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Swedish Coffee Bread
2 cupfuls hot milk 3/4 cupful sugar 1/2 cupful Crisco 1/2 teaspoonful salt 15 cardamom seeds 1 yeast cake 2 cupfuls flour Remove seeds from cardamoms and grind fine, add to hot milk with Crisco, sugar, and salt. When lukewarm add yeast cake mixed with a little tepid water and flour. Mix and allow to rise. Then add flour enough to make stiff dough. Knead and let rise again, then make into rolls or loaves. Let rise again and bake in moderate oven till ready.
Sufficient for eighteen rolls or two small loaves
A straightforward enriched sweet dough built by the sponge method, with two quirks a modern baker needs to translate: the yeast cake and the total flour, which the original never states.
- Flour is open-endedThe 2 cupfuls listed go into the sponge only; you then add "flour enough to make stiff dough." Expect roughly 5 to 6 cups total for this quantity of liquid, added a half cup at a time until the dough clears the bowl and is only slightly tacky.
- Yeast cakeOne yeast cake of the period is about 0.6 oz compressed fresh yeast, equivalent to one 2 1/4-teaspoon packet of active dry yeast. Slacken it in a few tablespoons of tepid water as directed rather than dumping it dry into the milk.
- Milk temperature is the hingeThe hot milk must come down to genuinely lukewarm, 100-110F, before the yeast goes in. Two cups of scalded milk holds heat for a long while in a warm bowl; test it rather than guessing, since anything over about 130F will kill the yeast outright.
- CardamomFifteen cardamoms means fifteen green pods; strip out the black seeds and discard the husks, then grind. That yields roughly 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of freshly ground cardamom, which is the correct assertive amount for this bread. Pre-ground cardamom will work but tastes flat by comparison.
- CriscoThe book was published to sell it. Half a cup of any solid vegetable shortening behaves the same way here; butter gives a better flavor and a slightly softer crumb, though as butter is only about four-fifths fat, a measure-for-measure swap enriches the dough slightly less.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350-375F. Rolls need about 20 to 25 minutes, small loaves 30 to 35, until deep golden and 190F at the center.
- Three risesSponge, bulk, and shaped proof, as written. Budget 3 to 4 hours in total at ordinary room temperature. The dough is rich enough that the final proof is slow; wait for the shaped rolls to look visibly puffed rather than clock-watching.
- FinishingThe recipe gives none. Traditional Swedish practice is an egg wash and a scatter of pearl sugar or chopped almonds before baking, and the dough is also the standard base for braided or twisted shapes.
This is the Swedish kardemummabröd family of breads, the cardamom-scented sweet dough that also underlies buns, braided kransar and coffee rings, brought into American home cooking by Scandinavian immigrant communities in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Cardamom reached Scandinavia through the northern European spice trade and became unusually entrenched there; per-capita consumption in the Nordic countries remains far above the European average. Its appearance in A Calendar of Dinners is telling in a different way: that book was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and it worked by taking dishes cooks already recognized -- including immigrant breads like this one -- and quietly substituting the new fat for butter or lard in the ingredient list.