Keeping bread fresh - on the table!

[Anna N]

Once or twice a year we host a Danish style lunch of open-face sandwiches. Not too many of our guests are Danes so I prefer not to pre-make the sandwiches but allow each guest to build to their taste.

I like to serve a wide variety of breads but have yet to find a way to keep them from drying out at the table. To slice to order would simply disrupt the informality and easy-going conversation (lubricated with lots of ice-cold Akvavit washed down with beer!). I try to put out a reasonable variety of breads in a number of baskets and top it up when needed but even so, during a three to four hour meal, the bread tends to curl and dry out. Wrapping it in napkins doesn't seem to help much - any ideas?

I'm preparing a mini-Danish lunch for The Dane and I right now, and we'll make do with the wrapped bread within easy reach but that's not the answer for guests!

Thanks.

[Jinmyo]

What if they also sliced their own bread? Or if you toasted or grilled it first?

[Suzanne F]

Can you pre-butter it? That works for finger sandwiches, usually.

[Anna N]

What if they also sliced their own bread? Or if you toasted or grilled it first?

Wow! I've got the quote thingy working! Thanks so much Dstone001.

Neither would work well. Slicing own bread would require passing around a bread board and knife (disruptive and possibly dangerous given the amount of Akvavit frizzling the brains), an ability to slice very, very, thinly (bread in the Danish lunch is a palette on which to design a masterpiece!) and more elbow room than I can manage at my table. Neither can it be toasted or grilled - generally we try to serve rogenbrot or something similar which simply doesn't take to grilling or toasting. But many thanks for your suggestions.

[Anna N]

Can you pre-butter it?  That works for finger sandwiches, usually.

Since, depending on how you will top your bread, you may decide on butter or goose fat seasoned with apples and peppercorns, then no, one cannot pre-butter it. But I still thank you for the suggestion.

I keep hoping there is something out there like a domed cheese board or perhaps I already have the answer - now I've expressed it - those bell-jars I've seen in laboratories - they should work but they might look a bit on the bizarre side until guests have imbibed enough eau de vie! Maybe I should search around and see if I can find something like that.

There - see - at least you've all made me find my own answer. Thanks to all.

[Bux]

Pre buttering is all I can think of, but that creates more problems than it solves. I can't imagine a basket full of pre buttered bread. I guess if you had a very large platter ...

[Suzanne F]

Goose fat?!?!?!? Please, please, please give us a lesson in Danish sandwich-making.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Sounds like your guests will be so plastered they won't care if the bread is a little dry.

[southern girl]

Close to a bell jar...how about placing the presliced bread beneath glass cake domes...easy access...and you wouldn't have to dig to the bottom of the jar for the bread type one desires...or (not a pretty presentation-but practical)...tupperware-each containing a different type of bread-of course, you are relying on your guests (who may have a couple of drinks) to close and "burp' the tupperware!

[Anna N]

Close to a bell jar...how about placing the presliced bread beneath glass cake domes...

Yes, I think this is worth investigating. Thanks

[Anna N]

Goose fat?!?!?!?  Please, please, please give us a lesson in Danish sandwich-making.  

I wouldn't presume to set myself up as an expert in the art of "smorrebrod" (please imagine the required slash through both o's"

My husband was born in Copenhagen and his mother had emigrated there from Scotland so it's a very, very mixed heritage. I've dined many times in the long gone and deeply lamented Copenhagen Room restaurant in Toronto. And I've made a number of trips to Denmark but I trust that any true Danes will chime in and correct me where I make errors.

I understand that smorrebrod means buttered bread and in the days before butter became the eighth deadly sin, it would be layered on the bread thick enough to show tooth marks when you bit into it. The alternative spread is called "krydderfedt" and we make it by sauteeing finely chopped apple, peppercorns and bay leaf in goose fat for fifteen or twenty minutes and then passing it through a sieve. It is allowed to solidify and then is used on the bread instead of butter for certain sandwiches.

