Recipe: pulla/cardamom rolls

[nerakrose]

I have been making a LOT of my favourite Scandinavian & Finnish comfort foods lately. One of those was a gluten-free version of pulla, which is a sweet roll spiced with cardamom popular in Finland, and I believe Sweden. Luckily (?) there are a lot of coeliacs and gluten-intolerant people in Finland, so there is no shortage of GF recipes for those online, but I still had to adapt to what is available to me here in the UK.

Original recipe @ valio.fi (makes 16 rolls)

My adapted recipe
makes 8 rolls

2 1/2 dl whole milk (I always use lactose free)
1 sachet dry yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 dl sugar
approximately a teaspoon of cardamom*
4 1/2 dl doves farm plain white flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
75g soft room temperature butter


* In Finland you use coarsely ground cardamom for this kind of thing, not finely ground (powdered), that come in these handy little things. Recipes usually call for whole or half of those. For this I would've used half of one of those, or about half a tablespoon. What I had was whole cardamom pods (that I usually use in curries) and so I cracked them open with a meat tenderiser, got the seeds out, and then proceeded to grind them coarsely by hand with that same meat tenderiser, because I have a really limited kitchen at the moment. Don't...do that, it's too much hassle, just get the finely ground cardamom from the supermarket.

The original recipe called for ground psyllium instead of xantham gum, which I have not been able to find here. If you have it, 1 teaspoon ground psyllium should do the trick. It's to be put into the warm milk along with the yeast and sugar and left to rest for ten minutes until goopy.

ALSO I AM SORRY THAT NONE OF THIS IS IN GRAMS. Scales aren't common in Finland and most recipes use deciliter. (I broke my measuring cup (glass) so had to use my tablespoon (15ml - that's 30 tablespoons) to measure out 4 1/2 decilitres of flour.) For what it's worth, the flour was packed and flattened with a knife. I did intend to weigh it, but forgot to reset the scale after putting my plastic tub on it, so the flour with the tub weighed about....460-480g? I don't remember, key to me was that it was Less Than 500g and my xanthan gum tub (that I'd never used before) said "2 tsp for 500g of flour when making bread". I have heard horror stories about what too much xanthan gum does (rubber! yuck!) so I opted for 1 tsp based on the fact I had Less Than 500g but definitely More Than 250g, and uh, I think it turned out okay??

I accidentally melted most of my butter because I forgot to take it out of the fridge so I just put the blob into the still warm casserole I'd used to heat the milk to soften. Half of it melted. It led to a dough with a very slick buttery texture that was like....warm very malleable playdough? I was VERY sceptical at that point, but it worked out okay??? If you make this with butter at the proper temperature and state of solidity, please report back.

Sorry about the essay.

METHOD:
Heat the milk until not too hot. Add yeast, sugar, salt, and cardamom. Let the yeast do its thing.
Add the xanthan gum to the flour, mix well. Add flour to liquid and mix well. Add the butter and mix well.

Form 8 rolls and put on a baking sheet or oven proof pan (lined with parchment). Let rise.*

Brush with egg or milk and drizzle with sugar nibs/pearl sugar if you have it.

Bake in preheated oven at 225 degrees C for 10-12 minutes.

If you don't have sugar nibs, put icing on the rolls after baking instead.

Eat plain or cut in half and serve with butter.

These turned out a wee bit dense (not sure if it's because they needed to rise for longer, more xanthan gum, or both) but they were very tasty and very soft. The day after they had hardened a lot but a few seconds in the microwave softened them right up again.

*I did mine for 30 minutes, could probably have done with another 10.

before proofing


after 12 minutes


icing YUM


I forgot to take a photo of the inside texture because frankly, I ate them too fast. (I put half in the freezer though, so I might update this post later.)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Oh those look excellent -- and I'm dreaming of a fresh pot of rhubarb-strawberry jam to add that extra early-summer touch.

I adore cardamom, and I so wish those handy tubes of coarsely-ground spice were available hereabouts.

[nerakrose]

I've never considered rhubarb-strawberry jam with these before, that sounds like an excellent idea :D

me too, bro. I think next time I'll just get the powdered kind from the supermarket - we use that in rolls in Denmark so I'm not unfamiliar with it, I just prefer the coarsely ground version used in Finland.

[mific]

If you can get Metamucil, then plain Metamucil is the same as ground psyllium. I use it to make bread rolls and it works really well.

[nerakrose]

thanks so much for the tip! I'll look into it. :D

[monanotlisa]

Oy, I always thought the Austrians were the only folks using dl -- Fins too, eh? No prob. :) Will try these!

[nerakrose]

well, everywhere that uses the metric system (so everywhere except the USA) uses dl.
I hope these work out for you!