Limpa Limpa

[Nico Sadiq]

EachThursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a. fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: A recipe for limpa, the perfect rye bread for toasty December breakfasts.

Limpa is a classic Swedish rye bread with a tender crumb and a hint of fragrant orange and anise seed. While some rye breads can be tricky to work with, this recipe is incredibly simple. If you are new to baking rye bread at home, this Swedish Limpa is the perfect place to start.

This recipe comes from my great-grandmother. In the early 1900's, she immigrated to America, bringing this Limpa recipe with her. I've updated it slightly and added more detailed instructions, but it is very much in its original form.

The combination of orange and anise in this simple buttermilk rye bread is as addictive as it is unusual, and I know you are going to love it. I am so delighted to carry this treasured family recipe forward and share it with you!

This rye bread is not a traditional base to use for making smrrebrd (Nordic open face sandwiches) but don't let that stop you! I often use toasted Swedish Limpa as a base for open face sandwiches with blue cheese, roasted pear compote and toasted hazelnuts. Absolutely delicious! It would also be nice in place of the white bread in this Toast Skagen recipe.

I found a major flaw in this recipe. It doesn't tell you that you'd better make more than one loaf, because you won't be able to stop eating it! This was so delicious, I can't wait to make it again. I'm going to give a few loaves to a friend as a gift, and make a couple for myself.

It looks like 1 teaspoon instant yeast (3 grams) = 1/2 block (0.6 ounce size) fresh yeast. So double that amount for the 2 teaspoons called for in the recipe. You will also need to proof the yeast (instant yeast does not require proofing and can go right in with the dry ingredients). You can do this in the butter/molasses/water/orange zest mixture. Just wait to add the yeast until the mixture has cooled a bit (you don't want to kill your yeast). Just warm to the touch should be fine. Hope this helps. Please report back and let me know how it turns out!

Hi Alison,

Thanks for checking back in! I'm glad the yeast conversion worked well for you. It really is a delicious bread...it always reminds me of the holidays. Thanks again for your feedback! Happy baking to you!

I would make "buttermilk" out of your lactose free whole milk. Simply add a tablespoon of lemon juice to one cup of milk and stir (vinegar works too). Let sit for 5 minutes and it will be ready to use in the recipe!

We made this limpa for our St. Lucia party last night! Usually it is a big affair with lots of folks and lots of tradition. This year, of course, just "family" and a big St. Lucia "Skol" on Zoom at 5pm, with glgg and akavit! The limpa was a huge hit at our house, so fragrant with anise and orange...can't wait to try it this am as toast!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the limpa! Sounds like you made the most of a 2020 St. Lucia celebration. You are in for a breakfast treat...the toast is amazing! Thanks for taking the time to leave me a comment. It is greatly appreciated!

Hi Cathy,

I've never made this bread with a sourdough starter but I'm sure you could! It might make the bread a little more tangy but I don't think it would be a bad thing. Let me know if you give it a try!

Kristi

At 80 years of age and a 1st generation American on my father's (Swedish) side, and second on my (Norwegian/Irish) mother's side I grew up with Scandinavian foods. Blood sausage with LInganberries, goats cheese, potato sausage, Limpa, Almond Tarts, split pea soup, Meatballs, Cucumber salad, Glugg, Swedenhouse coffee and many more found memories. This is the problem with age, memories and the mass produced so called foods of today. Our youth will never know the joy of excellent food.

I've made several versions of limpa bread and this is one of the best. The bread is soft and moist. The orange and anise add interest to the flavour without being overwhelming. It's great for sandwiches or toast. The dough was easy to mix and knead by hand. I weighed the flours and didn't use 80 grams of the bread flour to get the right dough consistency. The recipe makes a small loaf. I baked mine in an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch pan for sandwich bread. I made 2 loaves, subbing 1 cup of sourdough discard for some of the bread flour and buttermilk for the second loaf. Both were excellent!

One further note on this wonderful bread....the dough also makes amazing soft, moist and delicious sandwich buns. Once again I mixed and kneaded the dough by hand, subbing sourdough discard for some of the liquid and flour. I divided the dough into 6 portions of about 120 grams each for large buns, and baked them for 15 minutes. I'm very happy to have stumbled on this recipe. Thank you for posting!

