Finnish Bread

Holidays in the Sampson households always involved “makea leipa,” loaves of sweet braided bread flavored with cardamom, and sprinkled lightly with sugar on top. It was sliced and served with sweet creamery butter, and of course, with coffee.

            Vake explained that the Finnish word for “bread” was something like “korpua,” so he and his siblings called slices of bread “corpses.” While he was serving in the Navy, Sofia would bake the bread, toast it so that it would not spoil, and mail him a boxful. She and Eli would enclose a letter, laboriously written in English, and he would reply in English, because the communications had to pass through censors. The letters got through, so they must not have discussed “corpses.”

            The coffee was an important part of the ritual, too. Sofia posted a picture in her kitchen, cut from the cover of a Finnish-language magazine, that depicted an old Finnish woman in a head scarf (babushka), sipping coffee and looking contented. The picture was published just after WW II, after supplies of coffee were restored to Finland.

            Here is Sofia’s recipe for Makea Leipa. 

½   cup butter or shortening

1 C. hot milk           

1 C. cool milk

1 cake yeast

1 C. sugar

½ tsp. Ground cardamom seed

½ tsp. Salt

4 egg yolks, slightly beaten

8 C. flour

Melt the butter in hot milk, stir in sugar and cool milk, and allow to cool to lukewarm.  Add the yeast, cardamom, salt and egg yolks.  Add about 8 cups of flour, and knead to a stiff dough.  Let rise over night.  In the morning, roll into six l ½ “ ropes.  Braid three together to form each loaf, set on a greased flat pan or cookie sheet to rise for an hour or until light.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Brush tops with egg white, sprinkle with sugar, and bake for another 5 minutes.

Serve with unsalted butter and sprinkle a little white sugar on that. It is excellent toasted.