So, besides her oatmeal cookies, the other thing my grandma made superbly was nissua (aka nisu, pulla,) a Finnish Cardamom Braid. I used to love to watch her when she made the bread. The texture of the dough fascinated me, as did the speed with which Grandma wrangled that droopy, amorphous mass into two clean braids, and the taste…! I am salivating just remembering it.
One little problem, tho’.
If you look up a recipe for nissua these days, you’ll see something like this:
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon. salt
2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 yeast cakes (or 2 packages active dry yeast)
2 cardamom pods, open and crush seeds
6 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup butter
Heat milk with butter. Cool. Beat eggs, add sugar and salt. Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water. Combine milk and yeast mixture with egg batter. Add seeds and flour. Knead until smooth. Let rise 3 hours, then divide and braid into loaves. Let rise again until double in size. Bake in a 350 F oven, for 30 minutes. When bread is done, brush top with sugar syrup and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
Nice, huh?
But if you look at Grandma’s “recipe”, you’ll see something a lot closer to this:
handful sugar
pinch salt
milk
egg
cardamom
butter
flour
Moderate oven
Not a single, blessed true measurement in the whole danged thing.
I *hate* that her recipe died with her but seriously, this is NOT sufficient information for me.
I need measurements, dammit!
Fortunately, there’s a Scandinavian bakery nearby that sells something close, even if it doesn't rise to Grandma’s gold standard. (But you never get to watch them braid the dough…)
10 comments:
The bread looks both beautiful and delicious! My grandma used to make rolls and pie crust that she knew by heart, but weren't written down. Am so thankful we asked her to measure things out once so we could have a recipe. It was frustrating for her to have to use measuring cups and spoons, but we have the recipes and can make the rolls and pie crust and remember her making them.
Ann
https://harvestmoonbyhand.blogspot.com/2018/04/hobbies-that-begin-with-n-blogging-from.html
That's why i got the hojaldra recipe while i could, and this past Thanksgiving i stood and wrote everything down as Grandma prepared it -- the corn, the sweet potatoes, the macaroni, the broccoli, all of it. It's worth taking the time to do, and i am so blessed i was able to!
My great-grandmother passed down a cookie recipe with similar specifications.
Even with the same ingredients and exact measurements, some of my family's passed-down recipes just don't translate. My sister and I I don't even try making my mom's homemade bread or her cinnamon rolls. She's the only one who does it like her.
This looks delicious Jz. A new word for me today: Nissua.
Like you, I have very fond memories of my grandmother's cooking. You're right, no one can rise to those standards.
N is for No to News
Hi Jz - sadly I have a few of my mother's recipes - all with measurements .. yet she was an inventive cook and we both mixed and matched our ingredients ... she did make croissant - and I'm sure vaguely followed a recipe. Lovely that you've got your grandmother's love for the bread - cheers Hilary
Oh, wow! That looks SO good. I'm such a bread whore.
That is not on the FFF list. Oh, it looks so good.
Amy
A-
You’re right - I don’t recall ever seeing Grandma actually use a recipe. (Really, why would she when it was of so little use?!?) But I did find the paper later… and got briefly excited until I saw what it said!
Good for you for pinning yours down and getting her to measure for you!
mm-
Oooh! I had to look that one up.
I like to think I would have done that with Grandma when I got older but 9th grade is a bit young to think ahead to that kind of stuff…
I’m very glad you had the opportunity. :-)
Mrs F-
As you pointed out earlier, everyone’s technique is different.
Did you ever find a close facsimile for the cookie recipe?
A-
I probably should have added nissua to that list of Finnish words I know! ;-p
Grandma cooking is the best.
H-
The recipe as rule-of-thumb?
My mom was like that - her cookbooks have notes changing quantities and adding or subtracting ingredients, and she’d often hand me two cookbooks. “Make it like this one but cook it like this…”
Now you’ve got me wanting a croissant!
L-
It is superb stuff! :-)
A-
Well…. I’m not on the FFF list either!
I’m rooting for all the rest of you but, no.
Should be but, no. ;-)
My great aunt cooked that way. Most of them ended with "cook til it looks done."
What is cardamom, exactly? I guess I've never tasted it. Does it make this a sweet bread or a savory bread?
D-
Cardamom is a spice that belongs to the larger ginger family... but you would not confuse the tastes. It's a bit like cinnamon, in that it adds a nice warm tasty note to things.
Nissua a sweet bread, really quite similar to the Swedish pulla but my grandma was Finnish so that's what I lean toward. (I just toss that in there because it's prolly more likely that you'd encounter pulla somewhere along the way than nissua...)
Either version is super yummy. :-)
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