Bisket

The final recipe I made was a family recipe for Bisket, which is a coffee bread. I chose to make the whole batch, which makes a lot of dough! This way I could also make cinnamon rolls too. Still thinking to myself, I probably could have gotten away with using the usual half batch for this.

I started the night off by scalding the milk. I then added butter, salt, and sugar to the milk and let that cool down.

While the milk was chilling I added flour and cardamon to my bowl and made a well to dump my eggs in.

I then added yeast to some water with a little bit of sugar. Once the milk was cool enough, you don’t want to kill your yeast, I added the yeast to the milk.

I then added the milk and yeast to the flour and eggs.

I mixed everything together and slowly started to add a whole lot of flour.

Once I could no longer mix the flour in with the spoon, I buttered my hands and mixed the rest in by hand. I then kneaded the dough on a floured surface until a nice windowpane formed. I then let it rise until it doubled in size.

The dough, before it had even risen, had to have weighed close to 5 pounds. It was a monster!

One the dough had risen I took a section to make cinnamon rolls, which I had found in The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas on page 101.

I took some brown sugar and cinnamon and mixed them together. I then rolled out the chunk of dough, spread butter all over it and sprinkled the cinnamon sugar on top. I rolled up the dough and sliced it into little sections and placed them in a pan.

When the cinnamon rolls came out of the oven I brushed them with a coffee and sugar glaze, that I had boiled together.

When one makes bisket and there are children around one must make breadmen with them! This is a family tradition from my father. They are very simple to make, you just form a head, body, two arms, and two legs and stick them together, you then add raisins or other fruits to make a man.

For the rest of the dough I made it into bread. I took three chunks of dough and formed them into long ropes. I then braided them together and let them rise for a second time.

Once the bread and breadman had risen, I boiled water and sugar together and used that to glaze them and put them in the over.

Several times during the baking I brushed the bread again. I took the bread out once it was golden and gave me back a nice thump when I tapped it.