"Fake" rye bread

Rye bread - A Finnish thing

I'm a subscriber (and I always struggle with spelling that word!) of a Finnish magazine Kotivinkki that also publishes recipes of really good-looking and tempting dishes. For some reason, however, I have not really tried out the recipes before. Maybe it's because I don't want to get my precious magazine all covered with flour and stains that I usually can't escape when cooking or baking from a cook book or some written recipe. I don't know. Anyway, this month's issue was dropped down to our mailbox and the theme of this month's recipes in the food section was something that finally made me use the magazine as my guideline in the kitchen. Bread.

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Bread with cute figures

Last Sunday we visited the newly opened IKEA Tampere (website only in Finnish). Being thoroughly exhausted from the Christian youth event called Karkkugospel that had been organized the previous day and us being there from dawn til dusk, we didn't make any big purchases, but one thing (and actually the only thing) we bought (cost only 3.95 €) were these immensely cute cookie cutters that I have been wanting to try our ever since getting hold of them.

Today then, I made up an excuse to use them for something. Because I've developed a sudden urge to get more fit (although that sadly hasn't yet forced me to exercise a great deal) and thus to pay attention to what I eat and especially the health factor of food, I ruled out the possibility of actually making cookies with these cookie cutters. I thought about cutting cute animal figures out of watermelon slices (which I might just still do later on, I thought it as a fun idea) but as I forgot to jot "fruits" down to my husband's list of grocery shopping yesterday and hence being without them at home and getting more and more anxious to do SOMEthing with these wonderful shapes, I googled a recipe for the kind of bread that is thin and fills the whole of the baking sheet (if anyone knows the real name for this kind of bread, please educate me!) and decorate it with the outlines of different animals. (Wow, wasn't that a long sentence!) And here it is, straight from the oven!

And here it is, about 3 minutes later!

I wouldn't have believed that the recipe searched for so quickly and without much of an effort could produce such a delicious outcome! The crust was crisp and the bread tasted and felt like it had a lot of yummy roughage. The texture was perfect and even though the bread wasn't thick enough to be halved, it worked just fine as a thick one layer. And the figures are just so fun! I didn't much plan how I placed them on the sheet of dough and that's why the end result is so haphazard, but I learned from this experience too and next time I will place the figures in even lines and cut them into squares with a e.g. pizza cutter so that it's easy just to break up the bread into pieces. I made some slight alterations with the recipe itself. There wasn't a mention about what flour to use, so I used one third of wholewheat flour, second third was medium-coarse wheat flour and the last part was a ready-made flour mixture for making rolls. When flattening the dough on the baking sheet, instead of using more flour, I oiled my hands and flattened it like that. I though it gave the bread some extra crispness as well.

Bread made easy and fast

500ml / 2.1 cups water

4 dl / 13.5 oz oatmeal

1 bag (á 11 g) dry yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tbls sugar

50 ml oil

6 dl / ca 20 oz flour

Mix the oatmeal and dry yeast in the warm (42 C / 100 F) water. Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix smooth. Pour on a baking sheet and flatten the dough as an even layer. Let rise for 30 minutes. Cut into squares (and cut the figures as well, if you will). Bake in the middle level in 225 C / 440 F for 15 minutes.

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American Dinner

Today I hosted my first dinner party. On a small scale and not a very sophisticated one, though, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Nevertheless, I am feeling a sense of satisfaction, pride and delight that is hard to describe in words, which is very unusual to me. As the aftermath for the evening I am having a warm feeling and am tempted to smile, whenever thinking back how smoothly and perfectly everything went.

A friend couple was invited over for a dinner and a movie (thanks for the company and the visit by the way, we enjoyed having you here a lot!) and to unwind myself from the exam of yesterday (who decided that exam dates ought to be on Saturdays anyway?) I planned and executed an American themed dinner for four with the priceless help of my DH. He helped me through every step of the way, from planning the scheduling of the different dishes and then in prepping, chopping and the actual cooking and baking. How wonderful is he! How lucky am I!

To make it all just a little bit more special I printed out a menu card:

Even looking at the card makes me smile again. Sigh. A little dream come true. And little dreams are just as important as the big ones, right?

Like you can read, for main course we had Sloppy Joes and Coleslaw (recipe courtesy of Simply Recipes, the coleslaw one slightly modified), with Fresh Lemonade by Food Network that you can see a little bit in the glass and jug beneath. The hamburger buns are made with the previously posted recipe.

