Celebration Breads – Pulla

Received a gift of book.

Many cookbooks make good gifts. This one is exceptional. In Celebration Breads, Betsy Oppenneer tells a story of each bread and provides three methods of preparation for most recipes.

The stories give a brief history of the breads. Oppenneer describes the festival or celebration for which the breads are usually created and a short description of how the breads are traditionally made. Her research covers most of the world and she writes of recipes from Asia, Northern Europe, Africa and the Americas.

In the introduction, Oppenneer describes how she came to write the book and a the courses of her research. She also presents the three methods of bread preparation used in the book: By hand, with a mixer and by bread machine. Her descriptions are detailed and in most recipes, she gives tested instructions for all three methods.

For the first bread from Celebration Breads, I selected a hospitality bread from Finland; Pulla. The Pulla recipe is on page 244 of the book. I wanted to test the recipe myself and I selected the mixer method. I reasoned that many people, especially beginners, would find the mixer method less intimidating. Since I was testing the recipe, I should have followed the recipe exactly but, the recipe called for ½ cup of sugar. I try to avoid manufactured sugar whenever possible, so before I knew what I was doing I had substituted honey. Since the texture of bread dough is more a look and feel determination, the honey substitute probably did not alter consistency too much. On the other hand, yeast tends to like sugar more than honey, so my rises were a bit slow. Either way, I did alter the recipe and will bake another batch as the recipe is written.

Other than the sugar, every step of the recipe was followed. Ingredients were put into the mixer. Flour was added until the dough formed a ball and a very wet dough was put out for kneading. Oppenneer noted that she preferred moist doughs, so this seemed appropriate. Because the dough was wet, kneading was a bit more of a challenge. The bread board was oiled and very little flour put down to prevent sticking. One hand, my left, worked the wet dough directly. As a result, it got messy. With my right hand, I wielded a dough knife. For kneading I prefer a flat, stainless steel blade that is dull and spatula like. With the dough blade, I lifted the dough from the lightly floured bread board and with the heel of my left hand, I worked the dough. This method is less complicated than it sounds and comes out much better than you might envision.

When the dough was kneaded and had completed the first rise, as the instructions suggested, I cut it into three strips and braided them. Though tricky, this made for a very pretty bread. After the second rise, into the oven.

This bread was delicious. The texture was like a cake, or brioche. The butter, honey and cardamom in the dough blended into a taste treat. Not too sweet but interesting, the bread was an instant hit. The cardamom seed gave it an aroma and flavor that reminded me of grand-mothers. In a very good way.

Next time, I intend to follow the recipe exactly as written but I do not expect any surprises. If this first recipe is any indication, Celebration Breads will be a well used, treasure among our bread baking books.

copyright 2006 Chromia Poetics