Rúgbrauð - Icelandic rye bread

A special specialty of Icelandic cuisine is Icelandic rye bread, i.e. rúgbrauð . It's a bit reminiscent of pumpernickel, but it's soft and fluffy and tastes sweet.

Baking bread with the heat of the earth

Traditionally in Iceland, this bread is baked in hot earth, then usually in a tin can that is buried in the earth for 10 - 24 hours (depending on the local temperature). This bread is known, for example, from Heimaey after the volcanic eruption in 1973, from the Mývatn region or from the geothermal bakery near the "Fontana" swimming pool in Laugarvatn.

The village community oven

In some places there are also communal "baking ovens" where residents can bake their rye bread in special devices using the hot steam from geothermal energy.

A friend of ours lives here and she showed me her "oven". In this steaming "tin barrel" there is a grid at the bottom on which you place your rye bread in the milk carton, then you press the lid down again, screw it on properly, the bread bakes in the hot steam - and that's it the next day rúgbrauð finished.

But it's better to have two people when you put your bread here, because the barrel is really hot and I would have had problems with screwing and pressing alone.

Bake at a slow pace - baking time 12 to 24 hours

If you don't have geothermal energy available, you can also bake your rúgbrauð in the oven - here I have a recipe for you that is prepared with ab-mjólk (a special probiotic thick milk) or alternatively with sour milk / curdled milk . The bread is baked in the classic way in empty, washed out milk cartons - here for about 11 hours at 200 °F (90 °C) air circulation.

Ingredients for 3 breads

460 g rye flour

260 g whole wheat flour

3 tsp coarse sea salt

3 tsp baking soda

1 l concentrated milk

350 g syrup

oil for greasing

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 200 °F (90 °C) fan oven.

In as large a bowl as possible, mix the rye and wheat flour with the salt and baking soda.

Then add the concentrated milk and the syrup...

... and mix everything thoroughly into a smooth dough.

Wash the milk cartons thoroughly, cut the top end open, and preferably grease the inside a little...

...and then pour the dough evenly into the prepared milk cartons, which are then almost half full (be careful, the dough really rises when baking!).

Then cover the top of the milk cartons thoroughly and tightly with two layers of aluminum foil...

...and bake in a preheated oven at 200 °F (90 °C) for about 11 hours.

Then take the bread out of the oven, carefully remove the aluminum foil and then let the bread cool down, then carefully open the milk carton and tear it off.

Then cut the bread into slices and serve it with fresh butter as a side dish to soup or fish dishes.

I baked this bread for a forum meeting of Iceland fans in Thuringia, where I had prepared an Icelandic lunch one day - a nice thick soup based on the recipe for my meatless meat soup , after all we also had vegetarians with us, so that was what we had too Rye bread with butter and cinnamon rolls and Ástarpungar (“love sacks”) for dessert.

The bread tastes best fresh, but you can also cut it into slices and freeze it in portions if you have some left over.

The sweet rye bread is also called þrumari in Icelandic, literally translated as "thunderer", as it can cause certain noises in the digestive tract if consumed in large quantities. But I don't know how much bread you have to eat for that - so far I haven't apparently eaten enough bread at once for that. ;)

[Translated from here.]