Post in Which We Swap Sourdough Bread for Camera Lens and Finish with Apples!

I’m just out of traveling and already in the next job-seeking period (welcome back!). It explains my absence for some time here. Each time I come back from a journey, it seems I return to the same very point I left ‘this life here’ when I set out for traveling (and definitely needing some rest ;). It’s around -20 ‘C here and full of snow. Cannot believe I’m still baking with apples from our garden (?!?!?)! Thanks god, only several of them are left now and I can finally turn to some other sweets rather than apple-something!

While I’m preparing my post on traveling (and mostly on the tasty Italy, I guess), I think it’s high time I published these two recipes. I’ve been recently asked why everything in my blog is about USSR and again USSR and I struggled to explain that this is part of our history and without it there’s no present Russia. Well, here’s a post without any nostalgic photos or reminiscences at last, haha, for those who didn’t get the idea (and I thought I was writing too little on my topic!). But I’m kidding, of course, I’m not going to change whatever, cause I am the author (hoho ;).

Ok, bread first, then apples. Here’s a very fine Swedish recipe for sourdough rye bread from actually an Italian living in Sweden:

Soder Light Rye adapted from www.myitaliansmorgasbord.com will make three large loaves one of which you can give as a present (my Dad actually ‘paid’ with it for the use of an enormous camera lens).

For this recipe you can use Swedish white rye flour if you’re that lucky or you can substitute it with white rye flour and all-purpose wheat flour which I did (the author gives all the necessary measurements and instructions in the original recipe). I found some Finnish extra-whole-wheat flour in a supermarket and used it for my bread, also adding less water and less salt, but as for the rest I followed the recipe. Here is the crumb:

The proofing time amounted to about 3 hours; I slashed the loaves and dusted them with flour. They started to spread out too much and continued so in the oven but in the end they turned out just fine, puffing nicely. The bread took extra 15 minutes during the second baking stage (at 200 ‘C). Just be careful and on the watch – its top can start burning.

The result: although containing enough rye as well as rye sourdough, this bread is really light and let’s say all-purpose. We used it to make our sandwiches for the road 😉

And now – oh yessss – back to apples! When I pass those huge glossy apples in the supermarkets, I just want to snatch some but then I remember we have stiiil those never-ending and forever-keeping tiny tight apples from our dacha. Just before the departure, I made this leavened apple roll:

Apple Cinnamon Coffee Cake adapted from www.joythebaker.com will make two loaves if you follow the original recipe or you might as well cut it in half and still get a fairly big cake!

As it always happens after and during the holidays, there seem to be so many odd bits of various foodstuffs in your fridge which all need to be consumed as soon as possible. That’s why I enhanced the apple filling of this cake with such ‘whatever’ things as a bunch of grapes, some pineapple + some leftover streusel topping from the apple crumble I did before (as I though the filling might get too wet). I didn’t use any lemon juice, brown sugar, cornstarch or cinnamon  as they were all already in that leftover streusel. I also forgot about the nutmeg and the salt, but that’s fine C: I made the streusel topping required for the recipe exactly as suggested but instead of brushing the top of the cake with some egg, I used ryazhenka.

{baked apples – a fast way to cook them and then eat as they are or use to make something else}

The result: this cake has a well-balanced filling-dough proportion, it is not over sweet (and makes it thus even more useful in terms of finishing with everything apple, as my parents were eating it with apple puree) and keeping its softness for several days.

Well, this was a brief post, the next one will certainly take much more time. Will come back with some observations, considerations, photos and just things inspired by traveling. With food, for sure.

G.