I used a whole sachet of dry yeast because that’s what the instructions suggested, but I do think that even half the amount would have sufficed with a slightly longer proofing time. Sadly I haven’t seen dried sourdough starter sold in Finland, but I think I’ll ask if our organic store’d be willing to add it to their selection. Sure, homemade sourdough starter is great especially as its flavor develops over time, but sometimes it’s rather satisfying to take the easy way out and have a fresh loaf of sourdough in just a few hours!

Here’s what I used:

• 1 sachet dried sourdough starter (30 grams), Lecker’s
• 7 and 1/2 dl water, lukewarm (37 Celsius)
• 6 dl whole rye flour (plus 1 dl for shaping)
• 6 dl white wheat flour
• 2-3 teaspoons salt, to taste
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 sachet dry yeast (11 grams)

First I mixed the starter with water and let it sit for about 5 minutes to wake it up. Then I briskly whisked in 1 dl of rye and 1 dl of wheat flours, covered the bowl loosely, and let it brew for half an hour. I mixed the rest of the flour, salt, and dry yeast in another bowl and mixed that in the starter liquid. I kneaded the dough for about 5 to 7 minutes, until it wasn’t quite as sticky anymore but still pretty wet. Now I set the oven temperature to 200 degrees Celsius and let the dough rise for one hour, until it had more than doubled.

I poured 1 dl of rye flour on my working surface and scooped the dough out of the bowl. Then I cut the dough in half, shaped each half into a loaf, and placed them on a floured baking sheet. I let the loaves rise for half an hour, then slit them with a sharp knife, and baked for 45 minutes until they sounded hollow when tapped on the underside. I also placed a small ramekin filled with water in the oven during baking. After baking I wrapped the loaves in kitchen towels and placed them in a plastic bag to soften the crust a bit, and after about two hours they were easy to cut into.

Dried sourdough starter and its package.

We enjoyed this cake with a store-bought vegan whipped topping, but I am sure that vanilla ice cream would be just as good. I tend to choose full-fat whipped toppings on the rare occasion when I buy commercial ones – they’re not quite as artificial-tasting as the lighter versions. My favorite right now is GoGreen Vispi, an oat-based product that is available at least in Finland and Sweden.

The Wet:

• 2 dl plain soy yoghurt
• 1 large lime, juiced and zested (1/2 dl juice, 1 tablespoon zest)
• 1/2 dl canola oil

The Dry:

• 2 dl almonds, ground into 3 dl almond meal
• 1 dl white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 dl gram (chick pea flour)
• 2 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• pinch of salt

The Topping:

• 1 dl slivered almonds
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon soy milk
• pinch of salt

To Serve:

• vegan whipped topping (we had GoGreen Vispi)
• 1/2 vanilla bean

The batter was as straightforwards as can be – I mixed the wet and the dry separately and then combined, stirring with a fork. I also stirred the topping ingredients gently together (I didn’t want to mash the slivers), then poured the batter in the baking pan and sprinkled with the topping. For an even coating, you might want to double the amount of topping.

Then I baked the cake for 25 minutes in 200 degrees Celsius, until the edges were nicely browned and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake came out with just a few crumbs. I let the cake cool to room temperature, and served with vanilla whipped cream. For the cream, I just scraped the seeds from half a vanilla bean with the tip of a sharp knife, and added that to the commercial vegan whipping cream as I was whipping it.

I use white whole wheat flour all the time now that it’s finally available here, and it works very nicely in heavier baked goods like cookies. Maybe because of all the sugar and a touch of vinegar, these blondies don’t taste whole-wheaty at all, quite the opposite – not that whole-wheaty is necessarily a bad thing, just not what I usually aim at when making dessert. Peanut butter is just a slight side note in the taste – I am not a huge fan of sweet peanutty things, but here it adds a little something important. These were good right after baking and excellent straight from the fridge later on.

The Dry:

• 2 and 1/2 dl white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

The Wet:

• 3/4 dl coconut oil
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 2 dl whole cane sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon brown rice vinegar

The Egg-Replacer:

• 2 tablespoons gram (chick pea) flour
• 3 tablespoons soy milk

The Chocolate:

• a handful of chopped dark chocolate, 85%

First I preheated the oven to 175 degrees Celsius, chopped the chocolate, and sprayed a glass baking pan with a bit of olive oil. I used a small, 15 X 20 cm baking pan, and the result was fudgy and kind of sticky in the center. Very delicious, but a larger pan would yield more of the caramelized edges that were probably my favorite part of this dessert.

