Kavring Nordic Black Bread and Moody Bar

Wow bread is not just bread, on a trip to a restaurant in Stockholm we stumbled on a new bread, a Nordic black bread which after a little translation is called Kavring.

 

Yes our Italian food and cooking experience maybe only just behind us and now a whole new exciting world up here in northern Europe awaits us and is the Nordic Cuisine.

 

It doesn't take long for Sandy to be asking questions, getting new recipes, tips and finding her way back behind the scenes into the kitchens to see what different food cultures are up too.

 

It was sweetish, moist, date/fig/fruity, cakey, a little dense, even a little bit chewy and perhaps better with coffee in the afternoon, but then it also has a salty taste aftertaste as you continue to eat. The whole flavour, texture combo is just so different to anything I have eaten before but than so simular to many other different style of bread and or cakes but here all combined into one... interesting and very moreish.

Traditionally it is served as part of a Nordic meal.

 

The kitchen staff assured us that we will find many varieties in our travels around Sweden and all kitchens will have their own take on flavours and ingredients.

 

So we sat tasting and enjoying this new flavour and multi textured little morsel, like being introduce to a new friend, getting to know and learn all about them! Sure we had some visual clues of rolled oats and some various seeds but we wanted to know and learn more.

Sandy came away with the bones of a recipe and this will be feather developed at @ The Retreat I'm sure.

 

We will further be able to develop and hone our bread skills as Sandy has booked us into a 3 day intense bread cooking classes in Scotland in July where there we will be learning more about Northern and Nordic breads.

 

Below a little help from Mr Google.

 

“Kavring (in the southern Sweden folk dialect), a sort of twice-baked sourdough rye bread or an oven-dried loaf. Kafring, in early modern Swedish, dated from 1544, possibly originating from Norwegian, while the word kavring was first encountered in the early 16th century in the Danish language from the Russian kovríga, a round bread, literally ring or circle in old Russian.”
ー Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Elof Hellquist (1922)

 

The etymology tells us more than the origin of the word itself, it tells us the story of a bread that travelled through the Nordic countries. Originally a crisp rye bread (which it still is in Norway), kavring then morphed into the soft, sweet and fragrant loaf in the late 1800, mostly in southern Sweden according to Å. Campbell’s The Swedish bread (Det svenska brödet, 1950), a wonderful read that gives an insight into the cultural contrasts in pre-industrial Sweden through bread traditions in its regions.

The people hurried towards the workman’s hut to open their boxes and baskets before consuming their simple meal made of sour milk, kavring and butter. 

And today we also too enjoyed our Kavring with butter.

 

 

in this cute, dark and so cool Swedish bar.

 

Mirrored ceilings

 

and wonderful wallpaper.