Ruisleipä Image Used Under Creative Commons License From jillieofalltrades.com
Citizens – Finnish rye bread, aka ruisleipä is one of the truly amazing REAL breads you’ll ever taste!
As noted in a superlative (excerpted) article on finland.fi:
First cultivated in Finland over 2,000 years ago, rye grain’s adaptability to various soil types, coupled with its ability to ripen over the short northern summer, has long seen it a staple of the local cuisine.
“Finnish rye bread is a story of a poor country, as there were so few ingredients that were always available,” Mäkelä explains. “Water, leaven, salt and rye flour – that’s still the basic recipe. Sometimes you can also add yeast.”
Whether it’s the round limppu (loaf) originating from the eastern parts of the country, or the west’s flat disc with a hole in the middle, known as reikäleipä, Finnish full-flavoured rye bread is noticeably lighter than varieties from Germany and the Baltic Region. It is also considerably less sweet than Swedish rye bread, and is commonly enjoyed as a sandwich, dipped in soup or simply by itself, topped with a layer of butter.
Whichever way you look at it, and whatever shape it comes in, the bond that Finns share with rye bread cannot be overstated.
“If people come from a different part of Finland and move to Helsinki, they often long for the kind of bread they have eaten in their childhood,” Mäkelä explains. “Also, if you ask almost any Finn going abroad to meet expats, there are two things they would take with them: rye bread and Fazer blue-label chocolate.”
This coveted bread is even on sale at Helsinki Airport to meet demand. Here travellers can pick up a last-minute gift for their friends and family, or ensure they have enough in stock when spending time outside of the country.
With research continuing to uncover new health benefits, and the number of varieties on offer growing steadily, it’s safe to say that store shelves around the country will be well stocked with the national bread for many years to come.
“We Finns use rye bread to sustain ourselves and our bodies, but it is also part of our cultural identities,” Mäkelä observes. “We are keeping it in our hearts, but on the other hand we are also keeping it on our tables.”
“It’s a living tradition.”
The special leaven, sourdough, used when preparing Finnish rye bread is known as leivän juuri in Finnish, or ‘the root of the bread’.
“Many households still have their own leaven, which they inherited from previous generations,” explains VTT’s Kaisa Poutanen. “Where I live in Kuopio, a lady has leaven which is over 50 years old that she got from her mother-in-law. She is still baking with it, every week.”
The trick to preserving leaven is to ensure that some of the bread mix is left over when baking, which can then either be dried or frozen. Next time around all that needs doing is add a little water and the bacteria start to live again. And the cycle continues, ensuring flavoursome bread time and time again.
Ruisleipä relies very much on unique Finnish yeasts to achieve its character – I give you a way to add this to your own breads in perpetuity! The true key to making this authentically is you MUST use genuine Finnish sourdough starter or it just won’t work out or taste right – you can buy it here.
Ruisleipä is a gorgeously dense bread, a genuine 100% rye bread and I couldn’t be happier to enable you to have a taste of Finland in your own kitchens, Citizens! This Sour Rye Bread recipe makes 2-3 loaves and is adapted from the classic Finnish ‘Kotiruoka’ cookbook. Try enjoying ruisleipä with any excellent Finnish meal, perhaps Finnish split pea soup with ham!
Starter – you need to start this recipe 2 days before baking
3–4 slices wholegrain rye bread or 6-7 slices Finn crisps (‘hapankorppu’ (sour rye crisp bread) is sold as “Finn Crisp”. Look for bread that contains over 90% wholegrain rye)
Finnish sourdough starter
1 liter warm (25C) room-temperature non-chlorinated water
1 liter (about 400g) wholegrain (dark) rye flour – TFD prefers King Arthur Pumpernickel flour
***
Dough:
25g fresh yeast
100ml warm water
2 teaspoons salt
approximately 1 ½ liters (about 600g) wholegrain (dark) rye flour + extra for kneading
Instructions
To make the starter, pour the warm water in a large mixing bowl. Break in the bread slices (or Finn crisps) and mix in the rye flour plus the Finnish starter. Stir well to combine. Cover the bowl and leave for 2 days or until the starter is clearly bubbling and smells fresh but ‘sour’.
For this to happen, stir the starter every now and then (a couple of times each day), and keep the bowl covered with tea towels at a steady room temperature.
After two days, ‘revitalize’ the starter by adding a cupful of flour (from the whole amount of flour needed for the dough) and stirring it through. After that, leave the starter, covered, for 3 more hours.
Dissolve the fresh yeast in 100 ml of warm water and add the mixture into the starter. Add in the salt, then knead the flour into the dough bit by bit until the dough starts to unstick your hand.
At this point, take a piece of the dough to use as a starter for next time. Wrap the piece in plastic wrap and freeze it or store it in the fridge if you are using it again in the near future.
Leave the rest of the dough to rise, covered, until doubled in size. This can take a good couple of hours or more, depending on the conditions. Once the dough has risen, divide the dough into 2-3 portions and knead into loaves.
You can use loaf tins or make free-form loaves, both will work just as fine. Try not to use too much rye flour, however, as this can toughen the bread. Place the loaves on a baking tray lined with baking paper, rub a bit of rye flour on each loaf, and cover the tray with a tea towel.
Leave the loaves to rise for a further 30-40 minutes.Preheat the oven to 200C.Prick the loaves before baking. Bake the bread in preheated oven for 45-60 minutes or until the base of the bread sound ‘hollow’ when tapped with fingers. Leave the loaves to cool (covered with a tea towel) on a wire rack. This bread keeps well in room temperature, but if you want to freeze it, you should only do so the following day. Serve with good butter and enjoy!
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