Duluth’s Bea Ojakangas Is the Queen of Scandinavian Cooking
Duluth's Beatrice Ojakangas is Minnesota's most prolific cookbook writer.
Though her Finnish reticence would never allow her to brag about herself or her many accomplishments, Bea Ojakangas has had a life filled with remarkable achievements.
In 1957 at the age of 23, she unexpectantly won a $5,000 prize ($55,000 today) in the Pillsbury Bakeoff contest. In the 1960's she created Pizza Rolls for Duluth's Jeno Paulucci, wrote over 30 cookbooks, cooked with Julia Child and Martha Stewart, won a James Beard Award, owned her own restaurant, and done so much more.
Through it all, she has remained unassuming and modest while becoming the undeniable “queen” of Scandinavian cooking.
Bea was the firstborn of ten children and grew up on a farm in Cedar Valley, Minnesota. Her mother would say, “I have four sons and each one has half-a-dozen sisters.” As the oldest, Bea would help her mom with very basic cooking on a wood-burning stove.
Bea’s first attempt at baking was when she was five years old and decided to make a cake while her mother was in labor.
“I put out all my ingredients, but I didn’t realize I had forgotten the sugar. My mother always said to taste and make sure my cooking had flavor. When it didn’t, I kept adding salt to it. I brought a piece to my mother, who declared it delicious. To this day, I still refer to it as my ‘salt cake.’”
Bea majored in home economics at UMD, where she met her husband, Richard. After getting married, they lived in England for a year, where Dick was in the Air Force ROTC.
Beatrice and Richard Ojakangas celebrate their 64th anniversary.
Before returning to the U.S., Bea heard about the Pillsbury Bakeoff contest. On a complete whim, she decided to enter, only realizing that the due date was in one day. She had only one attempt to test her recipe for “Cheesy Picnic Bread” before sending the recipe off to the contest.
“When I tried it, it was a complete disaster,” Bea said with a chuckle. “The cheese all sank to the bottom. I changed a few things in the recipe but didn’t have the extra ingredients to bake it again. So, I just sent the recipe in without ever seeing if it would work.”
She forgot about the contest when notified that she was a finalist. "The bake-off was October 14, and my first child’s due date was the same day as the Bakeoff. The baby was born on the first of October, and at the urging of family and friends, I decided to go to the contest.”
Bea’s mother cared for the baby while Bea flew off to compete. She ended up winning the Second Grand Prize of $5,000, which the couple used for Richard’s graduate studies at Stanford in California.
While living in California, Bea decided she wanted to do some food writing and got a job with Sunset magazine. She started as a copywriter and ended up writing columns that included recipes.
“I really loved that job. It was exactly what I wanted to do. I was so reluctant to give it up when we moved back to Duluth,” she said.
Her next job was with Jeno’s, then called Chun King, his Chinese food venture. When he was leaving the Chinese food business, Jeno Paulucci wanted to use the machines they had to make the egg rolls for some other frozen food.
At the time, Bea was the only woman working in research and development at $3.00 an hour. She experimented with many flavors, everything from Reubens to peanut butter and jelly, and finally landed on pizza-flavored pockets that became Jeno’s famous frozen pizza rolls.
Jeno loved them, and even though Bea didn’t get a raise or a bonus, she still takes pride in her recipe that “sold like crazy.”
After travels in Finland, France, and other countries and places where she continued to hone her cooking skills and to teach others, she started writing cookbooks. To date, she has written 31.
Her first was The Finnish Cookbook, described on the cover as “Finland's best-selling cookbook adapted for American kitchens. Includes recipes for sour rye bread, Bishop's pepper cookies, and Finnish smorgasbord.”
Written in 1964, The Finnish Cookbook is now in its 38th printing. It is available on Amazon.
In the late 1970s, Bea and Dick opened Somebody’s House restaurant in Duluth. Her new take on burgers was a hit with diners.
As her fame spread in the culinary world, she cooked with Julia Child, making Danish pastries on her Baking with Julia show. “Julia called me herself. I was out, and my mother-in-law took the call and was so excited to hear Julia’s voice,” Bea said.
Beatrice with Julia Childs on the kitchen-set of The French Chef. Photo submitted.
A few years later, she got a call from Martha Stewart’s production team to appear with Martha and to teach her how to make lefse.
“Martha and Julia were a real contrast,” said Bea. “Martha was so organized with everything neat and its place. Julia was charming but her kitchen became kind of a mess when she cooked. It was an honor for me to cook on the shows with each of them.”
Selection to the James Beard Cookbook and later into the James Beard Hall of Fame followed. Bea has also taught cooking classes on cruise ships, done a column for The Woman Today magazine and for the Duluth News Tribune, and written for other publications such as Gourmet, Bon Appétit, Woman's Day, Family Circle, Better Homes and Gardens, Midwest Living, Cooking Light, and others.
Being a busy mother and grandmother, she finally found time to write her memoir, Homemade: Finnish Rye, Feed Sack Fashion, and Other Simple Ingredients from My Life in Food.
Beatrice Ojakangas memoir is available on Amazon. Photo submitted.
“I remember growing up making clothing out of feed sacks for me and my siblings—dresses, blouses, and shirts for the boys.”
Lucie Amundsen, author of Locally Laid: How We Built a Plucky, Industry-changing Egg Farm--from Scratch, wrote, “Beatrice Ojakangas makes her compelling family stories rich for all senses: we smell the cardamom in the bread cooling on the counter, savor the cream of morel soup, and long for chiffon cake. Best of all, we experience the joy of recreating these flavors ourselves with the recipes she provides.”
“I never expected all that has happened to me to happen,” Bea explained. “I have been so blessed and lucky. Cooking nourishing, healthy foods for my family still brings me a lot of joy, even making dishes out of leftovers, or ‘something dumb’ as my family calls it.”
She is a member of the First Lutheran Church, where she donated all her lefse-making equipment. She still enjoys making lefse and making pies for the annual Rhubarb Festival.
Bea asserts that her Finnish background is firmly tied to “sisu,” a Finnish word with many meanings, including “a stoic determination, tenacity, bravery, resilience and hardiness.” Bea has decidedly embodied all these traits in her cooking and approach to life.
Juicy Buns are still a family favorite from a recipe from Bea’s mother, so named because they were glazed with a sugar-coffee mixture that kept them moist once out of the oven.
Beatrice Ojakangas’s Mummy’s “Juicy” Cinnamon Rolls
Dough
2 packages active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
½ cup melted butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup nonfat dry milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
About 4 cups all purpose flour
Filling
½ cup soft butter
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Coffee Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
hot strong coffee
In a large bowl, combine the yeast and warm water. Stir. Let stand about 5 minutes or until the yeast foams. Stir in the butter, sugar, dry milk, eggs, and salt. Beat in flour, 1 cup at a time, until the dough is too stiff to mix; you may reach that stage before you have added all the flour.
Cover and refrigerate 2 hours or up to 4 days.
On a lightly floured board, cut the dough into two parts. Roll one part at a time to make a rectangle 12 inches square. Spread with ¼ cup soft butter.
Mix the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle with half the brown sugar mixture over the dough.
Roll up into a firm, log-shaped roll. Cut diagonally to make about 1-inch slices. Place rolls on a greased baking sheet and let rise for 30 minutes or until golden.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake the rolls for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden.
Mix the powdered sugar with enough hot coffee to make a thin glaze. Brush baked rolls with the glaze.
Makes 24 large cinnamon rolls.
