Flour and baking

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photo by kbcbakery.com

Flour and baking

    This week, our focus was on baking. Our assignment was to prepare a traditional norwegian flatbread or lefse and a christmas biscuit (doesn't need to be norwegian) that can last until Christmas without refrigeration. This time, I worked with Jekabs, and we made both of the goodies together.

However, before starting the baking and the practical session, we introduced the topic with a theoretical background during our literature seminar. 

Åsmund Bjørnstad in his Our daily bread titled book, in the Grains and Civilizations chapter, we could read about the historical significance of grains; how they shaped the rise of the first civilizations. The author explains how societies shifted from hunting and gathering to grains domestication and farming, which led to settled communities. With agriculture, society developed specialized roles, such as farmers, landowners, and scribes, and created tools for farming. All grain-growing people later also developed in writing and arithmetic. The chapter provides a detailed description of the role of grains and bread in the early civilizations: in Babylon, Egypt, Israel, Greece and Rome (Åsmund, 2012, pp. 43-86).

The role of the grains in the Scandinavian region nowadays showed by Henry Notaker's book Food Culture in Scandinavia, in the chapter Major foods and ingredients. Flatbread is traditional in all the Scandinavian countries, but each country has its own variations and traditional ways of making it. For example the swedish "Knäckebröd", is a thin crisp bread, which is really popular there, while in Norway, "Lefse" is a well-known thin soft bread (Notaker, 2009, pp. 46-50).


Lefse

Note: We used the recipe our teacher gave us, the same one we prepared together during the practical session as well (unfortunately, I don't know the exact source). However this time accidentally we mixed up (actually i mixed up) two recepies (Lefser frå Margun Vartdal Romestrand + Hardingar frå Kvalsund frå Go’bitar frå besta si kokebok). In the end, though we were happy how it turned out. Also, as I looked into it online, I found that there are many different versions of how to prepare lefse. So, in the following, you can read about our version.

Cinnamon Lefse
photo by Anna
Ingredients

Dough:

  • 0,5 l cultured milk
  • 0,5 l whole milk
  • 2 tbsp hjortesalt (a type of salt)
  • 1.5 kg wheat flour

Baking Flour:

  • sifted wheat flour (2/3)
  • semolina (1/3)

Butter Cream:

  • 250 g margarine or butter
  • 1/4 packet powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • kardamon + cinnamon as much as you prefere

To begin, we thoroughly mixed the dough ingredients; it should be soft and slightly wet. Then we shaped small, palm-sized balls and rolled each one out on a floured surface. We had to use a lot of the flour mixture to prevent the dough from sticking. A breakfast plate was used to cut each rolled-out dough into a perfect shape. Using the baking stick, we placed them on the baking sheet and cooked each side for a few minutes. After baking, we sprayed them with cold water and placed them between cloths to soften. Once they were all ready, we moved on to preparing the buttercream. We blended with a hand mixer the butter, sugar, and powdered sugar until it get fluffy. We added a bit of cardamom and cinnamon to the buttercream. We spread the Lefse with the cream, sprinkled some extra cinnamon on top, cut them in half, and repeated this process with all the pieces. We packed them in half-cutted, but when it's time to serve, we'll cut them into smaller pieces to get tiny triangles.

moments from the process
photos by Anna


Saffron Biscuit
Note: The recipe we followed is from the website of Arla, a danish-swedish dairy brand, and it was created by them. (link:https://www.arla.se/recept/biscotti-med-saffran/)
Saffron Biscuits and it's creators in the background
photo by Anna
Ingredients

  • 75 g almonds
  • 40 g margarine
  • 1.5 dl powdered sugar
  • 2 small eggs
  • 0.25 g saffron
  • 3.5 dl flour
  • 0.5 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla sugar



First, we preheated the oven to 175°C. Then we started making the dough. We mixed the butter, sugar, and saffron until smooth, then added the eggs. Separately, we mixed the dry ingredients: wheat flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar, and the coarsely chopped almonds. Then we combined this mixture with the saffron mix and thoroughly blended them. We formed three line from the dough and placed them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. They were baked at 175°C for about 30 minutes. After taking it out from the oven, we let it cool down a little, before we started slicing them diagonally into small pieces. Then, the oven was set to 100°C, and we returned the small biscuits to the oven, cut-side up, to dry for another 30 minutes until the biscuites were completely dried out.

moments from the process
photos by Anna

Conclusion
(based only on my personal taste)
Although I enjoyed making the cinnamon Lefse (especially when I learned how to handle the long sticks during baking!), I find it a bit too complicated, and the constant flouring created a lot of mess. The taste didn’t become my favorite, probably because of the norwegian cinnamon rolls now i have really high standards, and i still prefer those. (I feel like i could eat any amount of those at any time.)

However, the saffransbiscotti completely impressed me. I'm a big fan of dry cookies and almonds, so this recipe is perfectly suited to my taste. It will be hard to stop myself from eating it all before we need to submit our box of products to the teachers. Since saffron is the world’s most expensive spice, I probably won’t make this every week, but the Christmas season is the perfect time to bake with something special. I’m very grateful to Jekabs for showing me this recipe. 



Bibliography
Bjornstad, A. (2012). Grains and civilizations. In Our Daily Bread (pp. 43-86). Livonia Print.
Notaker, H. (2009). Major Foods and Ingredients. In Food culture in Scandinavia (pp. 46-50). Greenwood Press.


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