This recipe is most definitely modified! By the time the recipe came to me it called for active dry yeast, but I prefer baking with instant yeast so I made that change. But I'm sure that my great grandmother probably used cake yeast as well!

Thanks so much for your comment, Linda! I'm so glad this recipe brings back good memories for you. You can definitely freeze this bread! Make sure it is completely cool, wrap well in plastic and finish with a layer of foil. Happy baking!

Kristi

Aloha, Kristi,

I took your advice and bought anise seed and baked this bread.

Yes, it taste excellent with orange zest and anise seed! It can be both breakfast and dinner bread as is not too sweet! My husband loves this bread, too! Thanks for wonderful recipe. Mahalo

I love rye flour; it has a fantastic taste when baked. Even rye cookies are awesome. My favorite sourdough bread has 20% whole-grain rye flour, and the most perfect 100% rye bread is my danish rye bread.

The flour in this limpa bread is 100% sifted rye flour, called light rye flour in the states.I developed this bread with enriched dough. It contains both butter, milk, and syrup. The salt content is a bit above 2%, which brings out the taste of the rye flour.

If you want to play around with the formula, change the quantity, the hydration, or other vital stats, you can do so here in my Bread Calculator.The conclusion of this sourdough limpa bread recipeWhile this bread is a 100% rye bread, some key factors set it apart:

This is my recipe for sourdough limpa bread. If you like the recipe please consider sharing it with like-minded bread lovers on social media.If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.

I suppose it's because it's the perfect excuse to stay indoors on a wintry day, while the steam from the oven fogs up the kitchen windows and gently blurs the landscape outside into indistinguishable shapes in different shades of white.

So when we returned from spending Christmas in Rhode Island to find Toronto almost knee-deep in fresh snow, I knew it was a sign I'd picked just the right recipe for this month's Secret Recipe Club post - a giant triple-loaf recipe for Limpa, a Swedish rye bread perfumed with orange, fennel and caraway seed.

I've been dying to get more familiar with Scandinavian food, since my experience with it is pretty limited. I'm pretty sure that my occasional forays into the Ikea cafeteria are not the most stellar example of what Sweden has to offer, no matter how tasty those little saucy meatballs might be!

For the most part, I stuck to the original recipe, though I did replace some of the water in Ewa's version with some freshly brewed coffee to give it a little extra oomph. Coffee is totally not traditional, I'm sure, but I like the way coffee adds a subtle roastiness that plays up the brightness of the orange zest.

The texture reminds me a little of pumpernickel, with its thin, soft crust and dense, hearty crumb. It's also surprisingly sweet, though not so much so that it feels out of place next to a savoury dish, and the delicate citrus and licorice aroma is totally unlike the tangy (and sometimes outright sour) Eastern European ryes that I grew up on.

From the looks of it, we'll be in for lots of cold snowy days this winter of 2013, so I'm hoping that means I'm also in for a few more afternoons spent in a warm sun-filled kitchen with fogged-over windows, nibbling on a slice of freshly baked bread slathered with as much butter as it can possibly stand.

A traditional Swedish rye loaf - subtly sweet with hints of orange, caraway and fennel. Absolutely perfect when sliced thick and toasted, preferably with a generous slathering of melting butter or chunky orange marmalade. This recipe makes 3 large-ish loaves, so either plan to give some away or make some room in the freezer to store the extras.

This is the closest I've ever seen to what my mother used to make when we lived in Wisconsin. I've been trying to replicate that recipe for years with mixed results, but your's feels the closest. I don't remember the coffee being part of it, but it intrigues me enough to try it. Thanks for sharing!

I buy swedish rye crisps all the time - this beautiful bread reminds me of those. I'm not one for making a long list of new year resolutions but bread making is on my list of things to master this year. I'm going to bookmark this for future reference. I'd love to try it out. Coffee and Orange inside? How intriguing!

That beautiful hunk of carbs is making me wish I were knee-deep in snow here in PA and that, in addition to perpetually donning sweatpants, I had a big bowl of lentil soup on the stove and the smell of rye bread wafting through my apartment. Maybe I'll make some paper snowflakes for my windows, turn the heat down, bake this bread and pretend!

I know! The weather is so weird this week... I don't even know what to wear on any given day, the way the temperature keeps bouncing around. I'm hoping we'll be back to proper snowy weather soon, though. I do so love those bright winter days when the sun is out and the snow is sparkling.

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