than a true bee, but I can't find anything online that quite matches it.