It's been a couple of days since I last wrote. We had our tenth wedding anniversary (well done, us!) and a lot of fun.
I tried wakeboarding for the first time. It's awesome! Now my muscles ache like no tomorrow, though. I literally can't straighten my left arm. I'm expecting to look like Schwarzenegger when the muscles heal.
Tomato sorbet is the best frozen food, period. Birch ice cream is also nice.
Today is the last day of my summer vacation. I could really use a post-vacation vacation.
Last time I wrote I mentioned baking bread in passing. It deserves a couple of paragraphs.
My father loves rye bread and started experimenting on baking maybe ten years ago. Now he bakes regularly. I'd never seen the process so I asked if we could bake with the kids now on vacation (my wife already back to work).
We mixed warm water and rye flour with the seed sour ("hapanjuuri", a piece of the dough from the previous batch) and left it to rise. Due to some circumstances it didn't rise very well so we left it overnight. Normally it should be a couple of hours.
The next day we first made four loaves with my father's typical method, weighing 300 grams of dough, rolling it into a ball and letting it settle on an oven sheet. For these the baking method is pretty much 25 minutes in 200˚C, then 15 minutes in 250˚C, then 10 minutes in 200˚C. This was found through trial and error and creates a crust similar to after-oven bread (jälkiuunileipä) without a masonry oven in a much shorter time.
The next ovenful was for our own experiments, with slightly smaller balls of dough. My daughter made two round loaves. My son made one loaf square and the other rectangular (which ended up looking very much like Oululainen Jälkiuunipalat). And I made a ruisreikäleipä, with a hole in the middle.
The bread was as successful as ever, and our experimental forms worked well. I think the reikäleipä version was easier to break than the limppu-style loaf my father tends to break.
Btw there is a science to breaking the bread. The surface area is larger than if the bread was sliced. Therefore it's more tasty. So if you bake bread, break bread!
That's all I have for now. I'm hoping to bake again sometime. It's not nearly as much work as I thought. It does take time, but most of it is waiting, not active work.