We use local apples year round for our homemade pies!
Finnish coffee bread is a traditional braided sweet yeast bread often served with coffee. It is also known as Pulla, Nisu, nissua, Kahvileipa and, yes, Swedish coffee bread. Cardamon (cardamom) seed is an essential ingredient. We carry cardamon seed for the convenience of customers who make their own coffee bread or use cardamom in other recipes.
We bake Finnish coffee bread every day. For holidays and special occasions, we recommend calling ahead to order.
A little history:
My great grandparents, Lempi and Samuel Aho emigrated from Finland and eventually settled in Templeton, Mass. My mother remembered her grandmother, Lempi, making Finnish coffee bread, kahvileipa, with no recipe. Just a handful of this and some more of that.
I remember my grandmother, Ilmi, always having baked goods and coffee for her guests. She learned to bake from her mother and as a young woman went to the Fanny Farmer School in Boston.
My mother, Lorna, taught me to make Finnish coffee bread. After peeling the seeds from the pods, we would grind the cardomon in the same mortar and pestle that my great grandmother used.
Now I bake Finnish coffee bread six days a week in my bakery. I no longer use the mortar and pestle, but an electric coffee grinder. I only know a few words in Finnish. But, the bread I bake is what my mother made and many generations before her. It makes people happy when they taste it and remember their mothers and grandmothers.
Kiitos Lempi, Ilmi and Lorna!
And thank you to my customers for buying my bread!
Joyce
