Scandinavian from Scratch

A Baking Love Letter


I first set foot in Copenhagen at age eighteen, the summer after graduating from high school. Back in Ohio, I’d become close friends with Malene, a Danish exchange student who spent a year at my school, and so I left home to spend that summer with her family. I instantly fell in love with the Danish way of life. We went everywhere by bike. Until then, growing up in rural, hilly Ohio, I had barely biked anywhere and became enamored of this new mode of transportation, using my own legs to get me wherever I needed to go! Because Scandinavia is so far north, the sun practically never sets in summer, and so birds chirp through the night, which I found disorienting and delightful. And that summer I also became smitten with the baked goods there: breads, danishes, cookies, cakes—all of it!

Rather than reserving a sweet treat for after dinner, Danes seize every chance to enjoy fresh baked goods during the day. Many days started with a thick slice of Kringle (page 155) or a Grovbirkes (page 152), and there was almost always an afternoon coffee break with a square of Coconut Dream Cake (page 71), a Cinnamon Knot (page 113), or a Tebirkes (page 149), the almond-filled pastry that is to Denmark what the pain au chocolat is to France. Most of the foods I ate that first summer in Denmark weren’t entirely unfamiliar. But somehow they tasted new. I still remember the first time I popped a tiny Danish strawberry into my mouth. It was candy sweet and ruby red, so soft it required minimal chewing. Scandinavian strawberry season is fairly short but enjoyed to the fullest. All summer long, we feasted on strawberry tarts, ate them tossed onto whipped cream–covered cakes, and heaped them by the spoonful into bowls of Buttermilk “Soup” with Cardamom Rusks (page 103) on top, served in lieu of dinner on the hottest summer nights.

I’d had plenty of strawberries in my life, but never any quite as delicate and perfect as those Danish ones. I’d eaten more than my share of cookies, but never tried crumbling them into a bowl of cold, lightly sweetened buttermilk soup. That first summer in Denmark was a revelation. I fell in love with the way that Danes took pleasure in the season, from leisurely bike rides to outdoor dinners going long into the night to weekend music festivals and bonfires.

I returned to the United States that fall to attend culinary school. Becoming a chef had been my dream ever since my mom and I obsessively watched cooking shows together when I was little. Julia Child was my favorite! After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, I spent nearly ten years working in fine dining in Boston. I never regretted my decision to become a chef. But after a decade, the long hours took a toll, and I craved a more balanced way of life. I’d stayed close with Malene, and she’d introduced me to a Danish guy with whom I’d had a long-distance romance for several years. While I’d visited Joachim often (and vice versa), we wanted to be able to spend more time together, and I also felt drawn to life in Scandinavia, so I thought, Why not move to Denmark and start a new chapter, aiming for a better work/life balance? Three weeks after arriving in Copenhagen, we somewhat impulsively married at city hall. But that quick decision turned out to be a great one, as we have been married for over twenty years now and have three kids, all born in Denmark.

As a chef, I’d always dreamed of getting culinary experience in Europe. But at the time, Scandinavia was still far from becoming the culinary destination it is now. I worked at a variety of jobs while we lived there, all in some way related to food and cooking. I was head chef at a preschool, where we prepared made-from-scratch organic meals four times a day (!) for 240 kids. And I worked for a city-run organization, where I led hands-on cooking classes with public school cooks (many of whom were untrained refugees from Afghanistan, Turkey, Somalia, and Bosnia), teaching them culinary skills, including how to incorporate seasonality and be more organized in the kitchen. Naturally, my course recipe lists always included the ubiquitous rye bread that has pride of place at the Danish table. Living in Denmark brought the life balance I sought. I didn’t have to give up my career, I was able to cook something other than the Italian/French food I’d previously specialized in, and I learned a new language, and before long this foreign and beloved culture came to feel like my own.

