Sturdiwheat Bread Limpa Sweet Rye, 1.31 Pound (Pack of 4)

I'm experienced in bread making but have not done so in over 5 years. I wanted to try making bread again because I have too much time on my hands all because of the Virus stay at home situation here in Hawaii over the last few months. My biggest problem was there was definitely a lack of bread flour and bread yeast available in the markets. It kind of blew my mind that there were people out there taking to bread making and buying up all of the ingredients but when people are locked away in their homes most of the time, I guess they have a lot of time to make bread. I decided to try this because there's everything you need to make bread in this mix, including the yeast. All of the ingredients are measured out in the flour mixture. You just add luke warm water to a bowl and add the yeast. Never use extremely hot water or it will kill the yeast. From here, just add the flour mixture and follow the instructions. What you need to know from here is, bread dough is extremely sensitive to temperature and humidity. Here in Hawaii our winter weather is over and transitioning into summer weather so its beginning to get really hot and humid. 1 1/4 cups of water used in this mix made the dough extremely sticky when it was time for kneading it. Luckily, I did have a little all purpose flour in my pantry used for thickening gravy. I used this to flour my table top and added a little more to the dough in the kneading process. I would have preferred to use bread flour for kneading but did not have any because of its scarcity in the markets. By adding more flour when kneading, I could control the stickiness and the moisture of the dough. Also, you will really need to know how well your bread has proofed. You don't want it to under rise or over rise. The instructions say that for the first rise, let it increase to 1 1/2 in size, which can take up to 1 1/2 to 2 hours. With the heat and humidity in Hawaii right now, the first rise took only 65 minutes. So with hotter weather, you really need to watch your dough. Baking time for this bread took 50 minutes at 350 degrees in my electric conventional oven. This bread really has a nice texture and sweetness to it. To me, for the price of the 4 packs and having the convenience of all the ingredients in it, it was totally worth it.

This bread mix arrived today and I immediately pulled out the 25 year old Breadman TR560 my mom had passed down to me years ago that I had never used until this day. As my family has been on a quest to find a suitable replacement limpa for our traditional Christmas Eve smörgåsbord after the abrupt closure of Alpine Market in Torrance, California earlier this year, this was an important moment. It's been the hardest part of Christmas dinner to find an acceptable substitute for! Every bakery we've tried so far (and we've traveled to sample them) has had more rye-heavy limpa where Alpine's had been lighter and sweeter. I dumped the ingredients into the bucket, hit the button, held my thumbs instead of crossing my fingers (it's a Swedish bread, after all), and hoped for the best. Four hours later I popped the loaf out of the machine, cooled it on a wire rack for 20 minutes, and finally sampled it - delicious! Of course it's not exactly the same as Alpine's was, I wasn't expecting it to be, but it's much closer than anything else I've tried. Soft, light, tasty, and easy to make - you just need a little self-control to not eat the whole loaf in one sitting. I'm glad I still have three packets of mix left so I can enjoy fresh, warm limpa all fall - and save Christmas!

My grandma loves rye bread and she really enjoyed this mix! It was easy enough to make and made for a tasty bread.

When I looked up a recipe to make homemade limpa bread, I quickly realized that the cost of the ingredients would be more than the cost of purchasing 4 bags of the mix, so I decided to order them and give them a try. I'm so glad I did! This limpa bread is delicious! It tastes like the bakery's bread. The color is paler than the bakery's bread, but the quality and flavor is there. I love that you can use a bread machine or the oven and both directions are simple. I'd consider it very easy to make, especially in a bread machine. It's easy in the oven too, as long as you're patient and follow the directions because it requires a few simple steps over a few hours for some rising time before baking. You don't need to be a skilled bread baker to be successful with this bread. I recommend this limpa bread.

I use my bread machine, which works very well and makes my house smell like my Swedish grandmother's kitchen as I remember it from 70 years ago. I ate my first slice from my first loaf and immediately added a set of four mixes to my Amazon Subscribe & Save subscriptions. This bread is denser and moister than I recall my grandmother's, but that is great! I'd say the texture and richness are similar in some ways to B&M Boston Brown Bread. Lingonberries, cream cheese, peanut butter, and guacamole all "pair" well with this flavorful bread. The loaf slices easily, which is a plus for making sandwiches. At some point, I may add a few extra caraway seeds when I make a loaf -- not because the mix needs improving but just because I haven't found a good, rich caraway rye for many years.

I lived in Sweden as a youth and always enjoyed their sweet rye bread. I've not seen it in the USA until now. Sturdiwheat has a fantastic Limpa bread mix. It hits all of the notes of a wheat bread - semi-dense, a little sweet with rye undertones. It's a sandwich bread loaded with flavor. Thank you Sturdiwheat for making this mix.

. . . I have questions about the viability of the yeast. It's fortunate that I had to buy 6 packages because the first one didn't rise at all and we needed limpa bread for one of our holiday meals. The second loaf rose but took at least twice the suggested rising times. I've baked enough bread to not use overly hot water and kill the yeast and, in this house, to know that I need to use a proofing oven (≈ 90°F) for rising bread doughs.

I ordered the 4-pack of mixes, and having baked one of them, I love it! My first attempt did not have a hard crust at all, but it is a solid loaf. I used my 10-year old bread machine which has 12 bread type settings. This first loaf I made as a "sweet bread." I chose 1.5 lbs and a light crust so that it wouldn't get too crusty. I had no trouble using the enclosed yeast. I made sure that the luke warm water measured between 105 and 110 degrees F. A little more rye flavor would be lovely, but this should be a crowd pleaser. Out of curiosity, I am also going to try the gluten free setting and the wheat setting. The latter will most likely make a harder crust.