And for dessert I made Rocky Road Brownies (which I've been dying to make for a while now and I took the opportunity with pleasure and enthusiasm) and followed the recipe by Deborah in Taste and Tell. Messy, but oh so gooey and yummy! A perfect ending to my first dinner party, in my opinion.

Everything turned out very well, even though all of the recipes were ones I had never tried out before. But this definitely was not the first and last time I will make these dishes, as they tasted so good! After eating our tummies full, we continued the evening by watching the movie Up which was sweet and touching, I liked it very much. It isn't too often that an animated film makes you think about things and that's what I liked about it.

After a wonderful, wonderful evening with friends and food I am ready to start the new week with fresh energy.

A little dream come true can sure give one big boost to life.

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(Not so) Fast Food

For the last couple of days we've enjoyed the flavors of fast food - sitting at our own kitchen table. Today we made hamburgers and used the last posted recipe to make the rolls. I just made the rolls bigger than last time. On top of the bread I had hamburger dressing, ketchup, salad, pickle, tomato, the meat that cheese and blue cheese on top and a fried egg.



Yesterday's meal on the other hand was a Subway-inspired stuffed bread. Again, the bread was self-made, the recipe from the same book, and it was called rye baguette. Here is my husband's dish that included again hamburger dressing, ketchup, on one side grilled chicken from the fay before, on other ham, salad, cucumber, tomato and fresh pineapple.



4 long baguettes

Rising time: 30 + 50-60 minutes
Oven: 250 C, 10-12 minutes

50 g yeast
500 ml water
2 tsp salt
4oo ml fine rye flour
1000 ml wheat flour (I think I used about 800)
rough rye flour

Crumble the yeast. Warm the water to body temperature, add it in and stir as long as it takes for the yeast to dissolve. Add the salt and the flour. Knead and let rise under a towel for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough in four and form a baguette from each piece. Roll in rough rye flour and place the baguettes on a parchment covered baking sheets, two for both. Let rise 50-60 minutes. Bake the baguettes in 250 C for 10-12 minutes.

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Breakfast rolls

Another recipe from my new cook book. Although name refers to breakfast, I made these on the side of a soup. They are ready pretty fast, as only the dough is let to rise for 30 minutes and the rolls are put into a cold oven. I used dry yeast and it worked well too. They tasted great and were so quick and easy too that I will definitely make these again. If these were made bigger, they would be excellent for home made burgers.


16 breakfast rolls
Rising time: 30 minutes
Uuni: 200 C, 20-22 minutes


300 ml water
50 g yeast
2 tbl oil
1 tsp salt
ca 900 ml flour


Warm up the water to body temperature, crumble the yeast and stir until it's wholly dissolved. Add oil, salt and about 800 ml of flour. Cover the dough and let rise for 30 minutes. Take the dough on the baking table and use the rest of the flour for the baking. Divide the dough into 16 pieces and place the pieces on a baking paper covered sheet. Place the sheet into the cold oven, turn on the heat to 200 C and bake for 20-22 minutes.

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Bread

Here comes the first recipe out of the book posted about below. The bread was a success with a a crunchy surface and a yummy taste. I made two loaves of bread, I added sun flower seeds to the second one.



1 bread
Rising time: 40 minutes
Oven: 275 C for 15 minutes and 15 minutes in the afterheat

500 ml water
25 g yeast
½ tsp sugar
½ tsp salt
2 tbl oil
250 ml of coarse flour (for example rye or whole wheat flour, I used 100 ml of rye flour and 150 ml of whole wheat flour)
1150 ml of wheat flour (I only used 900 ml, the dough didn't take in more)

Warm the water to body temperature. Add in the yeast, then sugar, salt and oil. Finally add the both flours. Form the dough into a baking sheet long bread and let it rise covered with a towel in room temperature for 40 minutes. Bake the bread in 275 F for 15 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the bread bake for at least another 15 minutes.

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Bread

Recently we bought a bread mold. Before that the bread I have made at home have usually been rolls, flat breads and sometimes baguettes or something else. The mold will broaden the possibilities of home made bread. The first try with the new mold was with the following recipe and very good the bread turned out to be too.

500 ml of water, temperature 42 C
1 dose of dry yeast
1 dl of flakes (I used bran and wheat crush)
1 dl of rye flour
8-9 dl of wheat flour (I used a little less, 7-8 dl)
2 tsp of salt
oil or butter for greasing (with silicone molds you only have to grease it the first time you use it and then every once in a while but not nearly every time)
1 tbl of treacle/molasses


Mix in the warm water the rye flour, treacle, yeast, salt and flakes. Let it be for 30 minutes covered with a towel.

