Rye bread must be the most common food to eat in Finland. We love it too and lately we have trying to make it on our own. We started it by making a mother dough. In Finnish it's called 'taikinajuuri', dough with roots. Quite a nice word. A farm with a long history and roots should definitely have an own dough. Water and flour are the only ingredients needed. The process takes about five days until the dough is ready. However at the beginning our bread was quite flat. It needed many tries, baking and testing. After one month we had enough experience and maybe the time did its magic too. A dough for a bread with a perfect texture and airiness.
Making the sourdough:
Day 1. Mix 100g flour with 100ml warm water in a large bowl and place it in a warm place covered with a plate. After 12 hours stir the dough briefly and let it rest.
Day 2. After another 12 hours add 50g flour and 50ml warm water to the dough and mix it well. Cover the dough again and put it back in the warm place. This time, let the dough rest for 24 hours. You can already smell, that the dough is evolving and it has some bubbles.
Day 3. After 24 hours add again 100g flour and 100ml water to the dough and mix it well again. Cover the bowl and put it back in the warm place, stir the dough again after 12 hours and let it rest again.
Day 4. After another 12 hours add 100g flour and 100ml warm water to the dough and stir the dough. Cover again and put back in the warm place and let the dough rest for another 24 hours.
Day 5. The dough is ready to use for baking. Store the dough in a fridge in closable glass jar.
Now the actual bread. Our favorite ingredient, which gives a nice flavor to the bread is caraway. Otherwise you can add come seeds to bread or just make it pure only with the sourdough, water, rye flour and salt.
Add a cup of mother dough.
Mix it with water, around 300ml.
Add rye flour, around 500g. Add the flour in small parts, feel the dough. Sometimes it needs more flour, sometimes less.
If you like add some sunflower, pumpkin or flax seeds. And for the nice flavor, add caraway.
Don't forget to add a little bit salt.
Remember to feed the mother dough with new flour and water after using it for baking.
Let the dough rest couple of hours before making the bread.
The dough is ready to become a bread.
After forming the bread it needs to rest again about an hour. Cover it up with a kitchen towel.
When the bread is ready for the oven, put the oven to a temperature of about 225 degrees (electric oven). Bake the bread for 20 minutes and then lower the heat to about 200 degrees. Continue baking for less than an hour. The bread is ready when knocking the bottom has a hollow sound.
Our tasty bread is ready! The tiny bread has the shape of a traditional Finnish rye bread, made from the rest just for fun. Unfortunately our oven is currently broken and the baking has to wait. But we have also good news! The renovation is getting further and the second floor will be completely renovated before summer.
And other Aronia treats. The last berries are now in good use just before the first snow, which arrived yesterday. It's really pity, that this berry is at least in Finland so underestimated. Maybe this post will open the eyes. The aronia bushes are quite common in the gardens, because they are beautiful and they can manage in the cold atmosphere. Furthermore they are also healthy and tasty. We wrote already earlier in the post Delicacy from our garden and the forest about our aronia jam, which didn't quite fullfill the expectations. Afterwards we have been drying them and made juice out of it, which both worked well. But definitely the best creation was Tobi's aronia pralines, which we named Koivisto praline.
This is the leftover from the berries after we made juice out of them. We mixed them with sugar and dried them few weeks. First in the oven and then just in the room temperature. The berry plate was drying so long till it turned firm, but remained moist.
We cut the plate in small square formed pieces and covered them with white and dark chocolate. The dark makes the taste of aronia even stronger, whereas the white makes it softer.
The newest version of the pralines is with our dried aronia berries on top. They turned out tasty and also beautiful. Maybe we should start a delicacy shop at this farm!
Despite the promises we are still keeping the renovation update to ourselves. We will show the updated situation very soon. We just thought, that these treats were more worth to see. And if you are around, come and taste the juice and the pralines before they run out. Probably the best sweets in this town!
It was about the time to start with the dining room! We've been literally eating outside, because of the little mess and lately cause the dining room has been emptied. The empty room is feeling huge - how do we fill all the space? Anyhow the days were quite sunny, so it hasn't bothered to eat in the garden. Tobi made one day this delicious Turkish delicacy Pide. Any kind of weather can't destroy a good food. Inside we started with renewing the floor. First we took out the old plastic flooring and noticed, that underneath weren't suitable floor boards. So we needed to take the old ones out and set the new ones in.
A plumber helped us a little with the emptying by removing the heaters. We need new heaters, cause the old ones were too weak to give warmth to the dining room and the kitchen. Then the heater pipes got a new color, which should protect them from rusting.
We were beginners making a floor, but it wasn't actually difficult at all. In addition it didn't took so much time, that for example the tiling took. Susanna also enjoyd removing the boards. All the renovation stress can be pointed towards destroying things. Actually we didn't destroy anything, but kept the old boards for a new use.
Tobi tested the new floor. It's very comfortable.
We will manage to have a dining room before the days are getting colder. As long as the Summer goes on, we'll enjoy our food outside. Along with us these tiny fellows from the garden were really pleased with Tobi's bacon covered salmon. Lets enjoy the good food and the warm days!
One passion for us is to cook. Or more like Tobi cooks, Susanna eats and bakes. It's also the most important thing when renovating - remember to eat well! That's also the thing, which is driving us forward to make the kitchen full speed ready. Today on the menu was delicious muikku (Coregonus albula) and fried potatoes with a handful fresh rosemary. Maybe next time the fishes we're eating are coming from our river.
We have been coming quite good along with the kitchen. The old one is now gone or part of it has moved to the living room. We have removed the tiles, the old wallpaper and the plastic carpet from the floor. Also the old and cool extractor fan needed to be removed, but maybe we will figure out new use for it. It's sometimes a little bit chaotic to cook and especially wash the dishes here, but we are managing.
This time there's lot of rhurbarb growing in our garden, so it had to end up in a rhubarb pie or in two tasty pies. After the eating break our journey continues with the kitchen. Next step is to fix the walls.
