The Smell of Home
How I ended up baking bread while working on digital projects
It’s funny what you miss when you’re away from home. When I was an exchange student in Italy, I missed burritos; one of my teachers longed for Shake-n-Bake, begging friends to mail it to him. Now that I work for a Danish company (Hello Monday), we have a lot of employees in New York who are away from their homes in Denmark for months or years at a time. They get cravings for the weirdest food things (says the guy who spent a month trying to perfect the waffle nachos).
If you’re not familiar with Denmark, the food is fantastic. That’s a massive understatement.
The pastries? Holy shit. So good. The first time my wife and I went to Copenhagen we made a map of bakeries and I still email it to people at least once a year. One of my favorites, Lagkagehuset, is now everywhere in Copenhagen, including the airport.
But the baked amazingness doesn’t end on the sweet side of the table.
Lunch in Denmark usually includes an open-faced sandwich using rugbrød — rye bread — and some condiments, meat, and perhaps some veggies.
The smørrebrød sandwich is eaten with a knife and fork, and every Dane seems to have VERY heated opinions about what makes a proper set of toppings. From what I can tell it’s a challenge to see how much you can pile on without it toppling over.
Recently one of our interns lamented the lack of good rye bread in New York. We have good bread in certain spots, but no one seems to understand the pile of nuts and cracked rye that makes the rugbrød. Maybe it was too much time spent watching The Great British Bake Off (GO WATCH IT NOW) but I decided it was time to give it a shot. Here’s what I rolled with:
I had an unfair advantage in my colleague in Copenhagen, Sarah, who is an outstanding baker and offered advice. I also had enough free time on my hands to make a 9-day starter.
The twice daily feeding routine was a tad annoying but worth the hassle. The ingredients were also a little difficult to locate, so I’d suggest starting early. Once the starter was settled, the recipe itself is rather idiot-proof.
Mix it up, pour it in, let it bake.
In the end, we had a delicious loaf and enough materials to knock out another one every day or so.
BUT DID THE DANES LIKE IT?
Unprompted, Steffen walked out of the conference room and remarked that “it smells like home in here!” Well done, internet recipe. Well done.
The only problem I have now is figuring out how to say it. Danish, to me, sounds like a mashup of German and Swedish — two languages I can’t speak. The Danes seem to add a ton of consonants and not pronounce any of them. To my ear, rugbrød sounds a like little Drupal or RuPaul. Here’s us trying to work it, girl:
The people you work with are the people you pass your life with, spending more time together with them than your friends or family. It’s worth the effort to try and make that time enjoyable and comfy. Or as they say in Danish, hygge.
