... Reissumies - Finnish rye bread

I went to the Nordic Bakery a few weeks ago - it's a lovely Scandinavian cafe, nicely tucked away on Golden Square, so a fantastic escape from the hustle and bustle around Oxford Circus and Regent Street. It's the perfect place for brunch, as they serve very nice coffee and both sweet and savoury freshly baked delights! I ate an open rye sandwich with smoked salmon, which was delicious - I love rye bread, but this was a kind I had never tried before. It was a round little rye flatbread that was cut in half, buttered and topped with salmon - I thought this would make a delicious lunch for work, so I wanted to make some. The Nordic Bakery has recently published a cookbook, and I had a look through it but could not work out what these flatbreads are called, so I did some research and the closest thing I could find that matched this was Reissumies. It took me a long time to work this out, and there are few recipes for this online - I found one for Ruispala (another name for Reissumies, which are, it seems, also popular in Russia).

I bought some fresh yeast in an organic shop, but found out today that supermarkets have to give out fresh yeast for free, because it's a live culture, and therefore illegal for supermarkets to sell (odd, but I will give this a try next time I'm in Tesco). I used black treacle instead of molasses, as I could not find any, and I put a teaspoon of caraway into one half of my dough. They taste great, although next time I will add more salt.

Combine 13g of fresh yeast with 2 tsp black treacle and 450ml tepid water. Stir and then gradually add 500g of rye flour and 1-2 tsp of salt (I added 1.5 tsp, will add 2 next time).

Cover the bowl with cling film and let it rest for 1 hour.  The dough was very wet, but this is OK as no kneading is necessary, although you have to sprinkle lots of flour on your worktop so that it doesn't stick.

The recipe says to roll out the dough, but I just pressed it down lightly with my hands and then cut it into squares, pricked each with a fork and transferred them to a lined baking tray.

I let this rest for another 40 minutes under my favourite tea towel. Then brush the squares with cold water and bake at 250C for 20 - 25 minutes. So these were actually quite easy to make - you just have to be at home for all the proving, but on a rainy day like today, that was no problem. I'm going to take one or two to lunch tomorrow with butter, ham and salad - looking forward to it.