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THE LOCAL RECIPE

BREAD

How to make Swedish sweet black bread

Swedes love baking bread, especially as the November days grow colder and darker. Food writer John Duxbury shares his favourite recipe for sweet black bread.

Published: 13 November 2015 07:00 CET
How to make Swedish sweet black bread
Swedish sweet black bread. Photo: John Duxbury

Summary

Makes: 2 small loaves

Preparation: 20 minutes (plus three hours to prove)

Cooking: 35 minutes

Ingredients

120 g caster (superfine) sugar

420 g boiling water

1 tbsp spirit vinegar (5 percent)

340 g strong bread flour (all-purpose flour)

50 g strong wholemeal (whole wheat) bread flour

140 g rye flour

1 ½ tbsp vital gluten flour, optional

3 cocoa powder, sifted

1 tbsp fennel seeds

1 tbsp caraway seeds

1 tbsp soft dark brown sugar

1 ½ tsp salt

7 g fast action (easy bake) yeast, 1 packet

Method

1. Heat the sugar in a saucepan over a medium high heat, stirring regularly, until the sugar melts.

2. Turn down the heat and continue heating and stirring until the sugar is a deep caramel colour and is beginning to smoke slightly.

3. Remove from the heat, leave for five minutes and then add the boiling water. Return to a boil, stirring until all the sugar has dissolved.

4. Leave to cool to 40C and then measure out 440 g of sugar water. If you have too much, discard the rest. If you haven't got enough, add water to bring the total up to 440 g.

5. Add the vinegar to the sugar water and stir to mix.

6. Add the flours, cocoa powder, seeds, brown sugar and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

7. Add the yeast and mix thoroughly.

8. Fit the dough hook to the mixer and with the speed on minimum slowly add the sugar water and vinegar to the flour mixture.

9. Increase the speed to two or three for four minutes, by which time you should have a slightly sticky ball of dough.

10. Cover with cling film or a shower cap and leave in a draft-free warm place for about two hours until doubled in size.

11. Knock back on a floured work surface, divide in two and shape to fit two lightly oiled 500 g (1 lb) loaf tins. Gently cover with a floured cloth or lightly oiled cling film and leave for about 45 minutes to double in size again.

12. Preheat the oven, and bread dome if used, to 220C.

13. If using a dome, bake each loaf for 35 minutes, removing the dome for the last five minutes. If not using a dome, bake until the internal temperature of the breat is 95C, about 35 minutes.

14. If baked in a loaf tin, remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack. 

Tips

– If you have one, I recommend baking the bread in a bread dome or in an oblong covered baker, removing the cover for the last five minutes. Alternatively, you can use an overproof casserole dish.

– Don't worry if you can't cover the bread, it will simply have a more caramelized crust, which you might prefer anyway.

– If you are baking it without a dome, add a tray of boiling water to the bottom of the overn to prevent the bread from drying out.

This recipe, adapted from a recipe by Paul Moran (Canada's Young Chef of the Year 2014), was originally published on food writer John Duxbury's website Swedish Food.

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits. 

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user). 

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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