First in a series of bread-related posts is the sweet and slightly over powering Finnish Pulla bread. The recipe is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's and was in the Guardian newspaper, but is also available online as part of his Cardamom recipes.
Hugh describes it as a brioche-style bread (Light and rich), but our attempt proved extremely dense and quite dry. Still delicious don't get me wrong - and the smell was amazing... enough to bring my housemates of their rooms!
Perhaps the reason it turned out so heavy is because I didn't knead the dough enough. That's something I hope to improve on over the forthcoming recipes.
Being quite stodgy, and not really knowing what the bread is supposed to acompany, we ended up using it to absorb some tasty tomato and basil soup. Even though I think it's a desert bread, the combination was yummy.
I'm not ashamed to say (as a bloke), that I platted with confidence. It's quite tricky because once you've stretched the dough to 40cm as described in the instructions - all it wants to do is retract to it's original size. So you have to work quickly!
