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I made a batch of rieska (Finnish flatbread) this week using the recipe on KAB's website. I made it once before using the optional barley flour instead of rye flour; it was delicious. Most recipes from Finnish websites seem to use barley instead of rye.

I had purchased barley, rye, and buckwheat from a Serbian grocer. The bags do have English on them but the large type is in Serbian. I made this recent batch at breakfast and I don't think the morning caffeine had taken effect. I thought the bag of flour was barley but I discovered a day later that I had grabbed the bag of buckwheat flour instead of barley. I don't have any pictures of the batch because it was mostly consumed before I thought of posting here. I like buckwheat anyway and the buckwheat version may even be better than the barley one. I'm going to try the barley one again for comparison.

These little things are very good. I first had them in a fancy restaurant in Antwerp after multiple courses of little plates. Didn't care much for the plates, the bread was lacklustre, the dessert nothing to write home about, but the canele that came with the coffee, damn that was good.

Since then I've been trying to make them that good. Crunchy and caramelized on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside. It's a really spectacular sweet thing.

Good results today.

For 15 of them:

1 egg, 1 egg yolk, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 240ml milk, 80g sugar, 50g low-protein flour.

Mix and rest in the fridge overnight. Next day pour batter through a sieve into oiled molds (I used clarified butter) without excessive stirring (you don't want air in the batter). Bake in a 250C oven for 13 mins then 180C for 40 mins.

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It is amazing what can be done with faux substitute ingredients nowadays. I've previously had some bread and rolls made by a local 'low carb' company specializing in keto products called "We Love Low Carb" and the baked goods product range is truly outstanding -  bread (sourdough and CY), buns, bagels, pies, pitas, wraps, pizza bases, and why not have hot cross buns as well!

I'm always into exploring what makes products tick, and this bake was mostly about learning more about how these modern miracles of food technology work.

With that in mind, I baked some rolls and bagels using a bag of their all purpose flour mix. The bag of their flour mix lists the following ingredients: sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, oats, almond/macadamia nuts and vital gluten. In other words, what we have here seems to be the use of low carbohydrate seeds and nuts (except for the oats, which I wouldn't count as low carbohydrate, right?) and the magic ingredient that allows for a bread texture and makes this suitable for so many different kinds of breads would be vital gluten. It is interesting, and notable that flax seeds aren't listed as an ingredient, and in reviews of the product people seem to regard this as a positive thing! Perhaps people are tired of the taste if they're on a diet where this is a major constituent.

The bag contains a brief recipe: "500g of we love low carb flour, 300g water, 15g yeast, 14g salt, 30g sweetener. Mix all together for 12-15 mins. Let rise then bake for 40 mins at 160C". A couple of things are noticeable - a lot of yeast and salt. And more emphasis on the mixing than on how long you should leave it to rise! Rather cheekily the recipe leaves the sweetener up to you, which could be a source of carbs or artificial sweeteners, I guess (I used agave syrup for this).

In the initial mix with a Danish whisk, it felt and looked like a gluten free bread, and that had me fooled at first.

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In fact, I left it for 10 minutes before using my Kenwood as I was treating this similar to a gluten free bread. But, the mixing is essential, and this is the opposite of a gluten free bread, there is a lot of gluten here. The strangest thing is that after mixing for 10 minutes on the dough hook it developed a really tight elastic ball of dough. So tight that it was very difficult to remove from the dough hook, I've never struggled as much to remove a ball of dough from my dough hook as with this bake.

I made both rolls and bagels. The bagels were boiled, because to me a bagel has to be boiled. The dough could handle the boiling treatment acceptably well, although you do have to be gentle with your handling when you're seeding the boiled bagels as they're softer than with normal bagels and do deform easily.

And there was a lot of lovely oven spring. Nice browning on top. Beautiful texture and crumb. Flavour-wise it tastes like the ingredients, not as nice as real bread, but the texture can fool your mouth.

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Still can’t get photos to load. Oh well the bread is perfect. 😊
Danni doesn’t post here anymore but her amazing breads reside in my list of favorites forever. 

I flake my own oat groats. I use my Trinity , add 100g of very active Apple YW along with SD levain and sub an assortment of fresh milled grains.

The biggest and most notable change for this bread is the fermentation temps and timing. I’ve never done either like I did this time and likely won’t be able to replicate exactly but will try due to how well the bread dough performed.

100g oats toasted and then add 200g boiling water stir and set aside. 
250g active levain -100% hydration

100g active YW 

200g hard red wheat milled

100g rye milked

100g spelt milled

175g Stardust 

425g Arrowhead Mills unbleached AP 

23g salt

40g each- Yogurt . Honey. EVOO = 120g

550-650g water ( hold out 100g depending on your porridge consistency add as needed when doing first in the bowl folds) 

Put the 550g water, 100g YW, salt, levain and  Trinity into large bowl. Whisk together. Add the room temp porridge. Mix well. Add all the whole grain flours and beat hard with a wooden spoon like cake batter. Add all the AP flour and do in the bowl folds turning and folding til everything evenly moist. This is when you can add held back water as needed. Just enough so all is moist. Cover autolyse 30-60 min. Wet counter and do folds using part or all of that held back water. Dough should be very pliable and not sticky. 
Oil a large bucket and place dough into bucket. Lightly oil top of dough. 

This where I departed from all previous bakes . It was late so I placed the covered container on the screened porch approximately 50° out at 7 pm. Left it to rise til midnight- it wasn’t as much as I would have liked so went back to bed. At 6 am it looked fantastic! I lightly floured the counter dumped out divided gently into two huge pieces gently rolled each into a long cylinder tucked ends rounded into boule and placed into cloth lined bannetons. 

Left at room temp a couple hours til quite puffy then retarded in the fridge til late in the day . They grew well above the banneton sides. Huge beautiful loaves. 
Preheat 475 turn down 450 - 25 min covered graniteware roaster  then uncovered 425- 20 min. 

Perfect color. Natural burst on top and amazing crumb for a porridge high grain bread. And exquisite flavor profile.