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.

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.

Vispipuuro is most traditionally made with lingonberries, but other berries and fruit can be used just as well. The garnish in the picture is red currants, which make a nice porridge too – and one variation is to use pureed apricots for a pretty yellow version. This time I used muscovado sugar because it pairs especially well with the strong aromatic taste of the lingonberries, but consequently the color of the porridge isn’t quite as pink as it would be with white sugar. Either way, this is one my most favorite desserts ever – and also one of the few traditional Finnish dishes that are vegan!

The Ingredients (serves 6):

• 10 dl water
• 1 and 3/4 dl semolina
• 4 dl lingonberries (200 g)
• 1 and 1/2 dl (muscovado) sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

I started out by puréeing the berries with our stick blender until they were all smooth. Then I heated the water until it was boiling, and whisked in the semolina. I added the berries, sugar, and salt, and cooked the porridge for about 10 minutes, stirring all the time, until it had thickened a bit. The amount of sugar depends on the acidity of the berries, so it’s always a good idea to start with less and add more if needed.

The porridge has to cool down before it’s whipped, or else it won’t get all light and foamy. I poured the porridge in a large mixing bowl, let it sit in the room temperature for a few hours, and then refrigerated until it had cooled completely. Then I beat it with our mixer until it started to get lighter in color and quite fluffy, which took about 5 minutes or so.

Lingonberry semolina porridge is velvety right after it’s made, and after a night in the fridge it becomes a little more solid. It’s especially nice served with a little sugar and some cold soy milk!

The Best Mail Day Ever:

Sinead, whom I got to know through her blog Kitchen Dancing, is a Canadian vegan living in the UK, and she happens to like the Finnish salty liqourice candy called salmiakki. As per her request, I sent her a small assortment of different kinds of vegan salmiakki last week. On Monday the mailman delivered a brown package to our door, and it was filled with the cutest things: deliciously chewy ginger biscotti and truffles filled with white chocolate straight from Sinead’s kitchen, along with a beautifully packaged rosemary chocolate from a local chocolate shop, and a Secret Society of Vegans Membership Card! A great deal for me, no? Thanks Sinead, you are the sweetest!