To make the batter, I first mixed the wet, the dry, and the egg-replacer ingredients in separate bowls. The chickpea flour is a bit lumpy so it’s important to mix well. Now, I combined everything and stirred with a fork just so that there were no dry lumps visible. I folded in the chocolate, poured the batter in the pan, and baked for 25 minutes. For the last 5 minutes I covered the pan to prevent too much browning – it might be wise to check after the first 15 minutes and cover when necessary.

I recently found a wonderful organic smoked rye flour. It’s called riihikuiva which means barn-dried in Finnish, and has an amazingly deep and rich smokey flavor. If there’s no smoked flour available, I bet a pinch of smoked paprika with regular rye flour would work just as well. We served these muffins plain, hot from the oven with our evening tea, and I bet muffin halves spread with some vegan cream cheese would be pretty tasty as well.

Dry Mix:

• 2 dl white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 dl smoked rye flour (or another smoked flour, or medium rye flour)
• 1/2 dl oat bran
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons brown sugar (muscovado)
• 1 teaspoon each: salt, dried basil, chilli flakes

Wet Mix:

• 1 and 3/4 dl plain unsweetened soy yoghurt
• 3/4 dl cold-pressed sunflower oil (or olive oil)
• 1/2 to 3/4 dl water
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed

Add-ins:

• 15 kalamata olives, chopped
• 3 sundried tomatoes in oil, rinsed and chopped
• 1-2 tablespoons capers
• 1 spring onion, sliced

I first preheated the oven to 200 degrees Celsius and sprayed 8 muffins cups with olive oil.

I stirred together the wet and dry mixes in separate bowls and then combined the two, being careful not to overmix. I had to add a tablespoon or so more water because the batter was too dry, but this always depends – it’s best to start with 1/2 dl water and add more as needed. I folded in the olives, sundried tomatoes and capers, and spooned the batter in the muffin cups. Then I sprinkled the muffins with some onion slices, and baked them for 17 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin came out clean.

There’s only enough batter there to keep things together, letting all the nutty goodness really shine. We munched on these from the fridge for more than a week and the flavors just kept on getting better. I used a cayenne-flavored dark chocolate for the topping, but regular would be fine – maybe sprinkled with a bit of extra cayenne for more spicy kick. I also used whole cane sugar and agave as sweeteners, but to simplify things I’m sure using just one or the other would work as well.

Here’s what I used:

• 2 and 1/2 dl assorted nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, and almonds)
• 1 dl raw coconut flakes
• 1/2 dl chick pea flour (gram or besan)
• 1/2 dl whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 dl coconut oil in room temperature
• 1/2 dl whole cane sugar
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons agave syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1 tablespoon soy yoghurt
• 60 grams (cayenne-flavored) dark chocolate, chopped

First, I preheated the oven to 175 degrees Celsius, covered my baking dish with parchment paper, and sprayed it with a bit of olive oil. I also chopped the nuts and the chocolate – the nuts quite coarsely, dividing them only in 2-3 pieces each.

To make the batter, I mixed the dry ingredients except nuts and coconut flakes (chickpea flour through cayenne) in one bowl, and the wet ingredients (coconut oil through soy yogurt) in another. Now I poured the dry into wet and stirred with a fork just enough to mix. Then I poured nuts and coconut flakes in the batter bowl and stirred until they were evenly coated with the batter. There should be just enough batter to coat.

Now I spread the mixture in the baking dish and baked the squares for 15 minutes, until nicely browned. I turned down the heat in the oven, sprinkled the chocolate evenly over the nutty layer, and then placed the baking dish back in the oven for 1 minute to melt the chocolate. I removed the dish from the oven and spread the chocolate evenly with a butter knife, then let the whole thing come to room temperature, and refrigerated for a few hours before cutting into small squares with a sharp, unserrated knife.

There’s great regional variation in Finnish rye breads, and big emotions are involved when people start to explain why the baking should be done in a certain way. No one in my family used to bake rye bread, so this recipe is a combination of many I found online and in cookbooks – mainly one great little book called Suomen maakuntaleivät (Finnish Regional Breads) by a Finnish celebrity cook from the eighties, Jaakko Kolmonen. I checked it out form the library, but he also now has his own website, where you can buy copies of all his cookbooks that are still in print. The banner picture with him smiling and hugging a cute little piglet does creep me out a little bit, but his bread book is quite amazing – it’s filled with a variety of regional recipes, and the author has travelled around the country, interviewing and observing bakers in their own homes.

