Amateur Hour Baking: Bremer Kürbisbrot

With my confidence in yeast on an upswing, I’ve spent a lot of time lately thumbing through the Breads & Rolls section of Classic German Baking. Add that to the piles of assorted squash that are currently spilling off of tables at the supermarket and piled up in boxes at the roadside stands, and I had the perfect time to try out my first real loaf… a Bremer Kürbisbrot.

It’s a very basic bread dough, using canned squash for the flavoring. Since that’s naturally not a thing here, my first step was to roast up some chunks of butternut.

It’s been a butternut-heavy fall over here thus far. At the risk of BV actually turning into a pumpkin, I’ve also been freezing some Hokkaido puree to ration it out over the next few months.

The squash roasted, pureed, and cooled down, I got back to work.

Appetizing, no?

I quickly ran into a problem though.

I’ve now learned that instant yeast is basically useless without proofing it… what the package says be damned. But this recipe calls for nearly no liquid; only a bit of milk if your dough is too dry. Since I wouldn’t know whether or not that would be the case until I was a few minutes down the road, I opted to just warm a few splashes of milk and try to proof my yeast in that.

After a few minutes, it hadn’t appeared to do much of anything. In past attempts I’ve had bubbles, foam, some indication of activity. There was none of that, but I decided to forge ahead and see what happened. The rest of the dough came together quickly, and I got to kneading.

The oven was still a wee bit warm from roasting the squash, and made the perfect place to proof my dough. The first rest of two hours turned into three due to a long Skype appointment, after which I popped it out, punched it down, and put it back for another rest. Guess my worries about the inactive yeast were all for nothing!

Post-first-proof

Another hour later, a milk rinse, and she was ready for baking.

Bread baked, I tried my best to follow directions and let it mostly cool while we ate dinner. But our dinner wasn’t quite filling enough (though delicious), and we dove in afterwards. Luisa Weiss writes that it’s a decent alternative to cake, and BV would agree with her. I like my cakes a bit sweeter, but this was a very tasty bread.

The crust got a touch dark, but I’m very happy with how it turned out overall. The light sweetness paired really well with cheese, particularly fresh goat cheese with a dollop of BV’s pear compote on top.

Despite my best wrapping efforts, it got a bit dry after about three days, so next time we’ll have to try and eat it faster.  A bit more pear compote helped, but we can’t all be so lucky. 😉

I’ve been thinking about how to make this again, perhaps as some sort of crostini, for dinner on its own but am somewhat stumped for ideas. If you’ve got one for me, leave it in the comments!

Amateur Hour Baking: Apfel-Marzipan-Kuchen

The weekend of the Knerken was actually a double-bake weekend. The day before I made those, BV and I were invited to his dad for lunch, and BV had oh-so-kindly volunteered me to make a cake. Plus, on the Great British Bake Off, they did cakes in the second week so tie-in… score!

We had piles of apples around and so an apple cake was an easy choice. BV loves marzipan, so that narrowed it down from the handful of apple cake recipes in Classic German Baking… Apfel-Marzipan-Kuchen, or apple almond cake, it would be.

On Friday I went running around to gather the last of the supplies. On my list were almond paste and almond extract. According to the internet, and as I’d learned with my Rüblitorte, almond paste and marzipan were not the same thing. Turns out I should maaaybe read the ingredient notes so kindly provided by Luisa Weiss at the beginning of the book? She uses the term almond paste throughout the book to mean Marzipanrohmasse… it’s different to marzipan, but yeah… we already had that in the house. So that’s one thing down despite my unsuccessful shopping trip to find almond paste that didn’t exist.

And the almond extract? Despite checking the Karstadt food section (my Old Faithful when looking for various “exotic” ingredients such as vanilla extract), I came up empty. They did have some bitter almond Aroma, which seems to be like an almond essence in the U.S., so I grabbed that figuring something almond was better than nothing. Put a pin in that one.

Saturday morning I sprang into action. By which I meant I underestimated how long it would take to put this cake together and ended up flinging myself around the kitchen in a panic when it soon became evident that we would be late to lunch. No worries, BV called his dad and let him know. On the plus side, the wild boar was ready when we got there so no small talk preamble! On the negative side (depending on your opinion, haha), I didn’t do much of an Instastory on this one because laaaaaate.

Back to the cake. Step one… apples. Lots of apples.

