I’m sitting in my quiet apartment with my blanket on, writing this blog post, while it’s snowing quietly outside. The white winter is here in Helsinki. I don’t complain much, except for this lovely puffy snow turning into ice and becoming a health hazard overnight (unless it continues to snow). If I didn’t write this blog post, I would be doing what, can you guess? Yes, bake! Because baking is cosy and intimate.

But instead of baking, I’m writing about it. And I decided to publish this recipe as the first one for 2021. Let’s hope it brings, ehm, luck!

So, lingonberries, hmm… This is one of the berries I got to know after I moved to Finland. They are very sour, so they go well with savoury dishes, but sometimes with sweet ones too. It also goes excellent hand-in-hand in a bread dough like this.

I saw this recipe in a gluten-free cookbook I’ve had for many years. I finally decided to give it a try, but of course, I had to make my own twists. I made quite a bit of change in the instructions, which (I believe) made it easier and worked better with the dough.

This is essentially a straightforward recipe where you have wet ingredients and dry ingredients, and you mix them. You let the dough to rise for a couple of hours and then transfer to a tray, into the oven, boom you’re done. I recommend having it completely cooled down on a wire rack before slicing it. And provided that you cover it well, the leftovers taste great as well. Enjoy!
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Ingredients:

Difficulty: Easy
(makes 1 round bread)

Printable PDF-recipe (no photos)

2 dl + 2 tbsp (or 1 cup minus 2 tbsp or 150 gr.) teff flour
2.5 dl (or 1 cup or 125 gr.) oat flour*
2 tbsp psyllium husk
1 tsp xanthan gum
1.5 tsp salt
1 dl + 2 tbsp (or 1/2 cup + 2 tsp or 50 gr.) rolled oats
3 dl (or 1 cup + 3 tbsp + 1 tsp or 300 gr.) warm water (not so hot)
20 gr. fresh yeast
1/2 dl (or 3 tbsp + 1 tsp or 60 gr.) dark syrup**
100 + 50 gr. lingonberries, divided (I used fresh)

extra teff flour to spread on baking paper and the bread

*Make sure the oat-related ingredients are gluten-free if you’re following that diet.
**Can be replaced with molasses.

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1. In a medium bowl, put the first 6 ingredients and whisk a little. Set aside.

2. In a larger bowl, put warm water, fresh yeast and dark syrup (or molasses) and whisk well.

3. Add 100 gr. of lingonberries into the dry ingredients mixture from step 1 and mix.

4. Add flour mixture into the water mixture and fold gently so that the berries don’t turn into a mush.

5. Add remaining 50 gr. of lingonberries and gently fold the dough into a bowl shape using your spatula. Cover the bowl with a stretch film and let it sit in a warm place for 2 hours.

6. Preheat the oven to 225C. Put a baking paper on a baking tray.

7. Uncover the bread dough. Spread some teff flour on the baking paper. Put the bread dough on the paper, shaping it into a nice round bread form. Spread a little more teff flour on top of the dough. Put in the medium part of the oven and bake for about 50 min to 1 hour, until the top gets thick and crusty and you get a hollow sound when you tap the bread. Before you slice the bread, let it cool completely to room temperature on a wire rack. The bread tastes delicious on the day it’s baked, but leftovers taste great too – but don’t forget to cover it well. Enjoy!