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THE LOCAL RECIPES

BREAD

How to make traditional Swedish spelt bread

Swedes love making bread, so join the nationwide cult and start kneading. Here's one of The Local's favourite recipes by food writer John Duxbury.

Published: 4 March 2016 06:59 CET
How to make traditional Swedish spelt bread
Swedish spelt bread. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish Food

READ ALSO: Inside Sweden's secret hotel for sourdough fans

Spelt has a lovely, nutty flavour and it naturally proves and rises more quickly than wheat flour, so it is quicker to make a loaf of bread using spelt flour. This recipe gives consistent results, and yet it is very easy.

Summary

Makes: 1 large loaf

Preparation: 50 minutes + 90 minutes rising time

Ingredients

300 g spelt flour

200 g strong white flour

7 g dry yeast, usually 1 packet

325 g lukewarm water

10 g sea salt (2 tsp)

1 tbsp honey

Flour for dusting

Method

1. Fit a dough hook to a stand mixer, such as a kMix or KitchenAid.

2. Combine the flours and yeast in the mixer's bowl, stirring to ensure that they are evenly mixed.

3. Add 325 g of lukewarm water, 10 g (2 tsp) of sea salt and 1 tbsp of honey to a jug. Stir until the honey and salt are both dissolved.

4. With the motor running on minimum, slowly add the liquid mixture to the flours.

5. When all the liquid has been added, increase the speed to 2 (kMix) or 3 (KitchenAid), for five minutes. You should end up with a ball of dough that is still slightly sticky.

6. Tip the dough on to a lightly floured work surface and shape into a ball.

7. Clear out the bowl and then lightly flour it. Return the dough to the bowl and cover with a shower cap, cling film or a cloth and leave to rise in a warm, draught-free place for about one hour, until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

8. Tip the dough on to the floured surface again and push down on it a couple of times to knock the air out of it.

9. Either shape it into a log and plop it into a floured 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin, or shape it into an oval as shown above and then place the loaf on a floured baking sheet.

10. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm, draught-free place to prove until it has doubled in size again, which normally takes about 30 minutes.

11. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C.

12. Place a tray of boiling water at the bottom of the oven (this helps to keep the bread moist, but take care when opening the oven).

13. When the dough has doubled in size, dust the bread lightly with flour and then make a cut along the length of the bread using a sharp knife, adding some diagonal cuts it desired. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes until it has turned golden or the inner temperature has reached 95C.

14. Leave the bread to cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Tips

– For variations, incorporate 115 g mixed seeds, such as linseed, sesame, pumpkin or sunflower into the dough after step 8 or replace the honey with black treacle.

– It is important that the water is tepid because if it is too hot it will kill the yeast: the water should be between 35-45C.

– If you are making the bread by hand, increase the kneading time to 10 minutes.

– The recipe also works well with wholemeal spelt flour.

– If you don't use a loaf tin in step 9 the dough can sometimes spread out too much. If so, either lightly reshape with your scraper before flouring, scoring and baking, or transfer the dough to a floured 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin, recover and leave to prove for another 10 minutes before flouring, scoring and baking.

This recipe is published courtesy of John Duxbury, founder and editor of 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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