Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Swedish Limpa Bread


Tuesday, May 9, 2006
It was my turn to bring bread to book club tonight, so I decided to make a Swedish bread in Minneapolis, this very Swedish city. I had doubts about the limpa bread when I mixed it--the combination of molasses, ale, and aniseed seemed odd. In fact, it smelled downright nasty. I didn't like the smell, or the texture, or the color. I really liked nothing at all about this bread. In addition, I undercooked it (in my very unreliable oven, which I hope to replace soon), and ended up returning it to the oven after I checked its temperature. I muttered to myself about how I shouldn't expect anything from a Swedish bread since this is, after all, the land that brought us lutefisk, but I should have had more faith. In fact, the flavor of this bread turns out to be intriguing rather than nasty, and the texture light and solid at the same time. Tomorrow I'll try it toasted for breakfast, but it's a fine dinner bread with nothing more than a slather of butter.

2 comments:

Marie said...

Lynne,
It would be fun if all of Rose's fans would make the same bread at the same time. Imagine thousands of loaves of Swedish limpa being made at the same time all over the world--it would probably result in some great cosmic force for good. Unfortunately, I don't have a schedule, but I was thinking about baking the monkey bread this weekend.

kestypes said...

I love your idea of a collective bake off. I'd be in it. I can't wait for my copy to arrive.

It'd be really interesting to see how the different temperatures and altitudes of where we all lived affected our breads.