The diced ones went into the cake eventually, while the slices ones waited to go on top. We’d had some random supermarket apples in the pantry for a touch too long, so those went first, followed up by a few small, tart ones from our garden. Next time I do this cake I would much prefer to use either A) all our own apples, of course, or B) some better, more tart apples. BV tends to buy the bag of apples that are practically flavorless to take to work. I don’t get it, but next time I’m grabbing some better fruit.

Next up was that marzipan, which needed to be grated. The 200 gram chunk grated up surprisingly easily at first, but that changed when I got to the last little bit of it. The stuff pretty much turned into a slippery ball in my hand, it was taking far too long and was far too sticky to deal with at that point, and I ended up just cutting it into small pieces as best I could and chucking it all in the bowl. If anyone has a better strategy than that, please drop me a comment!

Note the chunky bits on the bottom right.

It all banged together much more quickly from this point. The batter came together pretty quickly, but remember that almond Aroma? When then recipe called for a teaspoon of extract I grabbed the Aroma, which comes in these comically small little tubes. I attempted to shake one out into a teaspoon to measure it but much more of it went into the bowl (luckily) than the spoon. At that point I decided that measuring it was an exercise in futility, and since one tube was nowhere near a teaspoon, I’d just thrown in two tubes worth. I managed that, and then noticed that a bit had splashed onto my finger. So I licked it, naturally.

HOLY SHIT. NO. NO. NO.

SO MUCH BITTER ALMOND IN MY MOUTH OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE?

But you know what? It was already in the cake and we were late. It is what it is.

Thus, more apples went on top and into the oven it went.

While it was in the oven, BV and I put ourselves together and anxiously awaited the timer. I really thought I took a picture of it when it came out, in between us fanning it off in an attempt to cool the cake a whopping minute or two faster, but seems I didn’t. Never mind. Instead, please enjoy this picture of the cake, still in its form, on a wooden cutting board inside our cake caddy. On my lap, in our car, because we couldn’t trust it on a seat or the floor in case it slid and melted the dome. FUN!

This was a harrowing 20-minute drive to BV’s dad.

“No sudden stops!”

“Agh, it’s sliding!”

“Oh God, that’s warm!”

That one was when the condensation dripped on me, because I thought it would be a better idea to lift the lid slightly on the straight, flat highway in order to ventilate the thing a little. Debatable.

Eventually we arrived without incident, and the cake was placed on the windowsill to cool off while we ate, with the bonus feature of drawing in all the wasps that passed by! More fun!

Boar and Klöße* ingested, it was time to cut into the cake. Please enjoy this photo of half of the cake, upon its return to our house.

Photo doesn’t quite convey the journey this baby went through.

Texture shot.

There were five of us at this particular lunch, most of whom had just consumed a pile of roasted boar, two or three dumplings, cabbage, and salad. The fact that they still had room to eat half this cake is amazing to me, and I have a strict one dumpling rule. BV’s dad was particularly enthusiastic (he and BV’s mom split the sixth piece) about it. BV loved it. And me?

I may still have been tasting that bitter almond Aroma from earlier, but it was STRONG. I liked this cake quite a bit, but that flavor was a bit too strong and I have no idea if it was because of that almond essence, or just the crazy amount of marzipan that went into it. This cake is DEFINITELY not for someone who isn’t into marzipan, but luckily that’s not us.

The cake was really moist and flavorful, and the apricot glaze on top gives it a nice shine. I probably could’ve taken it out of the oven a few minutes earlier as it got a bit dark on top, but it didn’t hurt the taste too much.

As I mentioned before, next time I make this I’m going to look for some tarter apples and see about finding some real almond extract. I know I can get it online, but if anyone has seen it in a brick-and-mortar store in Germany, please let me know!

 

*dumplings

 

Sunday Snapshots: Gourdy

Franconia, 2011

If you love a gourd, look no further than typical cafe decor at this time of year. If you want to bedeck your own doorway, it’s easy enough around here. Just drive out of any town and you’ll find farm fields with wagons of green, yellow, and orange Kürbisse ready to come home with you. Most of these places operate on the honor system though, so don’t you forget to put some cash into the box!

Save

Franconian Fish Are Sexy

Today’s post is a bit of a public service announcement for any fish enthusiasts who might be swinging through Franconia before the end of the month. Why? Well, back in November I wrote a bit about some “rules” regarding Lebkuchen, in which I also mentioned a commonly accepted rule here about the eating of carp.

