Sunday in the city and mama Ragnhild´s dark bread recipe

There are many many reasons why I love to go to Sweden, one of them is for sure the fact that my mother in law will bake my favourite dark bread, which I would enjoy every morning for breakfast, as a small snack during the day and a small piece of it just before the dinner. I am never getting tiered of this bread, which can be eaten with everything you love. I really don´t know what is my favourite combination, it all depends on the day and the hour...sometimes I could just die for a piece of this bread with thin layer of butter, sometimes I would go for leverpastej (Swedish pate) topped with mama´s homemade pickled cucumber and would always be caught by surprise how good this bread actually is. The first couple of years (in the beginning of my relationship with my husband) she would simply bake this bread and I would always admire her for this, being too shy to ask for the recipe. Coming from Germany, where you can find 1000 different bread types available everywhere, you would probably not really come up with the idea to bake your own bread. However the moment I tried this bread, it was love at first bite (if you know what I mean) and ever since I really wanted to have this recipe.

I don´t know exactly how and when this day came, the day my mother in law asked me the following "Elwira I am going to bake bread now, would you like to see how it´s done?" You probably can imagine how I felt...I cannot describe the feelings in words, I was just so unspeakably happy. We went to the kitchen, I equipped with paper and pen, ready to right down each and every step of the process... and then again, I was caught by surprise. Usually you would expect the bread making being very complex, with many steps to take and many hours to raise and to rest, at least this was what I was thinking about bread making back then. Well not in this case, we were done in 10 minutes.....10 minutes for measuring the ingredients, mixing them together, putting the dough in the bread form and then in the oven. The hardest part is yet to come...the part where you impatiently wait for the bread to be ready......

Ever since this day I have been making this bread 1000 times. Impressing my friends and my work colleagues with this. I also realised that I was not the only one being in love with this bread...once I baked this bread for a breakfast at work and one of my colleague told me she would give me money to get the recipe. Today is the "special" day for all of you...as I am finally about to share the recipe ...hoping you would like it as much as I do.

As this is a Swedish bread, the measurements will be in decilitre (Swedish measurement). You can get the decilitre measuring cups in every Ikea store (another good reason to go to Ikea ). I call it mama Ragnhild´s dark bread as this is the name of my mother in law and since I got it from her, this seems the most suitable name for it....

Mama Ragnhild´s dark bread

• 4,5 dl bread flour
• 4,5 dl Rey flour (Roggenmehl)
• 1,5 dl sunflower seeds (can be easily replaced by pumpkin seeds or walnuts)
• 1,5 dl flax seeds (Leinsamen)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons bicarbonate
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 500 ml buttermilk
• 1 dl golden syrup

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put all the ingredients into a big bowl, mix together with a wooden spoon till all dry ingredients are moistered. Line up the baking form with baking paper, put in the dough and bake for about 1 - 1,5 hours (depending on your oven).

I usually do this bread on Sundays...this Sunday we got a spontaneous invitation from our friends to meet up in the city. The weather was promising and it was about time to see our future daughter in law again (yes, yes, we are also those kind of mamas...deciding the future of our kids ourselfs:-))

Every time we are spending time in the city, we usually will have lunch over there, especially if we are meeting some friends. This means that we will go easy on dinner, hence this Sunday we just had a nice piece of bread topped with plain yogurt, radish, cucumber, salad and fried chicken breast on top..

Enjoy!