Oliva baker 12 loaves
– I used to say that I don't have a recipe for anything, I just make it. When I started keeping house, after I had children, we often baked a lot. You know, with the children, there had to be many loaves of bread, says Oliva Helene Nilsen from Manndalen.
Ingredients for 12 loaves
2 kg wholemeal bread flour
1 kg of a mixture of coarse baking flour and wholemeal coarse flour
3-4 kg wheat flour (I probably had at least over 3 kg of wheat flour)
3 litres of liquid (water, stock, carrot water)
Salt, syrup and oil
2 packets dried yeast
I use two packets of dried yeast for 12 loaves. Since I'm using so little yeast, I let the loaves rise for an hour and a half before shaping them. Then I let the loaves rise for another hour before putting them in the oven. I bake the loaves for a good hour plus to get them properly cooked.
If I have meat stock, I usually put it in the bread dough. Now I'm going to call Ragnar because they had broth yesterday. I'm going to tell them not to throw away that stock if there's any left. I put the meat stock in a plastic bag, and then I freeze them. About one and a half litres of stock in each bag, more or less. When I bake, I take one of the bags and mix it with water. For 12 loaves, you need a good three litres of liquid, comfortably. When I don't have meat stock, I usually add a little salt to the water. I also add light syrup and a bit of rapeseed oil. If I've just boiled carrots, I use the carrot water in the bread. And if there's any carrot water left over, I drink it myself. You should make use of everything.
As a rule, I get up around four or five when I'm baking a lot of bread. Then I'm finished early in the day. But that's not always the case. Sometimes.
My mother used to bake so much bread. We had a huge stone oven that an uncle had made. Great-aunt Ida used to say that when the men went to Lofoten in the winter, people would bring their dough troughs, and she would bake forty loaves at a time in that oven. Because when they went to Lofoten, they had to take all their food with them. They also baked lefse. They used to call it Lofoten lefse. They had large chests that they packed full of food and some extra clothes. In the spring, they went to Finnmark, and then it was the same again. The men, they were mostly away all the time.
The text is from the book «Seven Sorts – Stories from the kitchen counter», produced by the Centre for Northern Peoples in collaboration with Reni Jasinski Wright.
Watch the film with Olivia Helene Nilsen sewing boots
Oliva and Riddu Riđđu by Guttorm Pedersen
Current links
Life in the old small kitchens, NRK
Interview with Sámi woman from Manndalen 1975, National Library of Norway
