My Mom’s Bread

(nostalgia, but also very good)

This was my mom’s everyday bread. It’s a no fuss, no knead, delicious bread that I have no idea where she got from. In a summer household with seven cousins, five parents and a lot of visitors coming and going, it was probably essential to develop… just something that could be made by the dozens every day without being a big hassle. Luckily it didn’t turn out to be just cannon fodder but very tasty as well. Good job mom!

She’s not around anymore and probably never wrote the recipe down so I have no original to go from. My older brother Rasmus has kind of been the one picking up mom’s bread-mantle, so I asked him. I got a very approximate list of ingredients and instructions that produced something very close to the real deal. So this is that!

Created with Sketch. 30 minutes work, 2 hours watching Netflix Created with Sketch. 12 quite large buns

Ingredients

  • 500 gwater
  • 350 gbread flour
  • 100 goatmeal
  • 100 gsifted rye
  • 7 gdry yeast (or ca 25 g fresh yeast)
  • 7 gsalt
  • 15 gsyrup (or honey)
  • Some pumpkin seeds and an egg for garnishing

Directions

This is almost too easy.

  1. Mix yeast, salt and lukewarm water together.
  2. Add everything but the bread flour (and the garnish) while stirring.
  3. Add the bread flour while stirring. The consistency should be sticky but hold together. Like this or a bit looser (it can definitely be a bit looser). No need to stir more than a minute, maybe two.
  4. Leave it to rise under a towel for about 1-1.5 hours. It should rise to at least twice the volume.
  5. Take two quite large spoons. Dig out a fair chunk of the batter/dough and scrape it off with the other spoon onto a baking paper covered (or buttered) oven tray. It’s not gonna be pretty (as you can see) but it doesn’t need to be. Actually, if it’s pretty, the dough is probably not sticky enough.
  6. Let rise on the oven trays under a towel for another 30 minutes. Put the oven on 250 C after 15 minutes.
  7. Whisk the egg with a bit of cold water and gently brush the dough-buns with it. Sprinkle a bit of salt on top and finish of with the pumpkin seeds (or sesame, poppy whatever, I like the pumpkin).
  8. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes and you’re done!

We used to eat these in amounts that just cannot be recommended. Freshly baked, I always had them with lots of butter and honey, which I’m pretty sure sounds weird to lots of people but fuck me it’s good. And a large glass of milk.

Emotionally, that 👆🏻 feels like about 80% of my childhood. It’s my mom, my family, our summer place, visiting friends. It’s everything.

I hope it turns out to be at least something for you 😊

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