Easter plans?
Just wondering what everybody is planning to do for Easter? I'm baking Finnish Pulla bread, a braided bread with cardamom and a rosewater sugar glaze on top. Not sure exactly what else is on the menu yet but sure to include some other yummies. Am considering the Blueberry cheese braid with Mascarpone cheese. For eats, perhaps ham and all the traditional stuff. We have an abundance of garden lettuce right now so I'll include a nice salad.
Anyway, just thinking that it would be nice to share some ideas about everyone's traditional holiday bakes. I'm Finnish so I've decided that the Finnish holiday breads are fun and can become part of my heritage. Plus, I can have the grandkids over and they can play in the dough, making their own little braids and rolls.
if I can find the time, that is. Our daughter is flying in, and our son is driving in, so baking time close to Easter will be hard to come by. It might conflict with the traditional family pinnochle tournament! I want to try hot cross buns though. Yozzause has gotten me all stirred up with his baking of these buns, and I'm excited to give them a try. If not for Easter Sunday, then during the week after, but I will get to them some time.
I think we are having pork tenderloin, fresh asparagus since the locals are harvesting now, and yes, a big green salad. I will, without a doubt, bake Floyd's Buttermilk Cluster though for dinner rolls.
OldWoodenSpoon
Hi there Doc Tracy
Over the last couple of weeks, I have enjoyed testing a number of Hot Cross Bun recipes, several of them from TFL. Since I have been working with sourdough, I had the feeling that my favourite commercial HCB probably had sourdough in them. Using the recipe Foolish Poolish posted on TFL for sourdough HCB, I was very pleased with the resulting texture and confirmed my supposition. However I was not so fond of the flavour from the spices or the glaze.
Amongst his spice blend he uses cardamon, having only cardamon pods on hand, I ground some seeds. While I like cardamon, it is not used here in NZ in HCB (here some combination of one, some or all of the following is used: cinnamon, mixed spice, allspice, nutmeg, cloves) so whether by grinding the seeds I made it OTT or whether it was a matter of an unfamilar taste in a HCB, I'm not sure. I wondered what bakers % of cardamon you use in your Pulla?
The glaze included rosewater and it too was overwhelming to me. Again I am not familar with use of rosewater in a glaze so was interested to see you use it in your Pulla glaze. What proportions do you use in your glaze?
For Easter I will make Foolish Poolish's sourdough HCB but plan to use the spice blend and glaze which I usually use for yeasted HCB. Nevertheless I am still a bit intrigued by the use of cardamon and rosewater, and had wondered about their origin.
Here in NZ it is now autumn and HCB are more suited to the season than Easter foods with spring references.
Regards, Robyn
I'm not sure I've ever had Hot Cross Buns.
Cardomom is used widely in Scandanavian baking. I also came across small references to rosewater. The rose water I use very lightly , just a hint of essence in the glaze. When adding the rosewater try adding so little that you can't even taste it, than just one more drop. As far as the baker's percent on the cardamom, I have no idea. I'd have to pull up the recipe. I used the recipe from All Recipes.com, which is a very nice recipe. It's a small amount of cardamom. I find too much cardamom makes it a little bitter and tingly on the tongue. I went according to the recipe this. (it seems to me this recipe might be volume measured rather than weight)
For braiding, I found a wonderful video, done by a Finnish woman (in engllsh) showing other Finnish women how to braid their Pullas. I also compared to many Jewish challahs, as the technique is identical. The Finnish video really helped with dough handling. I'm sure on a google search that this was the first (maybe only) video that came up if you type in How to braid a Finnish Pulla Bread.
I was curious as to why Indian spices would be so prevalent in a culture so far north but aparently when the Vikings were taking over Europe they discovered cardamom and other Indian spices down in the Roman empire and exported it to Scandanavia, where they became very popular.
When my mother was a child in Northern MN, they had Pulla at all types of Festivities. She remembers not likeing it, saying it was very bland. However, she also didn't remember the spices. When I made it she loved the spices. Thinking back, we believe that cardomom was probably far too expensive (and possibly even cinnamon as a replacement for they didn't even use much cinnamon in her childhood) so they probably made the bread without spices. They may not have even been able to get cardamom, considering how remote their town was. I'm not sure about the rosewater, perhaps they could have and maybe did in fact make this? This would be a very bland sweet dough without the cardamom.
Wow, I almost forgot those buttermilk rolls. I'm glad those were mentioned. I remember thinking that I wanted to make them next time we had a family get together.
I'm going to make the HCB recipe from FoolishPoolish too. His photos sold me on them and I am intriqued by the use of a sponge in the dough.
Last weekend I made Beth Hensberger's HCB recipe from her 'Bread Machine Cookbook' and they were a hit with our overnight guests and easy to make. I've made these several other times too with a variety of changes depending on what fruits and spices I have on hand.
I also want to make the (Greek?) braided Easter bread with the Easter eggs this year. I don't know the real name of it (will have to google) but the colored eggs have fascinated me since I was a little girl, so this year I am determined to try it. I will look for the Finnish woman's video on braiding and thanks for that tip. If anyone knows of a good authentic recipe, please LMK. Otherwise I will just google around.
Now, what else?? Well, we always make a Rhubarb Pie sometime around now so I have it in the oven as I write. It's a 10 inch lattice crust pie made with 6 cups of rhubarb and 1/3 cup of Grand Marnier so we'll see how it turns out. I kind of made up the recipe just for a big family dinner tonight.
I will be interested to hear about others' baking plans. Nothing like a holiday for the best excuse to bake!
Does anyone have a good kulich (Russian Easter bread) recipe? I would like to try my hand at making kulich and pascha for Pascha this year.
Hi there,
sorry I'm about a year late to answer your plea but I've only just joined TFL. I'm Russian and I do have several recipes for kulichi and pascha, sorry can't post them this minute as it's 2.30 am and my toddler will be waking me up at 7.30 prompt, but I promise to share them soon. I'm assuming you're in no rush till next spring tho :)
Is it just kulichi you're interested in? Have you got a pascha recipe?
Cheers!
Faith