All that Scandi Sourdough Bull…

How much of that Scandi pale pine and rustic sourdough can we take in our feeds? Hasn’t that trend passed yet? Well, it may be a passing trend for some, but I have a feeling it will stick with me for quite a while.

Scandi. My ancestors trace back several hundred years to a region not bigger than a few square miles, hidden deep in the darkest of Scandinavian pine forests. It’s a bit of a miracle I actually made it out of there… I used to hate pine and all that soft pale wood. Now I find the rich scent of sticky sap from those tall, rather anti-social needle beasts warming and comforting. I may have left Scandinavia many years ago but, as I acknowledge more and more, my heritage is deeply rooted within me with no intention of leaving.

Sourdough. Traditional British bread is sadly inedible to me and many fellow immigrants. Factory-produced squashy white sponges – with the only distinction from a dish cloth being it’s injected with sugar and chemical preservatives – should really not be allowed to be called bread. I often wonder if these sugary sponges have even been baked in any sort of oven as they lack crust and can easily be consumed without using teeth. Sometimes they go under names like “wholemeal”, or “brown” but with little or no change in taste, consistency or nutritional value. Unless you happen to live near a gentrified high street full of artisan bakeries selling hugely overpriced “genuine bread”, you simply have to make your own. Under current pandemic there is no yeast available (because nobody ever liked the bread on the supermarket shelves and now finally have found the time to bake their own, and added yeast to their stockpiling list??) and we are left with only one option for having true bread: Sourdough. It’s not artisan, hippie, hyper or cool – it’s just damn good bread.

Kanelbulle. Now, the cinnamon bun. Certain drivers within me raise a nostalgic desire to sometimes celebrate “Scandi fika”: Coffee and Bulle, and with the current lack of yeast, I experiment with my sourdough (which almost starved to death last week due to the lack of flour but was rescued by a baker supplier’s 16kg flour delivery…) It works, and as I learn about it, it is in no sense new.

Delicious. Scandi. Sourdough.