Swedish goodness

Sweden was awesome! No surprise, I suppose, since it WAS vacation after all. It's a great place to visit - everyone spoke excellent English, it was easy to get around, heck, my cell phone even got data service there! (Thanks, provider!)

One thing I loved was the breakfast buffets - lots of delicious food, usually included in your lodging cost. My boyfriend and I would usually eat a hearty breakfast, skip lunch, have a late afternoon snack and then have dinner.

I have come back vowing to recreate the bread I found at every breakfast offering. It's dark, but not dry or heavy. It's got some nuts or seeds in it but no heavy flavoring. I've found some recipes that call for orange or anise or fennel and I'm certain the ones I had didn't have those elements - some posts hint that's a Christmas-related flavoring choice.

 

At one place I cleverly took a picture of the label, so I would know the ingredients involved when looking for recipes.



The above label indicates it's bread made with filmjölk, or sour milk. I have a friend in Sweden (who we didn't get to see) who tells me it's sort of like a cross between buttermilk and yogurt; they always have it on hand for their kids to drink. He even made a little video as he poured it into a glass so I could get a sense of its density!

I've tracked down some recipes for "sour milk bread" and also found this post for so-called Kavring, or dark rye bread. It calls for plain yogurt and a little milk or cream if the dough is too thick, so I think that is her attempt at substituting for the sour milk ingredient used in Sweden.

There are two more odd ingredients on that label: one is mörk sirap - aka dark syrup. Apparently it's kinda like dark corn syrup, sorta like molasses crossed with light syrup.. on that I took no chances. I bought a bottle and brought it home.

The final mystery ingredient is nyponskal. Here, I'm sorry to say, the internet has not been helpful, nor has my friend. The best I can find that this is rosehip husk... it can be used in soup. I'm thinking it's kind of a ... bran-like thing? Anyway I bought a bag of what seems to be rosehip meal.. so I will try that and see if it works.

I'm going to construct a recipe that mainly follows the Kavring one but has some additional elements, and will sub in my best guess at the Swedish-specific options.

Stay tuned!