February 4, 2016 - 7:22am
Any Swedes here? Need help
Hi Everyone..
My best friend in the world is coming in a few months with his wife and daughter from Sweden to visit me in Minnesota (sweden USA) for two weeks.
He is always talking about Groft Brod and Vort Brod around the holidays and id love to work on a few practice runs before they get here. The recipes i have found are all mostly translated and in volume measurements. If anyone has any great recipes they're willing to share id appreciate it VERY much.
Thanks and happy baking!
Bart
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is also translated but does include weights. It's vague on the quantity of flour though (600-700g) so it may be no better than what you have.
Disclaimer: I'm not Swedish.
Perhaps your Swedish friend will be happy to taste your American home-baked bread! When we visited our Swedish relatives some years ago we were delighted to experience their food, and they didn't try to prepare any American food for us. Unless your friend and his family are coming to visit you around the holidays, they may be puzzled if you bake Swedish holiday breads for them. Besides, our flours aren't the same as theirs. Perhaps you can bake bread together and share your recipes and techniques.
I have baked Vörtbröd several times around the holidays and could share my Americanized recipe if you'd like to try it. And don't worry about volume measurements--you can usually use 120 grams of flour per cup, or whatever the flour bag says is the gram weight of 1/4 cup flour, times 4.
My Swedish grandmother didn't use precise measurements for the flour that went into her bread; she just knew when the dough felt right.
i bake about 10-20 boules per week depending on my work schedule. almost all of those go to friends and family. i just know he always RAVES about Vortbrod so thought it would be fun to give it a shot.
I was there three years ago and his Farmor baked new treats and made Farfar deliver them to us daily. The woman was a magician with pastry. So while ill be trying to give them a taste of good american food while here it would be fun to give them a taste of home =)
Id give your recipe a shot if youre willing to share!
Bart
P.S. to this day i still miss filmjolk^^
You can probably find Swedish cookbooks in your local library. I've baked these two recipes, but won't post them because because they're under copyright. If you live in the Twin Cities metro area, Hennepin County Library has these titles; you can also find them on Amazon:
The Great Scandinavian Baking Book - Beatrice Ojakangas
Swedish Christmas Dipping Bread, p. 21 in the paperback edition
Swedish recipes, old and new - by American Daughters of Sweden (1955)
Christmas Rye Bread, p. 109
Hennepin County Library (or your local library):
look for Swedish cooking under the subject category in their online catalog
The museum store at the American Swedish Institute, 2600 Park Avenue, Minneapolis, has the Beatrice Ojankangas book and Swedish cookbooks. Most of the Scandinavian gift shops offer Swedish cookbooks. I like to visit Ingebretsen's at 1601 E. Lake Street when I'm in Minneapolis. It's not far from the American Swedish Institute. You can shop online for a Scandinavian cookbook at the web sites of the Institute or Ingebretsen's or other Scandinavian gift shops.
Another possibility for finding a recipe is to look at Google Images of vörtbröd. Search just the Swedish domain:
vörtbröd site:.se
Find a photo of a bread that looks good to you, click on the image, click on "visit page,"
copy the URL of that page, then paste the URL into Google Translate on the left side.
https://translate.google.com/
I don't like to knead dough with rye flour because of its stickiness , so for my version of vörtbröd I frequently use the Jim Lahey/Sullivan Street Bakery recipe for no-knead bread, substituting stout and molasses for the water and adding my favorite spices. I use half rye flour and half AP or bread flour. I let it putter away for about 24 hours, doing several stretches and folds to keep the yeasties fed. Last time I baked it I added some altus.
Here are my favorite ingredients for vörtbröd:
⁃ half fennel seeds; half anise seeds instead of other spices
⁃ stout for the main liquid ingredient
⁃ molasses instead of dark [corn] syrup
⁃ grated orange peel
You could experiment with vörtbröd by tweaking your usual bread formula, like I've tweaked the no-knead recipe.
Many of the online Swedish recipes call for "Julmust" in addition to the porter or stout. Julmust is a non-alcoholic Christmas beverage. I did a quick online search and found one Scandinavian food site that sells Julmust. There are some online discussions suggesting that Julmust tastes like root beer. I've never tried root beer in vörtbröd.