The Rye Sourdough Starter:

• 3 slices of good Finnish rye bread
• 10 dl luke warm water
• about 500 grams or 8 dl rye flour (medium)

I cut the crust off the bread, and crumbled the insides into the water. Then I let them dilute, added the flour, and stirred it in. I covered the bowl with some plastic wrap and poked a few air vents in the plastic.

Now I let the starter sit in a warm place, in room temperature, for about 22 hours. I whisked it briskly every now and then, maybe about five times all and all, and covered again after each time. It was all bubbly and foamy when it was ready, and smelled a bit sour and sweet.

The starter can be developed further for up to another 24 hours, which would most likely make it even more sour. The traditional way is to leave some dough on the sides of the wooden mixing bowl, let it dry, and just add the water and flour in the bowl to wake up the starter when needed. Some food scientists say only freshly milled flour works in a sourdough starter, but I just used what we had in the cupboard and it worked fine. Now if Finnish rye bread isn’t available, I don’t see why any kind of sourdough starter wouldn’t do just as well.

The Bread:

• about 1 kg or 16 dl rye flour (medium)
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 dl warm water
• the rye sourdough starter

When the starter was ready I mixed it with the salt and the warm water, and then kneaded in the flour a little by little. I kneaded until the dough was still soft but seemed workable. Rye flour isn’t very glutinous and the dough is bound to remain sticky, but that’s how it should be – the coarser the flour, the softer the dough, as Onerva Niilola explained in Kolmonen’s book. I reserved a piece of the dough about the size of my fist and froze it to be used as a starter the next time I bake rye bread.

Now I let the dough rise in a warm place for 4 hours, in two separate bowls that were covered with clean kitchen towels, until it had just about doubled in size. Then I divided the dough in three equal portions and lightly kneaded them a few times with floured hands until slightly firmer to the touch. I shaped the pieces into three round loaves with well floured hands on a well floured working surface and let them rise, covered with kitchen towels, for about 2 hours more until the surface started to crack. These round loaves are called limppu in Finnish.

Before baking the breads I made a few slits on the surface of the bread, but this isn’t traditional – the breads are usually just poked with the spikes of a fork here and there. I just think the slits are pretty, and I like how they offer a peek inside the bread.

I baked one bread at a time, in 200 degrees Celsius for 50 to 60 minutes, until the crust had browned and the bread sounded hollow when tapped on the bottom. Then I wrapped them tightly in kitchen towels and let the crusts soften overnight. The bread should be moist but well baked in the center, and it’s at its best a few days after baking. We store our rye bread in paper bags – with time it dries a bit and is easier to slice thinly.

This is a very simple method for bread baking – no need to worry too much about kneading or shaping. This bread keeps well for a few days, stored in a paper bag that is wrapped in a kitchen towel.

This is what we used:

• 3 dl wheat bran
• 1 1/2 dl spelt flour
• 2 dl white wheat flour
• 3 dl whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon caraway seeds, crushed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 dl water, warmed to about 37 °C
• 2 tablespoons muscovado sugar
• 25 g fresh yeast
• for decoration: about 2 teaspoons caraway seeds

I started by mixing the bran, the flours, salt, and the crushed caraway seeds in a bowl. Then I mixed the sugar with the water, and stirred with a fork until the sugar was diluted. Now I diluted the yeast into the water, crumbling it first with my fingers and then stirring with a fork. I poured the liquid into the bowl with the dry ingredients, and mixed it quickly into a dough. We spread the dough on a baking parchment placed on a baking sheet, and flattened with our hands until it was an evenly-shaped square, about 30cm x 30cm. Then we let it raise for 40 minutes.

The oven was set to 225 degrees Celsius. Before putting the bread in the oven, I sprayed it with some water and sprinkled caraway seeds over the top. I baked the bread for 15 minutes on the middle rack of our oven. Now the bread had browned just a little bit on the top, and I removed it from the oven and put it on a wooden rack to cool. Once it had cooled enough that I could touch it, I cut it into squares. We immediately enjoyed it with some soup.

I added a few pinches of saffron in the dough for a yellow hue. Saffron is usually only used on special occasions, in Christmas and Easter baking, and I have to admit that I actually prefer my pulla without the taste of saffron.

I placed the dough in the fridge after the first rising, and let it come to room temperature on the next day before shaping the rolls. I think that the slow second rising really made a difference, since this was definitely one of the best pulla batches I’ve ever baked – the dough was soft and pliable, very easy to work with and nice and tender after baking.

