Making Our Mother's Pulla Recipe

Title: Pulla--Finnish coffee bread braid eaten in all homes in Finland. So common you can buy it any day there, but if you want it in the states you must make it yourself.

Often, served when you visited our family's home or if our parents came to visit you -- our mother's trademark!

She did not have this recipe with her when she came to the States nor had she been the baker in the home. The oldest girl in each family was the baker. So she developed this recipe with trial and error. Now other Finnish Americans, American neighbors and even Finns in Finland use her recipe as well. After making it for over 50 years, she can no longer make it herself. She even taught our Father to make it when she no longer could, but now many others carry on her legacy.

Ingredients:

3 T dry yeast, dissolved in 3/4 c. warm water

3 c hot milk, powdered is okay

3 c sugar or less

2 1/4 t salt

6 eggs

2 cubes margarine, softened at room temperature

3 T crushed cardamom

12-14 c flour It does need to be adjusted for sea level from high altitude with less flour. Add enough flour until it pulls easily away from your fingers as you knead it. She never measured, but knew by the look and feel.

2 more eggs for basting

Directions: In a large plastic tupperware type bowl (need the lid ready), add sugar and salt. Pour hot milk over them. Stir to dissolved. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in 3/4 c. warm water. In another bowl, beat eggs then add to large bowl with milk, sugar and salt mixture, stirring well. (This cools the mixture so you can then add the yeast from small bowl). Add crushed cardamom, stir well. Add flour, a little at a time, then add margarine, working it in with your fists. On a floured surface, knead it for 8 to 10 minutes, adding enough flour if necessary to make it pull away easily and is smooth. Put the lid on your large plastic tupperware type bowl. 

Place it in the sink filled with hot water. Change the water every 30 minutes. Let rise to double--about when lid pops up. Because dough has so much butter and sugar, it is slow to rise, about 2 1/2 hours. 

On a lightly floured surface, roll about a cupful of dough, making a rope about the size of your two fingers and about 18 inches long. Make 3 or 4 ropes and braid together. Place on a greased cookie sheet or on baking paper sheets. Two fit on each sheet. Place a dish towel for over them and let rise for 1/2 hour. Baste with a beaten egg. Sprinkle with slivered almonds and "rae" pearl sugar, smaller in size than rock salt.  You can get this at Scandinavian shops.  

Bake at 375 for 12 minutes then turn the pan around in oven so it'll brown more evenly and bake for about another 12 minutes. *You may purchase french bread loaf bags from your local bakery section to put the loaves in.

Number Of Servings:  6 loaves
Preparation Time:   Plan a time when you can be around for 5-6 hours.

At Christmas time, leave off the rae sugar and after the loaves have baked and cooled, brush powdered sugar glaze on and decorate with red and green candied pineapple, cut in 1/4ths and placed alternating along braid. *For the Christmas deliveries, our Father cuts cardboard pieces the length and width of the pulla and covers them with aluminum foil. Once the pulla is on the board, he puts plastic saran wrap over the pulla and scotch tapes it underneath all the sides. Then they place a gift tag and red or green Christmas bow on it. One Christmas our Father made wooden bread boards which either had one of the other of her two mottos wood burned into them. Her mottos "The thing you share with others is the thing that you enjoy!" and "Breathes there a wife with soul so dead who to her husband has never said, this is my own real homemade bread!"

When one batch is ready, we'd don our red elf hats and go deliver the fresh pulla to the next round of friends or neighbors. Merry Christmas and Hauskaa Joulua!

I only made Christmas Pulla loaves for our extended family Christmas party shown here and to give my parents and siblings this Christmas and for our own family to enjoy. I know one of our brothers also made pulla loaves this Christmas for his family and yet another brother's daughter made it for their family too. Also there are several relatives, friends and neighbors who now make it themselves for their families as it's just not Christmas with out our Mother's Pulla!

In our family growing up and still in mine now, we make Pulla boys and girls to eat on Christmas morning with hot chocolate (we aren't coffee drinkers) and sometimes we have our traditional rice porridge with a lone almond for good luck to the receiver in it. It's always fun to stuff the raisins in for the eyes, nose and mouth. I'd always pick them out when it came time to eat them though. We made Pulla boys and girls this Christmas. Each person gets to decorate their own with hair and face how they want to.

I am so thankful for this tradition and getting to help my mother make it since I was 3. She said I asked her at 3 during Christmas, "Mommy are we running a bakery?" Now our children like to help make it and eat it too. Her legacy continues. Bread is the staff of life we were taught growing up. It is to be reverenced, enjoyed and appreciated.