Vörtbröd: Swedish Christmas Bread

When it comes to home-sickness, I’m in a constant state of it. When in London I miss Sweden, when in Sweden I miss London and when anywhere else, well, I’m most likely on holiday and having the time of my life. My ultimate dream is an integration, where Ica is next to Tescos and fikaas common as a pint in the pub. This week in particular, I’m having violent cravings after Vortbrod (or Vörtbröd in swedish).

Dear English readers, you’re missing out. Vortbrod is as much a bread as a treat and tastes like all things Christmas should. You eat it with cheese or creamy beetroot salad. Or both. “Vört” in english means “wort” and for those who don’t know what wort is here’s a definition from Google:

The sweet infusion of ground malt or other grain before fermentation, used to produce beer and distilled malt liquors.

Basically, it adds sweetness to the bread. The problem is, you cannot find this bread even in the most well sorted Waitrose, so I thought I’d just make some myself. Not that I’m some expert in baking bread. In fact, last time I did, the bread kept growing even after cooking. In mine, and all my dinner party guests tummies. No one had space for dessert that time. Anyway, I started googling recipes and realised that this bread requires a SERIOUS amount of spices and rather strange ingredients. Let me give you an insight, you’d want to include for example:

• Wort. You cannot buy this anywhere so unless you fancy doing some beer brewing you mix Julmust (a sweet, carbonated drink that us swedes drink at Christmas. Kind of like coca cola much, much better) and dark beer.
• Quark. This is a kind of cheese made out of soured milk. YUM.
• Ginger. Standard bread ingredient.
• Dried Cloves. It is a flower from a tree and tastes insanely good.
• The peel of a Pomeran. You know, Pomeran, that really commonly seen bitter citrus fruit?
• Aniseed. We’re talking scandi cuisine after all.
• Fennel. Standard bread ingredient #2.
• Cardamom. Best spice ever.
• + all “normal” ingredients used in bread.

So yeah, officially the coolest bread in the world. Can we now please agree on either importing or starting producing it? And no, I probably won’t be attempting to make it anytime soon. Just buying the ingredients will be a full-time job. My cravings will have to wait until December 22nd when I land in Gothenburg and mum will welcome me with a whole loaf at the airport.