The Pulla Dough (makes 12 almond rolls):

• 3 dl warm soy milk
• 25 grams fresh yeast
• 3 and 1/3 dl wheat flour
• 3 dl whole spelt flour
• 1 dl raw cane sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
• 50 grams coconut oil, warmed until liquid
• 1/2 dl canola oil
• (a few pinches of saffron threads, finely ground – optional)

I heated the soy milk to 37 degrees Celsius, as warm as my hand. Then I diluted the yeast and the sugar in the water, and then added the salt, saffron, and cardamom. Now, I poured in the wheat flour, and stirred briskly with a wooden fork for about 3 minutes. I added the coconut oil and the spelt flour, and kneaded for a few minutes.

Now I added the canola oil and kneaded it in the dough, then placed it on the working surface and kept on kneading until the dough was smooth and didn’t stick to my hands any more. I let it rise, covered and in a warm, draftless place (which in this case was our oven) for a few hours, until it had just about tripled in size, then shaped it back to a round log again and returned in the bowl, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it slowly rise in the fridge overnight.

In the morning I removed the bowl from the fridge and let the dough come to room temperature for a few hours. Then I rolled it out with a rolling pin into a rectangular sheet a bit less than one centimeter thick.

The Filling:

• 3/4 dl or 5 tablespoons almonds
• 3/4 dl or 5 tablespoons walnuts
• 1/2 dl muscovado (whole cane) sugar, packed
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 50 grams margarine, softened

I just mixed the almonds, the walnuts, and the sugars in our mini food processor until they were coarsely ground together. I spread the margarine on the dough sheet and sprinkled with the filling mixture.

The Shaping of the Rolls:

Now I rolled up the dough sheet tightly into a log, starting from the longer side:

I used an unserrated knife and sloping cuts to cut it into triangular pieces, like so:

I placed the rolls on a baking sheet, the wider side downwards, and pressed down the centers with my fingers, so that the cut sides bulged out:

Now I placed the baking sheets in a warm place, covered them with a kitchen towel, and set the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Now the dough got to have a third rising for about 40 minutes, until the rolls had almost doubled in size.

The Topping:

• 1/2 dl water
• 1 tablespoon plain soy yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon syrup of choice
• pearl sugar and chopped almonds

I whisked the water, soy yoghurt and syrup together, and just before baking I brushed the rolls with the mixture, and sprinkled with almonds and pearl sugar.

Finally, I baked the rolls on the middle rack of our oven for 10 minutes, until nicely browned over the top.

Everybody loved the combo of tart cranberries and melty dark chocolate, and the vanilla ice cream magically transformed the cookies into a real dessert. This makes 8 large cookies – pictured here are the two survivors on the day after.

The Dry Mix:

• 3 dl spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

The Wet Mix:

• 1 dl dark syrup
• 1/2 dl muscovado sugar
• 1/2 dl canola oil
• 1 tablespoon soy yoghurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Add-Ins:

• 1/2 dl dried cranberries
• 1/2 dl chopped chocolate (72 %)

First I stirred together the wet and dry mixes in separate bowls, added the wet to the dry, and stirred with a fork until almost combined. I poured in the cranberries and chocolate and kneaded them in, and then refrigerated the dough overnight in a zip-lock bag.

After our dinner the next day, I pre-heated the oven to 175 degrees Celsius, and divided the dough into 8 equal portions. I rolled them into balls and flattened slightly on a cookie sheet, and then baked for 11 minutes.

The cookies came out of the oven still soft, but after about 10 minutes they had nice crispy edges and chewy centers – quite perfect served with a scoop of ice cream and a dessert fork.

Adding wheat bran to cookies is a good way of making you feel like you’re baking something almost healthy without compromising flavor. This batch yields about 10 medium-sized cookies, and they keep very well in room temperature for a few days at least.

The Dry Ingredients:

• 1 dl whole spelt flour
• 1 dl wheat flour
• 1/2 dl wheat bran
• 1/2 dl dark cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

The Wet Ingredients:

• 1 dl muscovado sugar
• 3 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

I first mixed the dry and the wet ingredients in separate bowls, and then combined in one of the bowls. The dough was dry-ish but kept together when pinched between two fingers.

I then proceeded to cover a baking sheet with baking parchment and rolled the dough into 10 balls. I flattened the cookies slightly – they only spread a little in the oven, so this is an important step. Then I baked them in 175 degrees Celsius for 8 to 9 minutes, when still soft but just slightly browned on the underside.

These cookies had a good crunch, but also a nice and chewy center – there is a risk of overbaking these, so good care should be taken.