Bringing Home the Bread

I probably wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t actually performed the task myself.

I have, on occasion, surprised even myself by surpassing my own self-imposed limits, trying to obtain a goal that I truly thought to be beyond my reach, but giving it the ol’ college try anyway just to (if for no other reason) see what might happen.

This is what transpired and this is how it happened.

A few weeks ago my sister (the one who irrationally despises goats) and my mom safely deposited my niece Mary Ann at BYU to begin her 4 (or so) year career as a student of higher education. While they were in or about Provo, or maybe they were in Salt Lake City, they were able to purchase several 45 pound buckets of whole white wheat, and some active dry yeast.

When my mom gave me a bucket, the first thing I thought of was a Finnish bread that was made by several members of my former wife’s family. My daughter Jessica even made it on at least one occasion.

Since I was unable to obtain the recipe from the former family, I happily skipped along the information super-highway until I found what I was looking for… Finnish Cardamom Bread, also known as Nisua… or Nisu for short.

The following is my account of how the experiment took place. I thought about changing names to protect innocents and all that, but since I was the only one involved and I’m the one writing the story, it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to do so.

We begin with the whole wheat. The bucket looked like this…

And the grain looked like this…

I had borrowed my mom’s spare copy of a wheat grinder…

and began to grind away at the wheat right there on the kitchen counter. I have since learned that wheat grinding should take place on the back porch. Everything in the kitchen was covered in a fine layer of wheat flour, and the floor turned into a sticky mess that I can only refer to as “nasty”.

After the grinding (and the subsequent mandatory clean-up before the wife got home) I set about making the dough. Now those of you who know me well know of my distain for anything sticky (or raw meat) to come in contact with my bare hands. I tried to mix the dough with a wire wisk at first until that became impossible… kind of like trying to cut firewood with a dull butter knife. Then I tried it by hand with latex gloves, (this is how I get around the sticky and raw meat thing), but that didn’t last long either. I finally broke down and finished kneading the dough with my (ack) bare hands.

This is the result…

After the rising and the required punching down of the dough, I divided it in half, divided each half into thirds, rolled each third into something that resembled a doughy snake, and then I began to braid. I vaguely recalled from my youth how to braid hair, but this was not hair, it was doughy snakes, so it took a few braidings and unbraidings before I got it to look like I thought braided doughy snakes should look.

Then I put each loaf on a cookie sheet and let them rise again. This is what they looked like at this point.

Then into the oven went the fattened braided doughy snakes. After 25 minutes in the oven and a light butter brushing, this is what I ended up with.

All in all… not a bad effort. I’m told that they tasted even better than they look, even though I think they look pretty darned good. The fact that all the bread disappeared quickly leads me to believe that my family and friends weren’t just being polite.

For those with an adventurous spirit, here is the recipe as I have used it several times now since my first excursion into bread-making.

Ingredients:

2 pkgs active dry yeast (this equates to 4½ teaspoons of the stuff)

¼ cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees - be careful here, you can kill the yeast if the water is too hot)

2 cups of warm milk (110 to 115 degrees)

¾ cup sugar

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted sweet butter – softened (about 1o seconds in the microwave does it for me)

1½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon ground cardamom

2 eggs

7 – 8 cups bread flour
Directions:
In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in the warm water. Add the milk, sugar, butter, salt, cardamom, eggs, and 3 cups of the flour, beat until smooth. Stir in enough of the remaining flour to form a soft dough.

Turn onto a floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 6 to 8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top, cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Note: While I am kneading the dough, I turn the oven on the lowest temperature bake setting, then when it’s time to let it rise, I turn off the oven, open the door for a minute or so, and put the bowl of dough in the oven on an overturned cake pan with a towel on top, and close the oven door. The oven should stay warm, but not hot enough to actually cook the bread at this time)

After the dough has risen, punch it down and turn onto a lightly floured surface, and divide in have. Then divide each half into thirds and shape each third into a 13 inch rope (or snake). Place three ropes onto a greased baking sheet and braid, pinching the ends and tucking them under to seal. Do the same with the other three ropes.

Cover and let rise in a warm place (see above note) until doubled, this time about 45 minutes.

When they have risen again, remove from the oven, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, and bake 25 – 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

Remove from baking sheets and onto wire racks for cooling. (Before cooling, I like to brush them with butter, and this last time I mixed just a few drops of honey with the butter before brushing)

Enjoy,

Until next time...