I’ve been enjoying a food blogging event called Tuesdays With Dorie for a while now. During my foodblog-hopping (a very enjoyable thing!), I was puzzled by an acronym – TWD – that foodies talked about it a lot.
It’s an insane(ly awesome) community baking through a book strangely titled “Baking” by Dorie Greenspan – yup, all 491 pages! Anyday is baking day, but Tuesday is blogging day!
Today I stand before you, officially a TWD noob member! Whee!! *blows kisses* Yeah baby, No. 350 but no less excited! This week we’re making Kugelhopf.
Kugel-wha???
A French concoction with an identity crisis.
Also known as a cake bread, kugelhopf is apparently a dream baked in a slice. Simple, the goodness of the richer brioche (okay so I’ve never eaten brioche in my life…) but light. I got a little anxious here as 80% of my yeast baking experiments have rocked. Like, literally.
I read through the recipe on Sunday and thought “man, is this worth 6 hours of my life!?” and promptly began Monday night (…I do plan my time so well!)
How It Was Made.
Contrary to a lot of bakers, I had a lot of fun making this! I was done at midnight, starting at 8, completely disobedient to our great mama Dorie, but having a lot of fun in the process. I punched as I like, and mixed whither I fancied.
I didn’t start out so cocky though. My heart sank when I mixed in the eggs. The dough, if we could call it that, was soooo wet. At this rate, I thought, I’ll never be able to call myself a real baker! Keep reading folks…
The recipe? It’s pretty straightforward. First you boil the raisins & let em dry. Then you mix the yeast in the warm milk. No trouble there. Next, mix the flour & salt.
>> I used brown sugar & sea salt. I do think her loaf could’ve done with a little more of a savoury flavour. Anyone agree?
Now Dorie says to attach yourself a dough hook and mix up the dough with the beaten eggs added in slowly. Now don’t despair if it looks NOTHING like dough cos, it will! Read the next paragraph!
I don’t have a dough hook, so I attached my regular butter-and-sugar-creaming-hook and looked at the dough square in the eye, hands on my hips with the air of a hero. I am a hero. I will be a real baker! 5 minutes on and hey, it’s doing pretty good! It looks remotely doughy. So no need to invest in a dough hook! But beware of the dough riding up into the mixer. The yeast in my dough was terrifyingly lethal – nothing like the “shaggy” Dorie had pronounced!
I put in the brown sugar & butter, all the time fighting with the dough riding up to destroy my poor little mixer. Suddenly I got a little creative. Hmm, how bout a Mango Kugelhopf hey? I put in 1 tbsp of mango essence…
>> Dear friends, please know that any flavour in bread will totally evaporate if you put it in at such an early stage.
Although 2 days into this post, the kugelhopf has a tinge of mango flavour sweetly seeped in, I would rather have put in dried mangos, boiled ala raisin boiling-method.
My confidence and the dough rose throughout this time and I even had time to have a guest over and chat. It was an awesome experience peeking back at the dough and having it rise SO HIGH. Hello yeast where have you been all my life?
Dorie said to punch the bread down till it could rise no more, but dude. I only have one night and every flippin time I punched it down it rose right up again! Defiant, that bread is. All I did now was keep on punching and munching (said for poetic effect, last statement is not true) until I figured it was high time to stuff it in the oven! :) I skipped the refridgeration part. Time, time, time.
Ooh. I remembered the molds my granmma has for making her famous Kuih Buluh, a traditional Malaysian Chinese treat. No one said fusion was bad right? Well we were gonna try a little french-chinese mix right over here…
My gramma’s old detailed pans being Kugelhopf-ed.
Last but not least, I let it all rise again. Before, I had still very little faith it would rise up again, so I’d switched my bundt pan’s tower into a plain cake pan with upright edges. Wrong move! It rose.
AND ROSE.
In the oven, it rose some more! 20 minutes, later, it was done. I reduced the temperature to 160 though, as things (and burnt tops) were heating up way too fast!
I completely forgot about the icing sugar part though I spread melted butter & some brown sugar on top.
Verdict
It isn’t a rich bread, it’s very light, and a nice breakfast to have!
Ratings: B+
I liked the light loaf! Didn’t regret making it at all. But it wasn’t my favourite. It was great while it was hot, but my sisters said it was dry the next day. It may be because I didn’t keep it airtight, or kugelhopfs are just not so cool. I think it’ll be deeelightful if toasted though. It was pretty kewl..gelhopf. I wished I added more flavour like candied mango slices, more mango extract, maybe some light alchohol and I wisheddd I didn’t leave out the icing sugar! The butter also didn’t soak because, I very embarassingly, didn’t turn it upside down.
Thanks Yolanda of The All Purpose Girl for hosting this week! Go check her out for the recipe and most importantly, check out the other great bakes on the TWD Blogroll. Have fun!
Next up on TWD: Arborio Rice Pudding! (who can say ew!??? well we’ll see next week!)
(PS: Please keep me (and mankind) in your praaayurs because I’m going for my first driving lesson tomorrow morning at 8am!)