Carp is an extremely popular local specialty here in Franconia, but it can only be eaten in months with an ‘r’ in the name. Reasons for that are plentiful, mostly involving the intricacies of refrigeration “in former times,”* as well as allowing the fish to grow to maturity in the summer months. Thus, if you are in Franconia and want to try some fish, hop on your bike and pedal directly to your local Gasthof, Wirtschaft, or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods because April is almost over and time is a’ticking.

I’m not a carp eater** but BV is an enthusiastic one. Thus last week when we headed across the fields for dinner, he was happy to order one and even photograph it for me, much to the amusement of the old couple sitting at the table next to us. If you order a traditional Franconian carp, you typically receive half of a fish, and it’s priced by weight (hence the flag in the picture). BV asked for a smallish one, and this is what that looks like…

Smallish indeed. And if any nutritionists out there are concerned about the sorry “side salad” on the plate, have no fear. There was an enormous bowl of salad that came along with the carp, so BV had some balance to all that fried goodness.

The a fore-mentioned fried goodness at our local restaurant comes in two varieties, basic or beer breading. Naturally BV went with the beer, and he said it was great. The carp’s tail is curled, which is a good indication of freshness. How curly the fish is can vary greatly though. He has ordered carp before that has come out of the kitchen in a U-shape, which I assume means that the fish was fried alive or something. He tried to get a picture of how curled the fish was, but it’s not really that dramatic here.

I highly recommend encouraging foreign visitors to eat carp though. The look on the face of a Costa Rican friend’s face when an enormous, curly, fried fish was brought to him one night in Nürnberg was pretty priceless.

There is one more thing I’d like to address in this post, and this was new information to me as of this weekend. When BV sent me the pictures that he took, he opened them up to show them to me again, and asked if I knew what the fried bits in the front of the fish’s head were. Usually I try to avoid eye contact with his dinner while he’s eating, so I had no idea what he was talking about until he pointed them out to me. So what are they?

Ingreisch, he said.

Okay… so no idea what that is, right? Although it does have ‘in’ in it, so perhaps something like innards? Well, yes. Innards in German are Innereien (easy enough) but when it comes to carp, the Franconians are referring to a very special section of the innards.*** This is another example of delightful local cuisine and dialect intersecting, as if you put ‘ingreisch’ into a translator, you get no help. So let me clarify.

Yes kids, those are the fish’s sexy bits. And natürlich they are very special, and not something that you get at every carp restaurant. BV speculated that this fish was a manly man fish but if he can actually see/smell/taste *shudders* a difference or was just dicking (pun intended) with me, I cannot say.

While I wholeheartedly encourage trying out the local specialties when you are in a new place, carp is something I just don’t dig. But if anyone else wants to give it a go, you enjoy! Just be warned, you may have a sexier dish than you anticipated…

 

* ™ every German ever.

**See: the post about Lebkuchen for my true feelings on this fish.

***Or offal, as Wikipedia informs me.

‘Schland + Spargel = Tru Luv 4Eva

Ah, spring… the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, the train drivers are striking, and you may want to bring a clothespin if you plan on using a public restroom around here. Why? Because it’s asparagus season, aka, Spargelzeit!

I’ve written about the German love of asparagus before, but since it’s been a while, I thought the time was ripe (vegetable jokes) to post about it again. In the last few weeks, I’ve eaten off of a few local asparagus menus, and seen piles of the white gold at all the markets.

Sorry about the slight blurriness. There was a lot of activity around this stand in the Fürth market, and it was hard to get around all the people trying to get their Spargel fix while simultaneously trying not to drop my cappuccino. Priorities.

If you want more information about the German love of the asparagus, I recommend this excellent post over at Laptops and Lederhosen. After reading that, I realized that my life would not be complete until I have found and feasted upon asparagus ice cream. Who knew?

For my part though, I found the definitive proof that asparagus love is not only timeless, but something that merits being captured and preserved forever. Behold…

Now, some people might say that this is a still life with asparagus. I disagree. I say that this is a portrait of spring’s favorite vegetable.

Thanks to the artist, Carl Schuch, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, for making today’s post possible.

And now, I’m off to google recipes for the last thing I ate from the Spargel menu. If I can find it, I shall report back!