Episode: 2186
Title: HPR2186: Baking Yule Bread
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2186/hpr2186.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:27:32

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Hello hacker public radio listeners, this is Inscus, also known as Michael, and I'm going
to bake you bread today Swedish style or maybe Scandinavian style. I'm not sure.
So the first thing I'm going to do is put about half a kilo or about a pound of whole meal,
whole rye meal flour in steel jar and then I'm going to pour like boiling hot water or about
a hundred degrees hot water onto it and about three quarters of a liter. I mean it's about the amount
you can use. It's not rocket science, but you pour the water onto the flour and you stir it around a
bit. So the flour is soaked. This is the process of scalding flour, not sure I said that in the
beginning. So first scalding some whole rye flour and putting a lid on it.
When you stir it so all the flour is soaked with the water, then you can put a lid on it and put it
aside for the time being. And then take two pieces of dried bitter orange peels and put them in
hot water where they will simmer for about 30 minutes. Just simmer, don't boil them to
intensely. So that's the start of making the bread.
So about half an hour has passed and the scalded flour hasn't cooled off as yet, but I'm going to
pour a bottle of porter which is a kind of dark, quite heavy beer. And it's not for the alcohol,
it's for the taste. And the bread in Swedish is called vutt bread which is word bread, word what
you get when you make beer. And or it's a product on the way to become beer. And this kind of bread is
just very associated with Christmas time. But because also they used to brew beer at this time of
year, a dark kind of heavy beer for Christmas. And so they took some of the word, word W-O-R-T
to put in the bread, it acted a bit like a sweetener. So I don't know where I can get real
word. You can make it yourself, I haven't done it. But that's maybe the best. So instead I use
a kind of heavy dark beer. This bottle is half a liter. So I just pour it on the scalded flour
and it's bubbling. Also the traditionally they made this kind of bread apparently at other points
of time of year when they made beer, they took some of the word and put in the dough. But it just
feels wrong to eat this bread at other times of the year. So just stir it down into the scalded
flour which is kind of not so liquid and makes it with the beer, beer, not the beard beer.
And please don't drop your unique spears into the dough.
So it smells beer.
So now I take the bitter orange peel that I simmered for about 30 minutes and the inside of the
peel have some you know the white goo inside of peel some citrus fruits. And so you take it away,
goo is not good. Well it's not dangerous but let's scrape it away because now the peels are soft
and then chop them finely or they're so soft they can almost be mashed.
Chop them into small pieces.
This is very exciting to hear a knife chop stuff. This is almost like Game of Thrones.
And put it in the dough or well it's not really dough yet it's more like a mix.
Yes if you manage if you make your own word by the way or if you can get hold of some fresh one
you probably need more water initially for the scolting so because now with the beer it's part of
the liquid. And now I'm going to add one desiliter of syrup just plain syrup nothing fancy.
This is not the healthiest bread maybe but it's good for you anyway.
I'm not sure if this makes sense just as audio but I'll take some pictures so the bread at
least. So and put the syrup into the mix here then let's see cloves. I think I hope I don't
butcher the English language or say something funny but the cloves I've ground about ten of them.
So I'm put in and let's see I'm following my own recipe because there's so many details.
Cloves is kind of one of the standard ingredients. I'm going to put cardamom into it that's optional
but it gives a bit more pastry type of bread with cardamom in it so but maybe a less rustic taste
so I take about I'm not sure one does it say a one teaspoon one teaspoon it's uh maybe that's a
bit lit could be maybe a bit more but you don't want to taste too much like pastry either yeah let's
see here raisins raisins those are kind of standard ingredients about a deciliter
so and one teaspoon of salt that's a kind of a moderate amount but yeah I don't use salt that much
so but a little bit of salt in bread is always good so if you like salty stuff maybe
maybe one one teaspoon is about right so I also add a ginger which is kind of optional but that's
a common spice in the bread and I used fresh ginger which I grated about two inches long piece of
ginger I'm not sure how much I should have but as I said this is not an exact science
um let's see and then yeast
I use fresh yeast powder yeast is probably okay too I never use that so I'm not sure
how it works but I'm sure it works fine too the dough here is uh as cooled enough so that
can put the yeast in we have to add the lighter flour so you can use wheat
and I use uh it's kind of old type of wheat it has called either dinking or spelt
um and I also prefer to use flour that's not you know the more quote industrial
unquote sort of wheat flour which is very very white and very finely ground so you can use that
too but depending on the flour you may have to add more or less of the flour because some
flour is or so very dry so you just add the wheat or the dinkle or spelt flour or because it's
enough of whole meal flour now and then you just uh mix it uh can have cinnamon in it too
I'm not going to do that this time but I've I've seen I've done it before let's see how much
did I use about 10 milliliters that's about uh not a teaspoon but almost a teaspoon cinnamon
it's nice to it's more makes it more pastry life but too much cinnamon is just taste cinnamon so
it can overwhelm the other spices so I'm going to mix this and uh then I'm going to
knead until it's it's more like a dough in this steel metal jar uh it's it's a big jar I'm not sure
if you call this a jar when it's so big but so this is going to be quite much bread so
so I'm going to mix the flour and then when it's uh dry enough to knead uh unless you
what you call them I'm not sure of kneading machine or mixing machine you can do that too I
don't have one and I actually prefer hand kneading and baking machine I don't have one I don't
really know how they work um so I'm going to mix this and knead this so I'm going to turn off the
recording now a little while so the kneading and uh well the mixing and the kneading is done I
added maybe about a kilo of uh dinkle flour or wheat flour if you use that it might be more or
might be less it depends on the flour and the quality of the flour so now I'm going to let the dough
rest for about an hour and uh I'll be back then so the bread has risen for a little bit more
than an hour and I made uh divided it up in six pieces and made loaves of them uh three loaves
on each baking tray and um I will let them rest or rise for maybe another 30 minutes or so
unfortunately my oven isn't one of those with the heat fan in so I can only
spend to just bake one tray at a time so ideally I should make three loaves one tray and then
make the other tray with three another three loaves a bit later but uh now I have done it all in one go
so back in 30 minutes so the loaves have risen for about 30 minutes I took a picture of them too
uh the dough is probably a little bit too soft so they've been floating out of it so I
took some oil between them and uh I actually put both trays in the oven
it's not ideal but uh I'll see how it goes um 200 celsius which is almost 400 degrees
Fahrenheit and 473 Kelvin for about 40 minutes so I'll see how it goes of course if the dough is a bit
too soft or really soft it can be a good idea to put them in those special trays that make the
loaves more squares so if you if you use those sorts when you bake that works fine too so
well let's see how it goes
so now I'm back not only after making the bread but also actually two days later
um and the bread turned out nice the dough was a bit maybe a bit soft but it was okay
I should have used a bread pan or a loaf pan for when the dough or or else put a bit more flour
into the dough um and I baked two trays with the total of six loads at the same time
so I put pictures in the show notes for uh three pictures and the two first or from
this occasion the third one with the finished bread because I forgot to take a picture of the
finished bread is from another occasion where the dough must have been a bit firmer so
they they um this time the bread got a bit flatter because the dough was a bit soft but the taste
is the same and with a heavy bread you should let it rest for well two or three hours at least
after even cutting into it uh so if you like very freshly made bread it's better with a
wider bread so I hope you enjoyed this episode and maybe inspired you to try to make this bread yourself
or maybe make an episode about cooking or baking or well anything uh thanks for listening I wish
you a nice holiday and um catch you some other time
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