The bread is generally rogenbrot which is a square, extremely thinly sliced, heavy bread. Only a half slice is used for each sandwich. Cheese and shrimp though would be served with (or on) good white bread. Not all our guests like rogenbrot so we subsitute with other thinly sliced dark breads.

The "sandwiches" are made by completely covering the bread with toppings and are always open-face and always eaten with knife and fork.

Some traditional sandwiches include:

The Vet's Midnight Snack:

Spread the rogenbrot with goose fat, add a slice of liver paste then some thin slices of cured meat and garnish with aspic and thin slices of raw onion.

The Sun over Gudhjem:

Spread rogenbrot with butter and then a smoked herring, sprinkled with very thinly sliced radishes and place a raw egg yolk carefully in the centre of the sandwich and finally sprinkle with finely chopped chives.

Smoked Eel:

Skin and fillet the eel and place on buttered rogenbrot, top with lightly scrambled egg and chopped chives (This is the favourite of my husband, The Dane)!

Fillet of fish with remoulade:

Breaded and fried fillets of fish (plaice, sole, flounder) dressed with remoulade and lemon slices - always served warm.

Shrimp salad:

Tiny shrimp, white asparagus, mayonnaise, whipped cream, lemon juice all tossed together and served on buttered white bread which has been covered first with a large lettuce leaf - garnish with lemon wedge -very, very yummy.

Akvavit is kept in the freezer and served icy cold and accompanied by beer.

Hope this is an intro to some of the best food I've ever eaten.

[Nick]

From, "The Cooking of Scandinavia"

"They [danish women] are always careful to use the right bread, not any piece will do. The prefered type of bread is sour rye, dark, moist, tight in texture, only an eighth of an inch or so thick. It is always buttered evenly and thickly, since the butter acts as a juiceproof seal. Oddly, the sour rye flavor of the finished sandwich does not call attention to itself, but rather acts as a sort of catalyst to the other flavors. White bread with a hard crust is usually employed for smørrebrød only when the topping is to be shrimp, lobster, smoked salmon, or sometimes cheese."

The sandwiches are generally eaten with knife and fork.

The above title was written by Dale Brown and was part of a Time-Life series back in the sixties. My father (a Dane) got it as a complimentary copy. It's a really interesting book with lots of info and many recipes.

For Danish sandwich recipes on line Go Here.

Edit: Anna I was typing this while you were making your post. Looks like I haven't had anything to add what you just wrote. Nick

Edited December 25, 2002 by Nickn (log)

[Suzanne F]

I thank you both, Anna N. and Nickn. It's been ages since I've had anything like that -- oddly, in NYC (Manhattan, anyway) we no longer have smorrebrod available. I'm not sure what the Swedish restaurants do, if anything, that might be similar.

Nickn: I've got that one! bit by bit I'm building my collection of Foods of the World -- one of the finest series ever published.

[Nick]

Nickn: I've got that one!  bit by bit I'm building my collection of Foods of the World -- one of the finest series ever published.

Suzanne, I'm sitting here thinking about that. My parents had the whole collection and the Scandinavian one was the only one they kept when they moved to the Florida Keys.

But, I am happy to have this one as well as it's little companion volume which is just the recipes.

Edited December 25, 2002 by Nickn (log)

[oraklet]

anna n, i'm sorry not to answer sooner.

smørrebrød is a thing of beauty, which can be spoiled by the wrong kind of bread. if you want it to stay fresh at the table and be great tasting, perhaps you should make it yourself, sourdough or biga based. my mother's recipe for rye bread is as follows:

first, you make, or get hold of, a biga/sourdough. she made hers this way 20 yrs ago:

150g rye flour

3-5 g of yeast (danish style block of beer yeast). perhaps even less?

1/2 teasp. salt

enough youghurt or buttermilk to make it rather "wet"

let rest at kitchen temp. (if not very hot summer) until it forms bubbles and starts smelling of...sourdough. approx. 24 hours.

then add

1,5 liters water

3 tblspoons coarse salt

500 g wheat flour

500 g "broken" rye kernels (?)

