Lussekatter is the traditional breakfast roll served on St. Lucia's day in Sweden. Since I'm part Swedish, and hadn't made this since I was really young, I thought it would be fun to make it for my co-workers on December 13th. It is a saffron bun, which I didn't realize at the time would be relatively expensive to make. I don't bake with special spices very often, so I had no idea that I would be spending $19 on 1.7g of saffron when I set out to make them.
But, you know what, it was totally worth it :)
Anyway, I worked off a recipe from food.com. The night I went to buy ingredients, I bought based on the mass necessary by the recipe. The night I planned to cook, I had to calculate all the directions from measurements of mass to measurements of volume since I don't have a decent scale at home. Since that calculation differs from ingredient to ingredient, I had to research each one separately.
Then I set off to work. Since my team at work is having a bacon themed 12 days of eating, I had to cook some bacon to add as a garnish (instead of the traditional raisins) on at least half of the buns. So that went into the oven. While that was cooking, I measured out all of my ingredients at one time, so it would be easy to just grab and add as needed. This included grinding down the saffron strands into powder and praying that I didn't add too much and ruin the whole batch.
Next step was what I felt would be the most difficult part: melting the butter, milk and saffron together to the accurate temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently, this is important. I bought a cooking thermometer just for this step and started freaking out when the red line didn't seem to be moving. My incredibly fast thought process went something like this:
"What a piece of junk! Why would the store even sell this. I should take it back... later. Okay, what do I do now? Do I just wing it? I'm supposed to get it to 100 degrees. The recipe says this is 'very important'! Maybe if I set the oven to 100 degrees, I can see what that feels like and then see if the mixture is the same temperature.... No, that's stupid. That's a ridiculous idea. Seriously, why isn't that red line moving? This is such a piece of crap, why do I even still have this thing sitting in the pot? It's not doing anything... Maybe if I move it, it will work better. Nope. Nothing. Stupid 'good cook' brand. I'll tell you something, 'good cook', good cooks don't even use your brand. How's that feel? - OH HEY, IT'S MOVING! IT'S WORKING! YAY!"
After getting that mixture to what my thermometer told me was 100 degrees, I poured the mixture over the yeast I had placed into my roommate's KitchenAid, and then proceeded to add the other dry ingredients until everything was in and I could set the thing to start mixing into dough. Once that's finished, you have to let it rise for 30 minutes. That gave me a nice break :)
I couldn't help but take a little peek though...
Eventually, it looked like this!
So then, I got to knead the dough. That was kind of fun. Little bit of a work out for the arms. Definitely needed after eating the extra bacon from the oven...
Then I separated them into little balls, which needed to rest some more.
Next was the fun, but tedious part: rolling them into long lines and creating the traditional S shape.
Added the raisins and/or bacon and then let them rest some 40 minutes longer...
Then, just before the oven, it was time for a quick egg wash!
After cooking just about 9-10 minutes, they came out looking like this:
I won't lie, I was pretty darn impressed with myself. I really thought they were going to turn out awful. But they were delicious! And the bacon ones (pictured above), were especially fun.
I challenge all you Swedes and part-Swedes to try making it for your own St. Lucia's Day celebration next year! Or, if you can't wait, or you don't really plan on ever celebrating St. Lucia's Day, try Christmas! They go great with some morning coffee whilst sitting next to a roaring fireplace :)
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