Swedish Limpa (Rye Bread)

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 5

Bake of the Day: Swedish Limpa (Rye Bread)

I love trying out new ingredients and when I go to a grocery store, I feel like a kid in a toy store. I go with 2~3 things in mind to buy and end up with buying way more than that. So on one of my trips to Whole Foods, I picked up Whole grain Rye flour because I thought I saw seeing a recipe with it. But as luck might have it, I was actually imagining that recipe and couldn't find anything.

Hence the flour sat in the pantry for quite sometime, until I saw this Swedish Limpa or Rye Bread recipe in King Arthur catalog. The use of caraway & fennel seeds gives this bread the unmistakable rye flavor. I reduced the quantity of both the spices because I wasn't sure if we'll like the strong flavor. There's also some orange oil added to the dough making it very fragrant. The house smelled amazing when this bread was baking.

All in all the bread turned out great. It has a nice soft crumb and is mildly spiced. It tasted great with some butter and pepper jelly. My son ate it with his favorite Nutella and loved it.

Recipe adapted from Kig Arthur Flour:

Ingredients:

Bread Flour - 2¼cups
White Wholewheat Flour - ½cup
Rye Flour (or pumpernickel flour) - ½cup
Dark Corn Syrup - ¼cup (I used 3tbsp Light Corn syrup + 1tbsp Molasses)
Instant Yeast - 2½tsp
Caraway, Fennel & Anise seeds - 1½tsp each (I skipped anise seeds and used only 1tsp each of caraway & fennel seeds)
Orange Oil - ¼tsp
Salt - 1½tsp
Powdered Milk (Dry milk powder) - ¼cup
Lukewarm Water - 1cup
Unsalted Butter - ¼cup, softened

Method:

• Combine all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of the stand mixer until a rough dough forma. Knead until the dough is smooth and satiny.
• Transfer the dough to a greased bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until the dough is puffy but not necessarily doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
• Gently deflate the dough and shape into a ball. Place it in a greased 9" pie plate or if you are fancy, then put it in a cloche baker. Flatten it slightly and cover with the cloche lid or cover with a greased plastic wrap.
• Allow the dough to rise for 75~90 minutes, until noticeably puffy.
• Preheat the oven to 400°F.
• Bake the limpa for 35~40 minutes or until the top is golden brown. 
• Remove from the oven and slide the bread out of the pan on to a wire rack and let cool completely before slicing.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51.

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