I watched Copenhagen (and the Nordic region) assume an exciting new importance on the global culinary scene after René Redzepi founded Noma in the city in 2003, a restaurant that would go on to receive three Michelin stars and be named best in the world by Restaurant magazine. (As of this writing it’s set to close.) An influx of chefs and bakers from around the globe came to work at Noma, and many stuck around to open up places of their own, a trickle-down gastronomy that benefited the casual restaurant scene, too. To my immense delight, the number of quality bakeries in the city boomed. I love nothing more than a flaky pastry, and as the bakeries in Copenhagen got better and better, one of my favorite things to do was to go with a friend on a “pastry crawl.” This entails waking up extra early to bike around the city, sampling and comparing baked goods from one place to the next, and always concludes with a feeling of deep satisfaction tinged with a hint of nausea from overindulging.

Copenhagen came to feel like a second home. But after sixteen years of living abroad and only returning to the US for vacation, Joachim and I wanted our three kids to get greater exposure to my culture. So, seven years ago, our family left on what was supposed to be a six-month trip to San Francisco. But those first six months flew by, and we realized that we weren’t ready to leave. While I was blown away by the Bay Area’s abundant produce and vibrant food scene, we did miss the Scandinavian-style rye bread that had been the staple of our diet back in Denmark, a sentiment shared by many of the Scandinavian expats with whom our paths crossed. So, I set to work trying to develop my own recipe for sprouted rye bread as a cure for homesickness. I spent a year on that recipe. Once I felt like I’d perfected it, I started selling it by the loaf, along with smørrebrød (see page 200), the open-faced sandwiches that are a specialty in Denmark, at a stand that I ran with my daughter’s help at the Ferry Building farmers’ market. It was here that the idea for Kantine, our Scandinavian-inspired venture, was born. A year later, Kantine, our daytime restaurant and bakery, opened its doors.

At Kantine, our motto, scrawled in chalk on a sandwich board sign in front of the restaurant, is “Scandinavian from Scratch.” Everything that can be made from scratch is, from the Sprouted Rye Bread (page 198), which also goes into our Rye and Oat Granola (page 183), to our whey-simmered savory and sweet porridges, freshly cultured yogurt, cured trout, bacon, and, of course, the ever-popular Cardamom Morning Buns (page 141), Cinnamon Knots, and Tebirkes. In Scandinavia, people try hard not to waste, and we mimic that sentiment in our kitchen. When almond filling oozes out of the edges of the tebirkes and caramelizes into brittle on the baking tray, we collect the pieces to add to the dough for our Rye Chocolate Chunk Cookies (page 60).

Even though California’s seasons are far less extreme than those of Scandinavia, there are still shifts in produce throughout the year. Come spring, we slice up the luscious strawberries to arrange on top of strawberry tarts, just like the ones I ate in Denmark that first summer. In December, we sell a popular assortment of Scandinavian holiday cookies and a Swedish Cardamom Wreath (page 123) that people can buy baked or frozen raw to thaw, proof, and bake at home, filling their own kitchens with that heavenly scent of spices, sugar, and butter. After the December holidays, we celebrate “semla season,” serving tender, sweet buns filled with almond paste and whipped cream, which our customers can’t seem to get enough of (you’ll find the recipe on page 127).

Danish smørrebrød are intended to be as pleasing to the eye as they are to the mouth. I love the care that goes into making each open-faced sandwich, from buttering the bread from crust to crust to layering toppings in a way that shows off the ingredients. Sometimes our open-faced sandwiches are classic combinations, like the Egg and Shrimp Smørrebrød (page 207), but we often create modern takes on a theme, as in the case of the Roasted Cauliflower, Tarragon Cream, and Almond Smørrebrød (page 204). It brings me pleasure to contemplate what flavors and textures will complement each other on these sandwiches, adorning them with pretty garnishes like thinly sliced radishes or fresh herbs.

Because Scandinavian weather fluctuates so much from one season to the next, the region’s cooking is deeply influenced by seasonality and the weather. With that comes a great appreciation for nature and a fondness for foraging for ingredients.