Category Archives: Special Occasions

December 13th, 2019

Lussekatter

Category Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Biga, Cardamom, Cream, only with yeast, Saffron, Wheat 10 Responses

It’s been a long time, since I published my first Lussekatter recipe. Back then I learned that in Sweden you can find two different types of recipes: one with quark, and one without. The variant with quark was on my to do list ever since. And I had a recipe draft ready already three years ago. But an ugly flu stopped me baking back than and two Saint Lucia Days passed without me baking Lussekatter. But this year, finally, I managed it!

The Lussekatter with Quark are delicious. A hint of cardamom rounds the flavour but stays in the background while saffron is the main flavour component. Like my favourite Zopf-Recipe I replace part of the butter with cream, so the dough or the formed rolls can rise in the fridge, too.

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January 19th, 2019

Spelt Panettone

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Candid lemon peel, Orange, Spelt, Sweet starter, Vanilla, wheat free 22 Responses

It is already middle of January, but I still have two Recipes from christmas waiting. The first one is the recipe for a spelt panettone. Baking panettone or pandoro on the 23. December is already a kind of tradtion here at “Hefe und mehr”. In the weeks before, I take intensivly care of my sweet starter to make it especially fit for the task.

As baking Panettone is already nearly a no brainer. And so I was looking for a new challange. Switching from wheat to spelt is definitly more challenging, as kneading the sensitive spelt to full gluten development needs experience. And it is a good idea to check which sort of spelt you use. Different spelt sorts behave differently as their gluten composition differs. For Example if you use Oberkulmer Rotkorn you need to shorten the kneading time compare to Franckenkorn, which I used here. But with these in mind, baking panettone with spelt works very well. Just keep a close eye on the gluten development.

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January 13th, 2019

Reutlinger Mutschel

Category Bread, regional breads, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée, regional, Wheat 14 Responses

I am always fascinated how one recipe can lead me to the next (and the next…). Like when I was researching for the Rheinische Neujährchen, which leaded me to the Variant from the Westerwald. And then a reader commented about a tradition from reutlingen called Mutschel day. This day is the first thursday after Three Kings Day and at this day the people in Reutlingen a playing dice games in order to win a mutschel.

The mutschel is a highly decoreated bread made from a very rich dough. The bread has a eight pointed star shape with a bump in the middle. The shape is much easier to form then I first thought as the dough ball just has to be cut like a “#” and the sides then has to be pulled away and shape into pointy tips. I made pictures form the process but used a tinier variant of the mutschel as it was much easier taking pictures from it then from the big one.

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January 4th, 2019

Rheinische Neujährchen

Category regional breads, Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Biga, Butter, Egg, only with yeast, Rye, Spelt, Wheat 23 Responses

For new years morning I baked my traditional New years pretzel, Westerwälder Neujährchen and Rheinische Neujährchen. The swirly form of the Rheinische Neujährchen may looks familiar to some of you. It is one of the forms that is used traditional for Lussekatter. And in Tyrol there is a Bread called “Thomasradl” which is baked during Christmas time in this form. The wide spread of this form is a hint that baking breads in this forms stems from a pre-Christian time. It is discussed that its a leftover of the midwinter fest and is a symbol for the sun.

I like the idea of sun very much as I am waiting each year in January to the days get visibly longer again.

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November 16th, 2018

St. Martins Rolls

Category regional breads, Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Candid Orange peel, hazelnut, Nuts, Pâte fermentée, regional 13 Responses

Besides of baking Martinsbrezel I tested a recipe as well: St. Martins Rolls. Like for the Martinsbrezel I learned about them from a dear reader. These rolls are stuffed with candid orange peel and hazelnuts and topped with a generous amount of pearl sugar. They are only baked in the time between St. Martin and Christmas.

And even with the temperature far away from winter, I felt a bit like Christmas when I smelled the candid orange peel and nuts during baking. And on breakfast I fell completely in love with the rolls. Spread with some honey (a gift from a baking course participant) they are so delicious!

