Finnish Sweet Buns, or Pulla

A lot of things have happened in my kitchen since my last post.

First of all, at about 7PM on Christmas Eve, just as I was baking some Christmas loaves, my oven and stove suddenly broke. I had to wait five days until we finally got them repaired! In the meantime, I did a lot of microwave cooking - I had no idea the device could be used for so many different purposes. I even baked a sourdough loaf in microwave oven... (I do NOT recommend it, though; but microwave bread is anyway better than no bread at all...). Anyway, I wasn't very convinced - and will continue to use my microwave oven mostly to melt butter and chocolate :)

Secondly, the warehouse where I've got a lot of my family's stuff stored is going to close next month. So I spent one entire day going through many things I haven't seen in years, thinking what to keep, what to give away or sell, and what to put straight to the garbage. One of the nicest surprises were my old cookbooks, from about 30 years ago! I was super happy to be able to give them to my kids.

It seems that those old recipe books have not lost their interest... During the two past days, my kitchen has been under the invasion of cute halflings dressed in aprons, baking the most delicious findings from those old books! Like these traditional Finnish sweet bun "boys" (pullapoika) from yesterday.

For the dough you need:

• 250ml hand-warm milk or water


• 25g fresh yeast


• 100ml sugar


• 1 tsp salt


• 1-2 tsp cardamom


• about 700ml all-purpose flour


• 100g softened butter (f0r a vegan version, use margarine)

To decorate:

• raisins


• almonds


• 1 egg (for a vegan version, use vegan milk for brushing)

The method:

Crumble the yeast and place in a baking bowl. Pour the hand-warm milk in the bowl and stir until dissolved. Add sugar, salt, and cardamom. Then, add flour gradually stirring with your hand until the dough is smooth but still sticky. Lastly, add the softened butter and knead the dough until it's smooth and elastic. Add more flour if needed. (My halflings didn't knead the dough at all, yet their buns turned out perfect. Just telling you this in case you're feeling lazy ;) )

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let ferment until doubled in size, or about 1 hour.

Pour the dough onto a baking surface and beat the air out of it. Shape as you wish, decorate with raisins and almonds, and proof about 15 minutes. Brush with egg and bake in a preheated oven (200C) until your buns are golden brown.

Sweet buns are best eaten when they are still a bit warm - is there anything better in this world than warm home-made pulla?