Icelandic rye bread

Ingredients

• Rye flour500 g
• Wheat flour200 g
• Milk600 ml
• Golden syrup or treacle150 ml
• Brown sugar100 g
• Baking powder2 tsp
• Bicarbonate of soda1 tsp
• Butter — to serve100 g
• Salt1 tsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Mix both flours with the sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate and salt in a large bowl.

   6 min

2. 2

   Warm the milk with the syrup until the syrup dissolves.

   8 min

3. 3

   Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon to an even thick batter.

   8 min

4. 4

   Grease a tin, pour in the batter and fill it two-thirds full.

   6 min

5. 5

   Seal the tin with two layers of foil and tie it with string so no steam escapes.

   8 min

6. 6

   Stand the tin in a deep tray of water and bake at 100 °C for twelve hours.

   725 min

7. 7

   Cool it completely in the tin and rest it a day before cutting. Serve with butter.

   20 min

About the dish

On the geothermal fields it is buried in hot sand by a spring for a full day. The home version is an oven at 100 °C for twelve hours, and the principle is the same: very long, very low heat.

The bread turns dark from the caramelisation of its sugars over those hours rather than from malt. It is the Maillard reaction alone, with nothing added for colour.

The tin is sealed tightly with foil. The steam inside prevents a crust forming, and the bread comes out moist and dense all the way through.

Worth knowing

• — Top up the water in the tray after six hours. Water boiled away means a dry oven, and the bread starts drying at the edges.
• — The tin has to be sealed completely. Any gap lets steam out and the bread comes out with a dry crust instead of a moist crumb.
• — The bread is cut very thin and served with salted butter and smoked lamb. A thick slice is too dense and too sweet.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

320 kcal

Protein

7 g

Fat

4 g

Carbs

66 g

More from Iceland

• Plokkfiskur — Flaked boiled fish mashed with potato in a white sauce. Icelandic home cooking made from leftovers.
• Kjötsúpa — A clear lamb soup with root vegetables and barley. One pot, four ingredients, three hours.
• Skyr with berries — Home-made skyr, the Icelandic cultured dairy, strained thick, with bilberries.