Underappreciated

I am looking forward to serving my guest tomorrow some rugbrauð. This amazing little bread was something I overlooked for years coming here to Iceland, even when I started baking bread I was on the quest for fluffy insides with a crispy crust. And then I bought the West Icelanders cook book published a few years ago, and flipping through it, I noticed some recipes for brown bread, raisin bread, cinnamon bread, but nothing really like rugbrauð. Turns out that baking bread with lots of steam is really tricky, can only really be done here in Iceland. And thus rugbrauð is an example of Icelandic culinary ingenuity every bit as fabulous as skyr. The molasses means it is packed with iron, in addition to the normal carbs of bread. And it has a wonderful dense but sweet taste. It welcomes a tab of butter like skyr takes milk -- what a pleasure not to have to worry about the bread tearing as the butter is smeared on. 

But rugbrauð suffers from a PR problem. Photographs of it hardly do it justice, since food the color of poop is not on the top of most people's list. 

Comments

Ko-Leen said…
you forgot to mention that it smells like cat food
July 22, 2009 at 9:46 AM
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