Recipe for Finnish Cardamom Buns (Pulla)

My Finnish Mother Inlaw's recipe! It is really good!

4 tsp. active dry yeast

2 ½ cups milk, heated to lukewarm

1 tbsp. crushed cardamom (not ground cardamom **)

1 stick butter, very soft

1 tsp. salt

1 cup sugar

Approx. 7 ½ cups flour

1 egg for the pulla, beaten (plus 1 later for brushing the pulla)

Heat milk in pan on stove to lukewarm. Pour milk into large bread bowl and stir in the yeast. Let sit for about 7 minutes to proof. Add all ingredients except the flour and butter and stir well. Stir in about 3 or 4 cups of flour, then add the softened butter and mix it pretty well into mixture. Add the rest of the flour (you will probably have to use your hands to mix and knead it now). Knead for about 10 minutes. Cover bowl with lid or dish towel and let rise in a sunny & warm place for about 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Lightly flour table and remove pulla with a dough scraper to the table. I cut it into 2 pieces to make it easier to handle, and cover half of the dough with dish towel to keep moist. Roll one piece into a log shape and cut pieces off with the dough scraper and roll into a ball, maybe a little bigger than a golf ball. I put about 12 pieces on a jelly roll pan that has either been greased or has parchment paper on it. Parchment works better. Cover with dish towel and let sit at least 15 minutes to rise again before baking it. The other pans will sit longer than that, but it is okay! Use other dough the same way, and cover for 15 min.

About 5 minutes before baking, get some cold butter out of the fridge and 1 egg. Beat egg in a small bowl and you will need a pastry brush and white sugar too. Take your thumb and make an indentation in each pulla bun on the first pan. Put a small piece of cold butter into center of each bun. Brush each bun with beaten egg and then take a small amount of white sugar and sprinkle on top of buns. Try not to get too much sugar on bottom of pan because the pulla will get black, burnt sugar rings!

Pulla burns easily, so watch it carefully! I bake them at 400 degrees and bake for about 12 to 14 minutes. I preheat my oven for about 20 minutes too. Pulla likes a really hot oven. I also put my oven rack on the highest level.

For Stale Pulla: Take pulla and fry in butter in the frying pan until browned. Let cool enough to spread with strawberry jam and top with whipped cream! Yum!

** I bring home crushed cardamom from Finland, and you can only buy whole pods of cardamom or ground cardamom in the U.S. You can make it with ground cardamom, but I don't think you will get the same bite of flavor with the ground that you do with the crushed cardamom. You bite into the seeds and get a nice burst of flavor with the crushed cardamom. You can order cardamom seeds online without the green pod, and crush them in a coffee grinder until they have a sand-like consistency. The crushed cardamom feels like sand. I've tried taking the green pod off the whole pod of cardamom and it was such a task, that I would order the seeds online! Enjoy!

Julie J