Add the wheat flour into the mixture little by little. The dough should not be too hard! Let it rise for 30 minuted covered with a towel.

Grease the mold, if necessary. Put the dough into the mold. Let it rise for 30 minutes more covered with a towel.

Bake in 250 C for about 30 minutes.





As the photos tell, the dough was maybe a little too plentiful for our mold, so next time I'll probably make a slightly smaller dough. The bread was very tasty! Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Unfortunately the bread didn't last for long, it was eaten in a span of a few days. Well, more the reason to bake it again!

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Carrot rolls

This is why I bake! This is why anyone does anything! Success! I have baked bread rolls every once in a while to give a little variety to our breakfast table. Never have my rolls been as fluffy as I have hoped for, though. Yesterday, after having a sudden inspiration to have home made hamburgers and hence using the left-over hamburger meat, I needed to bake sandwiches for them. So on I go to Google to find a perfect fluffy bread roll recipe. I ended up to the baking blog of Juhlatar and choose one of her reciped. As the inspiration came so quickly I didn't have all the ingredients at hand and I made impro choices with the content and size of the dough. They were liked, however, and so I decided to make a re-run today, and to follow the original recipe more true to heart. I made slight changes though and add the recipe the way I made it.

5 dl of milk
4 carrots (Juhlatar had 3 big ones, but I didn't have big carrots)
50 g of fresh yeast
2 tsps of salt
4 dl of wheat flour
a little less than 1 dl of cooking oil
8 dl of roll flour (a mix of wheat flour and crushed grains)

I peeled and grated the carrots. I warmed the milk in a microwave oven to lukewarm and added the grated carrots, the crumbled yeast and salt. I added the wheat flour to the mixture and mixed them up with my hand. I added the oil and 2 dl of roll flour. I kneaded the dough with my hand. I added flour as needed and kneaded first by hand, later with my hand mixer's dough hooks (I unfortunately don't own a proper mixer) as long as the dough was shiny and smooth. I run some warm water into the basin, put the bowl in and let the dough to double under a towel, it took about 30 minutes.

With oiled hands I shaped the dough into bread rolls and let them double on a baking paper before baking them, for about 30 minutes again. After the half an hour, I turned on the oven to 250 C degrees and placed the baking sheet in it as well. When the oven was ready, I drew the baking paper, and with it the rolls onto the sheet and put them into the oven, placing another sheet there to warm up at the same time. After a couple of minutes I lowered the temperature to 225 degrees. I baked them for 10 minutes and repeated the same thing with the second sheet of rolls.

I am more then happy with the end result.

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Breakfast rolls

I love home-made bread but we eat bread in such quantities that there's no point to bake just a little bit, it's more rational to bake more and freeze part of the breads and because I bake more at once, it feels like a big project and I'm not up to that at all times. After the time in Germany and eating something that someone else had planned for two months, it's rewarding to do something myself, something that I want and that's why I wanted to bake bread instead of just sweet. We don't have a vast-sized kitchen and doubly dough made into rolls takes up a lot of space so I decided to try a recipe of Kinuskikissa and use the same method for baking rolls, but adapting it slightly. Under is my own version.

ca. 16 pieces

5 dl of non-fat milk
50 g of fresh yeast
1 tbl of sugar
½ tbl of salt
1 tbl of cumin
½ dl of cooking oil
12 dl of roll flour (or just plain)
about 2 handfuls or sunflower seeds
about 1 handful of pumpkin seeds

Warm the milk to a body temperature. Sprinkle in the yeast and mix with a wooden spoon, until the yeast is dissolved. Add the spices and the seeds and add the flour in slowly, first mixing with the wooden spoon, then by hand. Add the oil towards the end in small quantaties. Let the dough rise under a kitchen towel for 45 min.

Before you remove the dough from the bowl, press the air out of it with an oiled hand. Spread the dough onto a baking paper into a plate the size of ca. 30 x 30 cm. Cut into squares with a knife. Let it rise under a towel for 15-20 minutes. Bake in 200 C for about 10 minutes until the bread has a nice colour. Fold the rolls to pieces.

I marked the amount to ca. 16 pieces, because I made the rolls of one row bigger as we intended to use them as rolls for home-made hamburgers, which by the way were terrific. It was a good invention to let the dough rise twice. Next thing I try with these is to make two trays from the same amount of dough, maybe they will rise even more. All in all, the bread made a wonderful breakfast, with the blueberry soup made by mu husband.

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