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November 11th, 2018

Martinsbrezel

Category regional breads, Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Biga, Flohsamenschale, only with yeast, regional, St. Martin 10 Responses

The Saint Martin’s Day is a celebrated through whole Germany. The traditions anyway vary from region to region. In the Bergische Land, where I live, and in the Rhineland, one tradition is to give a Weckmann to each child after the lantern procession. In other regions instead of this weckmann they get a Martinsbrezel (Martin’s pretzel).

I learned about these tradition quiet recently and did some researching then. And interestingly this tradition is rather wide spread and there are differnt kinds of pretzels. In some regions, they are topped with pearl sugar before baking while in other regions they are brushed with butter and turned in fine sugar after baking.

I decided to try the second variant. Due to the big amount of sugar decided to use only a small anount of sugar in the dough. And then these pretzel are big treat – they may not replace a weckmann in this house but are a good addition to them!

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April 3rd, 2018

Easter Dove Rolls

Category Rolls, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Eastern, Egg, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée 3 Responses

And here is a last glance of of what I baked this year for Easter. The little Dove I baked twice. Once with my sisters kids, once alone. In the first version I rolled the dough strand equally thick what resulted in doves with a very plumb body and with a tiny head. For the kids it didn’t matter, they made sure they vanished while still warm from the oven. But I was hooked and so I baked them a second time, this time with a slightly modified formed strand. And this time the birds looked like birds. And to find the pictures next year, too, I have here the “how to” for you. The dough recipe is the same like the tsoureki just without the spices.

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April 1st, 2018

Tsoureki

Category Bread, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Eastern, Egg, Mahlep, Mastix, Pâte fermentée, Zopf 9 Responses

When we drove through snow- rain to meet with the family on Easter Sunday, I mused if todays Easter weather was colder then on Christmas Eve or not. But good weather or not we had a broad mixture of rolls and a greek easter braid with us.

The idea of baking tsoureki I had in mind since a readers question last year. And so I did some research and found the braid in many different forms and different ratios of ingredients. But two ingredients were a stable: Mastix and Mahlep.

Mastix is the resin of the pistachios tree, while mahlep are cherry pits form Prunus mahaleb. While grinding the spices to powder I realized that mahlep has an similar aroma than tonka beans: almond like and very delicious. As always, the flavours of a spiced bread are depending more on the spices then on the aroma of the preferment. But using a preferment is useful anyway, as it helps to strengthens the gluten network as well as improves the shelf life.

We enjoyed this greek Easter Bread with its fluffy crumb and almond like flavours very much.

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January 1st, 2018

New Years Pretzel 2018

Category Bread, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, New year, only with yeast, Poolish, sour cream 14 Responses

Some traditions are important. For me having a new years pretzel for the first breakfast of the year. And so there are more than one recipe for new years pretzels on the blog. That I like to use sourdough or sweet starter for that I realized when a reader asked me what recipe she could use for a “only yeast” pretzel.

I took the hint and my 2018 pretzel is made with yeast and poolish as yeasted preferment. The poolish together with the bit of spelt flour makes the dough extensible and so its easy to roll the dough into strands. For the flavour, I added sour cream and some honey to the dough.

And while I was baking my pretzel a question came to my mind: Do you have special breads or pastry you need to celebrate the first day of the year?

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December 29th, 2017

Panettone 2017

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Candid lemon peel, Christmas, Egg, Raisins, Sweet starter 29 Responses

I love the Italian Christmas cakes Pandoro and Panettone. And as my sweet Starter is happily active it was no question that I would bake one of this cakes for Christmas eve. And when i found the lovely mini panettone forms for little cakes of 50g each the decision was quickly made. Panettone it would be this year.

My recipe for panettone yields an amount that fits for 3 normal sized cakes or for 30 mini ones. But forming so many minis was a bit to much, even for me and so I went for 2 big and 10 mini Panettone.

I tweaked the recipe a bit, too. I increased the liquid and butter amount but reduced the raisins a bit. The resulting cake was incredible light with a crumb that can easily be shredded into long strands and so tender that it seems to melt in the mouth.

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