As soon as I saw the Swedish coffee bread on Elise’s Simply Recipes, I knew I’d make my own. The original plan was to bake it last Sunday because I thought that Sam would just love to drizzle the glaze over the newly baked bread but she went back to the condo early Sunday morning, I lost momentum and baked nothing on Sunday. Yesterday, I was by myself in the house and I decided to do some baking. I made one wreath of Swedish coffee bread and eight cheese and sausage rolls.
According to Sara, Elise’s reader who sent her the recipe, coffee bread is a traditional Christmas dish in Sweden. So, although most recipes yield braided bread, Sara likes to form her coffee bread into a wreath which I found lovely. My Swedish coffee bread closely follows the recipe from Simply Recipes (Elise is one of the few food bloggers whose recipes I trust) although I did make a few tweaks here and there (I didn’t add any egg), and I used my concoction for the filling.
Scald the milk. Pour into a mixing bowl. Stir in the water. Leave until lukewarm. Sprinkle the yeast over the mixture. Leave for 10 minutes. Add the sugar and melted butter to the yeast mixture. Stir. Add half of the flour mixture. Mix. The dough will be wet, sticky, and lumpy. Add the rest of the flour mixture. Mix just until the dough comes together. Dump the dough into a lightly floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes, dusting with flour sparingly, until no longer sticky. Form into a ball. Brush the inside of a bowl with vegetable oil. Put the dough in the bowl, turning it around to coat the surface with oil. Cover the bowl and leave the dough to rise for about two hours.
Punch down the dough and transfer to a lightly floured surface. Form into a log. With a rolling pin, flatten the log to make a long rectangle. Take the log and transfer it to a lined baking dish (I used a pizza dish), forming the dough into a ring. Pinch the two edges together so that everything is neat. Using kitchen shears, slice the dough diagonally at two-inch intervals without cutting to the inside of the ring. Ideally, the slices should be an even number.