When I saw Tanya’s picture of her ‘grandma’s bread’ I thought it looked delicious. When I read her post I was surprised, the recipe broke all the usual rules of baking bread (eg no proving, put in a cold oven, etc) so I just had to try it even though I’d said in a post shortly before that I’d settled on my recipe for bread.

I’ll not give Tanya’s recipe here, you will find it on her blog (link at the end). You’ll even learn the Norwegian for grandma. So just some comments.

Sorry, this is not my attempt at Tanya’s grandma’s bread; Petronela deleted it 😱. You’ll just have to believe me that mine look pretty much as the picture on Tanya’s post. This pic is my usual bread.

Sorry, this is not my attempt at Tanya’s grandma’s bread; Petronela deleted it 😱. You’ll just have to believe me that mine look pretty much as the picture on Tanya’s post. This pic is my usual bread.

The closest thing I know to it is Irish soda bread though that uses bicarb of soda not yeast. I make this, usually for Sunday breakfast when we’ve run out of bread and I’ve ‘forgotten’ to make any. It’s delicious and very quick and easy to make but the disadvantage is that you must eat it more or less immediately. Even the next day it’s not good.

Tasty – and tastier

Tanya’s grandma’s bread is just the opposite. It seems to improve with age (I made it three days ago and so far it gets better and better). First it had a very hard crust when it came out of the oven; now it’s soft, but not tough and chewy which I don’t like. Secondly, although it tasted good when fresh it has tasted better with each passing day.

I didn’t have fresh yeast so I used quick dried yeast (1/4 of the quantity of fresh). I didn’t have sesame seeds so I chucked in a load of poppy seeds.

Finally I read (I think misread) Tanya’s recipe as having a quantity of milk with water, but then another 300ml of warm milk to which the yeast is added. This seemed too much liquid to me so I reduced the amount of milk/water by 300ml. It turned out OK so I think that is what she meant.

Final conclusion: very tasty, worth making for the taste. It didn’t seem to me to be much quicker or easier to make as mixing it (by hand) is a messy job and it takes an hour in the oven but I guess it will get quicker with practice. My ‘cheat’ of letting a breadmaker do the work before baking in the oven in my recipe is less hassle.

You’ll find Tanya’s recipe at

https://bakewitht.com/2017/09/17/bestemor-bread-quick-easy-to-make-great-for-the-kids/

I recommend you try it. Great for grown-ups too.