The Danish Smorgasbord!

A traditional Danish lunch begins with ryebread, topped with herring in different varieties like, herring in carry, white herrings, fried herrings and red herrings, mackerel, tuna, egg and tomatoes.

When eating the fish you are served beer and snaps.

The next serve is cold meat like salami, ham, roast pork and a whole lot of other varieties, in between you get served a couple of warm dishes like crumbed fish and meatballs and the sitting is finished up with a cheeseboard and maybe prawns or a fruit platter.

Making open sandwiches is an art on its own, there are shops in Denmark that specialise in open sandwiches , some of the sandwiches even have names like, “Shooting Star” and “The Veterinary’s Night Meal” and they are all decorated to perfection.

You can do an apprenticeship in open sandwiches as well and you will find take-away shops that specialise in open sandwiches.

The Danish Ryebread.

The Danish Ryebread is a speciality in Denmark and comes in a lot of varieties like: light rye, dark rye, and with a variety of grains.

The light ryebread is about 50% rye meal/flour and 50% wheat flour where the dark rye is 70% rye flour or more and quite a heavy loaf.

Most of the darker rye breads are made with a sourdough and requires only a little amount of yeast in the mixing of the dough and a long resting time before they are shaped into a loaf of bread.

The ryebread is sliced thin, about 3-6 mm, depending on the variety, where as you will find most of the white breads are sliced at a thickness between 9mm and 14mm.

At a smorgasbord you usually start with the ryebread first and the white bread is treated more like a dessert.

I remember as a kid my parents’ always said you had to eat the ryebread first before you took any white bread, so you would grow up strong.

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