Æbleflæsk

Since we had some real Danish bread, we obviously had to make some real Danish meals.  Other than just eating it straight with butter, the most famous use of the stuff is Smørrebrød (lit: butterbread), which are basically just open sandwiches of... any kind of flavoursome stuff on bread. Tasty and awesome, but not exactly worth writing a post about, since it's essentially "Cut bread. Put stuff on bread. Put bread in face."

So I decided to make something very slightly more involved - a breakfast dish called "Æbleflæsk" (lit: applepork).

Fry a pan worth of bacon, cut an onion and an apple into slices and chunks respectively.  Remove the back to some paper towel, then fry the onion and apple in the rendered baconfat until they're both slightly mushy.  Add a little sugar (we used three not-all-that-flat teaspoons), a dash of cider vinegar (which was a bit of genius culinary improv from Steph, actually) and half a cup or so of water, lower the heat and let it thicken a bit.

Butter some rugbrød (or any bread you like, toasted if you prefer), and dump the mix from the saucepan  straight onto it, then top with the bacon.

Mmm. Makes one feel like plundering the English coastline.

Rugbrød

So, my parents have recently been baking their own bread - particularly danish rye bread, which is a very dense sourdough with amazing flavour that is sliced thinly because otherwise your colon just can't handle it.  Apart from the fact that it's delicious, this is basically Dwarf Bread. The relatively small loaf pictured here weighs 1300gr and has the structural integrity of a housebrick.

I won't go into details about the recipe (interested parties can find it here), but it involved mixing buttermilk, yeast, flour, water and salt, parking that in the fridge for a week to ferment, then mixing that in with rye flour, rye grains, linseed meal, beer, molasses and some other stuff. I think I overcooked it slightly - the crust is a little too dried out, because it was really hard to judge doneness as apparently it's supposed to be slightly sticky in the middle when it's done - it solidifies in the 24hr rest time it requires after baking.

The finished product.  Serious bread!  I think this compares quite nicely to the picture in the recipe link above - nailed it!

And a consumption shot.  This stuff is flavoursome enough to be eaten with nothing but butter - it tastes of grains and malt and seeds and awesomeness.  Note the butter thickness - the Danes call this "tand smør", or "tooth butter", as it's thick enough to leave toothmarks in when you bite.  This is apparently how it's supposed to be done. I figure eating bread that's an order of magnitude more wholegrain than wholegrain qualifies you for a few health credits that can be spent towards buttery goodness.

(note also the silly soldier mug - hooray for hand-me-down stuff!)