1,500 g rye flour

let rest in forms (?) for c 15 hours in kitchen temp., covered with damp cloth.

bake at c 190 C for c 2 hours

wrap in damp cloth for 24 hours (!)

lots of c's, so you'll have to experiment a bit...

sorry about the celsius part, don't know what it would be in fahrenheit.

as for the white bread, if you make it slowly it will stay fresh much longer and have a lot more taste - you can even let it develop the slightly sour taste which was sometimes used in the smørrebrød of my childhood. making your own bread will, with some experimentation, be worth the effort.

butter, of course, should be lurpak - salted. and krydderfedt can be pigs fat, too.

on the "lunch" thread i rambled about danish smørrebrød. to think that i was able to forget about the vet's midnight snack! my only excuse is that it belongs in the finer end of the range, whereas i was trying to describe the delicious savagry of smørrebrød at its brutallest (which is what i love best...). which reminds me that a real dirty stinking old cheese should be served on good rye bread.

and an additional advice which may sound heretical to most danes: if you serve several different kind of herring, try substituting the kryddersild with grebbestads ansjovis. swedish, but incredibly good and powerfull stuff.

[Anna N]

anna n, i'm sorry not to answer sooner.......

........which reminds me that a real dirty stinking old cheese should be served on good rye bread.

and an additional advice which may sound heretical to most danes: if you serve several different kind of herring, try substituting the kryddersild with grebbestads ansjovis. swedish, but incredibly good and powerfull stuff.

Hey, no apologies needed!

How could I have forgotten the stinky cheese! When we first visited my brother-in-law in Denmark, we arrived in the very early hours of the morning. He drove us from the Copenhagen airport to his home in Lynge and stopped off at the local bakery to pick up fresh white bread and Danish pastries (If you are reading this and have never been to Denmark, don't even think of what is called Danish pastry in North America!).

As he opened the door to his home we were engulfed in the smell of "dirty socks" - real, wonderful, stinky, Danish cheese. Breakfast was bread still warm from the bakery topped with stinky cheese, washed down with Danish coffee which keeps you wired for hours, and followed by Danish pastry. We topped it all off with a half coffee - half black, black coffee, half akvavit and loads of sugar. If we ever suffered from jet lag on that trip, I don't remember it.

Sadly my wonderful brother-in-law passed away just two weeks ago.

I have never had even the least success in bread-making though I have tried for a loaf of rogenbrot and I can make a very nice caraway rye in my bread machine. Bread-making is one of those things that simply eludes me so I'm afraid it will have to be store-bought for us.

Though I have never heard of grebbestads ansjovis, I am willing to see what I can find out.

Many thanks for your post and for reminding me of stinky cheese which I find almost impossible to get here - best I can manage is a strong German Tilsit and even that is hard to come by.

[oraklet]

anna n

bread baking is a challenge - and more so if you, like i had to, start off from virtually scratch. but luckily there are several good books to be found, one of which is danish, written by camilla plum. perhaps you are able to read some danish, or your husband may help you. on "the bread thread", led by robert schoenfeld, there are lots of great suggestions, too. sorry i can't figure out how to do the link thing, so you will have to search for it.

there are two variants of grebbestads ansjovis: one with filleted, and one with whole achovies which are crunchy, and for the adventurous...

[Jinmyo]

Anna, here is Robert's The Bread Thread.

[oraklet]

jinmyo, thanks for adding the link

nickn and suzanne, is this Time-Life series to be trusted on indian and chinese cooking, too? (i've got the ones on french and spanish cooking, and they seem all right)

anna, try sauteeing some onion together with the apple for krydderfedt. and then there are fedtegrever (that would be "fat counts" i think), too: slowly, slowly, boil cubed pig's fat in small amount of water till it forms pea-size crunchy chunks of fat that can be used with (danish or rather: southern jutland) sausages.