Tekla's Braids & Breads

I first met Janet Carlson Moore at the Osterville Farmers’ Market, where she was selling a variety of delicious braided breads, including her Finnish nisu and her Barnstable County Fair award winner, which she calls West Barnstable Cranberry Orange Braid. Moore is the granddaughter of a Finnish grandfather, two Swedish grandmothers, and a Norwegian grandfather. Her passion for her heritage and traditions shines through in her wonderful breads and other baked goods.

“All European sweet breads basically start off with flour, sugar, butter, eggs and, sometimes, yeast. The signature in the Scandinavian countries is the addition of cardamom, and that is what makes it unique from the others,” Moore says.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Finnish immigrants settled in West Barnstable. The eastern side of the village was known as “Finn Town”. Moore grew up outside of Boston and then moved to West Barnstable. At one of the First Lutheran Church’s yard and bake sales, she was introduced to the Finnish nisu bread. “People would come in looking for Helmi’s nisu, Tony’s nisu, or Pauline’s nisu. Well, what’s this nisu? I had been making coffee breads but never heard it called that.”

When Moore researched nisu, she found the recipe was basically the Swedish bread she had been making but with a Finnish name. “I came up with my own recipe that combines the best of all the Finnish recipes I found. It is basically the six ingredients mixed, rolled out, and allowed to rise a little.” Here is Moore’s recipe for her award-winning bread:

Find a recipe for nisu on our website ediblecapecod.com.