Baking

You might assume that baking is pretty much the same everywhere.  Oh, if only it were true!  I consider myself a good home baker.  I am not a professional, but I bake most items from scratch with good success.  Not so after moving to Sweden.  Although some recipes have turned out well, some results have been pretty sad.  So, as I figure out some of the problems, I thought I would share some of the fun with you! 

1)    Metric.  Metric is not a problem.  I am familiar with using the metric system.  But it does add another layer of thinking when baking and cooking.  The oven temperatures and volume and weight measurements are all in metric.  Thus, if I need 1 cup of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and am baking something at 350 degrees, I have to transpose all that to 2.5 dl (or 250 cc’s) of flour, 5 cc’s of salt at ~ 177 degrees C. 
2)    Pan sizes (“forms”) are different.
3)    Flour is different.  This really threw me for a loop.  I have baked many biscuits in my day, but the biscuits I have baked here have been leaden disks.  I couldn’t understand it.  It finally occurred to me that maybe the flour is different.  With the help of some Q and A posts found online, I came to realize that the flour is heavier.  The suggestions I read were :
Treat the Swedish flour like bread flour from the US... use about 2 Tbsp. less per cup…don't over-mix once you add the flour to a batter/dough, thus preventing gluten development…add air by creaming the butter and sugar more…separate the eggs and make a meringue, folding it in to make the cake lighter.  And finally, trying looking for lighter cake based flours in the supermarkets/shops, as they are better for non-bread and pastry items.
So I did all that and had good results.  Whew!
4)    Oven:   Our oven, like most ovens here, is smaller than ours was in the U.S.. Our Swedish oven internal measurement’s are 17” W x 13” H x 17” D.  [Or: bredd: 43cm., höjd: 33 cm., och djup 43cm.].  Interestingly, the ovens here come with some grates, and with some solid metal shelves that one uses for cookie sheets.  That is convenient since our U.S. cookie sheets do not fit into the oven! 
5)    Reading:  first let me say that I love love Google Translate (GT).  It has saved my skin.  But it is faulty and sometimes the mistakes it makes are laughable.  Last night we were trying to figure out the directions regarding the different oven modes.  So, when all else failed, we took out the instruction book.  Our first step to understanding was to realize that the instructions were in Finnish.  Then we went to our old pal, GT, to see what it had to say.  The oven mode I had picked was “Tasalämpö”.  GT described this as “DC heat”.    ..Whatever… The short discription read: Tasalämpö valinta mahdollistaa uunin käyton normaalina tasalämpöuunin.  GT suggested that the meaning was “Gender Selection Heat the oven during normal use of a warm oven.”  Who knew?!  ; - )