Welcome to the
Academic Karelian pie Association's blog and at the same time to Pristina,
Kosovo at least virtually! In this blog we’ll serve you a variety of our whims
that mostly concerns food and especially baking. Since we are three Finnish women
living outside of our native country, we’ll provide you traditional Finnish delicacies
like the Islander bread, cinnamon buns and of course Karelian pies, which you
most likely already guessed from the title of the blog. Addition to this, we’ll try to
honor also the Balkan cuisine and make and present something local at least in the forthcoming Yugo darling – dining with Tito- serie.
But without further introductions, let's move to the main
subjects, the Islander bread and homemade beer.
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| Don't do as I do, but as I say. Whisk is not a good idea for this. |
Summer passed same as my holiday trip to Finland. However, as a souvenir to
myself, being a smart girl, I carried a bag of rye flour, wheat bran
and beer malt to Kosovo. There is no point to even try to find for example rye flour in Kosovo since all the markets are full with a variety of basic wheat flours. Sadly, I
did also make a one cardinal mistake by leaving dark syrup at the store in Finland.
Haven’t been able to find that in Pristina either.
Regardless of these
challenges me and Mrs. Hyde managed to make the Islander bread and it tasted
like the real thing. Since it was a Saturday evening we decided to also invite
some of our Finnish friends living in Pristina to come to taste our makings. The
Islander bread is at its best from four to five days after the baking, but we served the bread still straight out of the oven. Greedy and hungry as we
were.
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| Suveniers from Finland |
The homemade beer, on
the other hand, was done by a random tough when we realized that we had all the ingredients
that are needed for it. The result was almost doomed to be a juice-failure since we were too busy and excited not to read the instructions carefully
and started drinking the beer straight after bottling. Besides this, we thought
first that problem was the temperature of the place where we left the beer can for its fermentation process. Well, what ever it were, note to self: read the instructions!
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| Homemade beer |
ISLANDER BREAD (2 breads)
- 5 dl sour milk of running yogurt
- 50 g yeast
- 1,5 dl syrup or honey
- 1,5 dl wheat bran
- 1,5 dl beer malt
- 1,5 dl rye flour
- ½ tablespoon of salt
- about 5-6 dl of wheat flour
Warm the sour milk/yogurt. Don’t let it boil. Move the
sour milk/yogurt to a bowl and add yeast. Add then syrup/honey and salt.
Finally, add all the other ingredients in small sections by mixing them with
your hand or wooden spoon. The dough should be left quite loose when it’s done
so if you have managed to make something similar to pizza dough, you have done
it wrong.
Let the dough rise in its bowl at least 1,5 h. Divide
it to two bread trays and let it rise for one hour more. It’s good to cover the
trays with oven paper so it will be easier to get the bread out of it.
Bake the breads at 175 Celcius for 1,5h. If you like
decorations, you can sprinkle a small amount of wheat flour on top of the
breads. When the breads are done, it’s good to roll them on folio and restore
them in fridge.
HOMEMADE BEER (5 liters)
- 5 liters of water
- 3 dl beer malt
- 2 dl sugar
- 0,5-1 teaspoons yeast or ¼ teaspoons of dry yeast
Put the beer malt and sugar in a bowl that is at least
5 liters. Boil water and pour it on top of them. Let it rest and cool down.
When the mixture is not hot anymore, add yeast. Let the whole thing rest in a
warm spot at 12-24 hours.
Strain the beer, bottle and put into fridge. Your beer
is ready to be enjoyed on the next day after bottling.
