For about two months, I had had my sourdough starter sitting on the kitchen counter covered with a kitchen towel. Last week, when I finally found time to look at it again, it looked like a dry cracker cookie. 

I had no idea if I could still restore the starter or not, but I decided to give it a try.

I added some water to dilute the dried starter. When most of the starter had turned into a milk-like fluid, I removed the remaining pieces of dry dough and added just enough flour to get it back to the normal consistency of my starter (at 100% hydration, 50/50 full grain and all purpose flour). I then left the starter on the kitchen counter and waited. The next morning, the starter was full of life!

Just look at this before and after photo:

After a couple of days of daily feeding cycles, I finally had the time to try to bake something with the starter.

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About two weeks ago, I visited Viipurilainen kotileipomo, a family run bakery in Lahti, about 100 kilometers from Vantaa where I live to meet with the bakers and see how they work on their full-grain rye bread (among other things). The four baking brothers I met that night where some of the friendliest people I have ever met, and their rye "limppu" is delicious! So, inspired by seeing them at work, although I didn't ask for their recipe, I decided to try my luck with creating my own version of this Finnish tradition called "ruislimppu." 

At about the same time as I started reviving my old wheat starter, I created a 100% rye starter by mixing a handful of dark rye flour and some water. I didn't write down the exact measurements but it resulted in a rather wet and sticky dough to start with. I fed the starter daily, slowly increasing the mass of the dough, until it felt really sour and light. Ready for use. That was the night before the bake. Last week's Saturday. 

On that night, I made the rye "limppu" dough by mixing the starter with about 1.5 kilograms of rye flour and 1 kilograms of water. As I don't know the amount of flour and water in the starter, I can't give exact figures. I will try to be more exact the next time I make this bread... I didn't knead the dough at this point, just mixed the ingredients to a consistent mass. 

On Sunday morning, I mixed in the salt and did a very brief kneading for the dough. The dough was quite wet and it was practically impossible to knead, so I didn't spend much time on it. At the same time, I also prepared a batch of my favorite dough for two loaves of Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread. 

I was baking for most of the day, and here are the results. I'm pretty happy with them: even the rye limppu tastes right. The rye loaves could be a bit lighter (it's definitely denser and flatter than the one from Viipurilainen kotileipomo), but that's not necessarily a requirement: most of the time they look just like this when you buy them from Finnish grocery stores: dense and dark, but full of flavor (especially with a thick layer of real, creamy butter on top!).

Basic Country Bread:

Rye Limppu:

Since I first got excited about bread, I have been dreaming of ways to use that love for bread for creating something worth sharing with the rest of the world. I have dreamed of opening my own bakery (not going to happen any time soon, but never say never). I have bought a bunch of domain names for starting a bread blog (such as BakerDad.com or 365breads.com to name two). But all the time, I wasn't quite sure what my thing should be. Well, I guess you can never be sure...

But today, after working on it since the beginning of January, I am very happy and proud of something I have created, and I'd love you to see it as well.

It's a free magazine on bread—called Bread, quite simply. 

The magazine comes in PDF format that you can download to your computer and consists of interviews, stories, and some tips and recipes. Plus photos of beautiful loaves of bread. But mostly, it is about the people who make great bread.

As the magazine unfolds in the next editions, my goal is to dig deep into specific areas of bread making with editions dedicated to topics such as fermentation, flour, heat, and so on—starting from flour in issue number 2. 

The first issue, which I published today, is an introduction to the journey, looking at the question of what bread really is all about: what makes it special, and how people fall in love with it. In making the magazine, I have approached this question through stories: I start by telling my own small story, and then move on to interviewing more advanced bakers.

Phil Agnew, a familiar face from The Fresh Loaf, tells about his relationship to bread.

Larry Lowary, a long time baker, is retired from active work but runs a small bakery on his backyard—as a hobby, he says. 

And what excites me the most, I even got the chance to interview my baking hero, Richard Bertinet. 

In addition to these baker interviews, there is an interview with Chris Young from the Real Bread Campaign and some beginner instructions for baking bread at home. 

