I bake bread — a lot of bread. It’s long been my passion. So much so that last year I challenged myself to bake at least one new bread recipe every week. I met that goal, and even exceeded it. French, Italian, Polish, Japanese, Ukrainian, Middle Eastern, Norwegian, Filipino, Irish, ancient grains, seeded, cheesy, savory and a few sweet breads — you name it and I baked it; some successfully, others less so.
Get the recipe: Helsinki Buttermilk Rye (Sturenkadun Piimalimppu)
But at the end of 2022 I still had recipes left on my to-be-baked list, so I’m continuing the challenge. Thus far, 2023 has seen pane bianco, Swedish limpa bread, bagels, a classic French boule with poolish, some intriguing blueberry muffins with turmeric to inflict on unsuspecting houseguests.
Some of these are what I refer to in shorthand as “BfO” bakes — Baking for Others. Some are for our household. (The spouse is an inveterate sandwich eater.) Some bakes are just for me, to experiment with a new technique, a new grain or simply a new recipe that catches my eye.
Advertisement
I don’t tend to create my own recipes, but I do tweak others’, sometimes intentionally as part of this exploration, sometimes purely by accident. I’ve had a lot of happy accidents over 35-plus years of home baking, and some amusing misfires, too — and that’s okay.
Sometimes bread is not all about the bread.
Bread baking is “just” a hobby: My professional life has been primarily in the national security space. Perhaps it’s a right brain/left brain kind of thing, but I’ve always found it a healthy distraction to play with flour. (Of course, kneading the daylights out of an innocent wad of dough is also great for stress release.)
The geeky part of me is fascinated by the chemistry, that magical alchemy that results from combining the most mundane of ingredients — flour, water, salt and yeast. It’s no wonder that some form of bread can be found in cultures pretty much the world over. I love searching out small mills that keep heirloom grain varieties alive; heck, even my house in Delaware is an old flour and grist mill.
Advertisement
After a lot of BfO during the depths of the pandemic, I found myself by late 2021 in a bit of a rut, though, falling back on tried-and-true recipes. I needed to shake things up a bit and try new bakes. Hence this self-inflicted challenge of a year’s worth of new recipes. It was a good thing — hard at times in terms of scheduling, but exhilarating in forcing me out of my comfort zone, to build new skills and discover new styles, bakers, ingredients and recipes.
Share this articleShareIt was also humbling at times.
One of my greatest weaknesses is impatience and a tendency to move too fast. Suffice to say, that doesn’t always work well when baking. I still laugh at what I termed the “big-A” biga bread flail: I was moving too quickly and accidentally added almost twice as much biga — a type of yeast pre-ferment I had prepared the day before — to ingredients that I had mixing in a stand mixer. Realizing it was too late to do anything about it, I continued onward, fully expecting that the baked loaves would be disasters suitable only for the compost.
Advertisement
Shockingly, they turned out well — laughably tall, each more than 8 inches high — but with an intriguing depth of flavor, I’m guessing from the copious fermented yeast.
Baking is like that: full of life lessons. This one was about patience and slowing down, but also about not giving up, and learning from mistakes. (I’ve since taken to increasing the biga proportion when tweaking other recipes.)
Another such lesson comes from one of the many bakers I’ve encountered in researching recipes: “Do not overthink breadmaking.” It’s a great one for those of us who can geek out at times about chemistry or technique or flour protein levels. Sometimes, it’s simply leaning into the joy of making bread to share with those we love.
This is one of those recipes that’s a joy to share, an unusual one that we don’t typically find in the United States — but should: Stanley Ginsberg’s “Sturenkadun Piimälimppu,” or Helsinki Buttermilk Rye, from his wonderfully well-researched book, “The Rye Baker.”
Advertisement
I first made this halfway through my 2022 challenge, and immediately knew I’d keep it on repeat. It’s sweet, sour, bitter and citrusy all at the same time, and absolutely magical for an open-face sandwich or cocktail nosh with a mild Havarti cheese and smoked salmon. I’ve also served it to houseguests for breakfast, toasted, with orange marmalade alongside.
Finding new breads such as this — how can I stop at just one year’s worth? The journey continues.
Get the recipe: Helsinki Buttermilk Rye (Sturenkadun Piimalimppu)
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLOwu8NoaWlqY2R9dnuQaWabmZueu6h5waucmpxdm7yzecBmsJ6ZomQ%3D