Читать книгу Dutch Treats - William Woys Weaver - Страница 20

When the Pennsylvania Dutch first settled in America, the traditional wedding cake among Pennsylvania’s Quaker colonials was a type of old English bread flavored with saffron. Throughout Europe, saffron bread in one form or another served as the symbolic luxury food for weddings, funerals, Christmas feasting, New Year’s and Easter. The Pennsylvania Dutch – coming as they did from many different parts of German-speaking Europe – also brought their own regional interpretations of this once widespread tradition. For this reason, very early on in the colonial period, saffron bread came to represent a fusion of diverse culinary customs best expressed by the iconic saffron-flavored Schwenkfelder Wedding Cake, which now appears in almost every cookbook claiming to be Pennsylvania Dutch (by virtue of its long-time acceptance in regional cuisine).

For weddings, saffron bread was baked in small round loaves for easier distribution among the guests. In private households, as part of the Christmas celebration for example, the dough was baked as dinner rolls, one per guest. Or, in families that owned fine cake molds, the bread would be baked Gugelhupf-style, in an elaborate heirloom mold brought out once a year for this sort of special occasion. I have baked the bread in a rare Schtriezel mold, since the braided shape is an old one associated with festive baking. The beauty of saffron bread lies in its seemingly infinite adaptability to meet the needs of many types of special situations. One thing for certain, the bread must be bright yellow, which means no holding back on the saffron!

Finally, a word about the recipe at hand: after viewing hundreds of saffron bread recipes, I settled on Henrietta Pelz’s, as adapted from the 1835 edition of her Schlessisches Kochbuch (Silesian Cookbook). This is not a Silesian recipe, rather a fairly standard version of saffron bread found in German cookbooks dating from the Renaissance onwards. But it works and works well.

Yield: 16 to 24 servings

1 tablespoon dry active yeast

2 cups (250ml) warm whole milk (98F/37C)

1½ cups (375ml) warm spring water

½ teaspoon ground saffron

8 cups (1 kilo) organic bread flour

4 large eggs

1 cup (250g) sugar

8 tablespoons (125g) unsalted soft butter

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg, or more to taste

½ cup (75g) Zante currants

½ cup (100g) dried green seedless grapes

Proof the yeast in the warm milk. Once the yeast is foaming, combine it with the warm water in which the saffron has been infused for at least 30 minutes. Place 3 cups (375g) flour in a deep work bowl, then make a valley in the center and add the proofed yeast mixture. Stir to form thin batter. Cover and let rise in a warm place until the batter forms bubbles on the surface. Once covered with bubbles, in a separate bowl, beat the eggs until lemon color and frothy. Add the sugar and beat until creamy, then add the butter, salt and nutmeg. Sift in 4 cups (500g) and work into sticky dough. Cover and let the dough double in bulk. Knock down, and work in the fruit adding only enough extra flour so that the dough does not stick to the fingers.

Form the dough into dinner rolls or fill two earthenware molds, greased and well dusted, with cake crumbs (see note). Whatever your choice, allow the dough to recover 30 minutes before baking. Bake in an oven preheated to 375F (190C), but the length of time can vary with size: for small rolls, 25 minutes, for bread baked in cake molds, 45 to 50 minutes.

Note: Stale sponge cake or angel cake crumbs are ideal for this purpose. Lacking those options, use unflavored bread crumbs or unsalted cracker crumbs.