If this sounds too much like an advertisement, I'm sorry! I will return to normal bread posts next time... :) But I'm very excited about this today, and it's free... So, take a look!

My grandfather often tells the story of how during the war, when Helsinki was being bombed, his mother had to leave the pulla dough as the family fled to the nearby bomb shelter. After many hours, when they came back home, there was a surprise waiting for them: pulla dough all over the place -- apparently it had raised rather well!

Pulla, or Nisu as it's known in the United States (in old Finnish, nisu was the word for wheat, nowadays we call it vehnä) is the most common sweet bread in Finland and very popular with coffee -- so popular that it's also known as "kahvileipä", coffee bread.

In this recipe, which I wrote about a year ago, I have tried to combine some of the things I have learned about bread with the best of Finnish pulla.

Most pulla recipes tell you to start from the milk and then slowly add flour until the dough feels right. Because of this, the recipes are not that exact. I go the opposite way and start from flour. I also use less yeast and allow the dough to rest a bit longer. Other than that, this is very traditional pulla.

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• 500 g full milk
• 8 g cardamom
• 1 egg (shelled weight about 60 g)
• 150 g sugar
• 10 g salt
• 800 g all-purpose flour
• 11 g instant yeast
• 180 g butter
   
• For cinnamon rolls, you will also need additional cinnamon and sugar as well as a little melted butter. I didn't measure these, but I hope you can get the amounts by looking at the photos below...

Instructions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together.
    
2. Heat the milk to 42 degrees celcius to wake up the instant yeast and pour over the dry ingredients. Add the egg.
    
3. Mix the dough. I worked the dough for about 10 minutes by hand, using the technique taught by Richard Bertinet.
    
4. Add the butter, at room temperature, and continue working the dough until everything is smooth and nice.
    
5. Let the dough rest until it's almost doubled in size. I did a stretch and fold sequence after 45 minutes of rest and then let the dough rest for a total of 1.5 hours, or maybe a little more.
    
6. To make buns, shape the dough into small balls and let them rest for about 45 minutes before baking. Just before putting them in the oven, coat with egg and some pearl sugar. Bake for 10-12 minutes in 225 degrees Celcius.
    
7. To make cinnamon rolls, use a rolling pin to form the dough into a rectangle with roughly the shape of a wide-screen television screen and thickness of about 5 millimeters or so. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
    
8. Starting from the further wide end, roll towards yourself until you have a nice, tight roll.
    
9. Using a sharp knife, cut the left side of the roll so that you have a clean corner at about a 45 degree angle. I like to eat the dough that was cut away, and so do my kids.
10. Continue from there, cutting to the opposite direction at the same angle, until you reach the end of the roll and can eat some dough again. You should now have a bunch of nice triangles.
     
11. Move your triangles on a baking sheet, the tip of the triangle pointing up. Gently press the top down with one finger and leave to rest for 45 minutes or so. 
     
12. Bake the same way as the buns.

Fresh pulla is best enjoyed with a glass of cold milk.

And finally, here's my four-year-old's work of art. It has a lot of added sugar and butter!

Greetings from Finland!

After years of reading your posts (and drooling over your tasty and beautiful loaves) for inspiration, I thought I'd start my own blog here too. During the days I'm a stay-at-home dad exploring life with my two boys (ages 4.6 and 2 :)). The rest of my time, mostly when my family is asleep, I try to split between baking, writing and some other creative experiments. And browsing The Fresh Loaf.

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In the past summer, I managed to spoil my starter by not refreshing it during the summer vacation as we were traveling around Finland. Ever since, I have been making breads with yeast, procrastinating with the idea of training a new starter. The Ale and Yeast Poolish recipe from Richard Bertinet's Crust has become my current favorite bread.

Today, once again, I made a batch: I usually follow the recipe as printed, except that for baking, I use a cast-iron frying pan covered with a clay pot for the first twenty minutes -- my cheap version of a dutch oven. To fit the breads in the pan, I divide the dough in four pieces instead of the two instructed in the book, and shape the dough into boules instead of batards.

Here's how it looked this time: