Merry Second Christmas Day

From New York Times

In Germany they have First Christmas Day, and Second Christmas Day. So MERRY MERRY all over again! :)

Today I just wanted to share this link from the New York Times, German Baking, From Almond Paste to Zimtsterne. Elisabeth and I attempted Zimtsterne, post here.  It was difficult. Kudos to these bakers, bringing German baked goods to the U.S.! We can always use more good Stollen, and Schwarzbrot and any other non-squishy bread! (The article has a hilarious bit about how Americans think "rye" = "caraway seeds".) Also interesting that the article title mentions "almond paste"...do Americans not know what "marzipan" is?

My sister also recommended I read The Master Butcher's Singing Club (Louise Erdrich) ...which is okay so far. I really laughed at this one part at the beginning of the book, where someone brings American bread into this German village, around 1919 or so: "This man held something white and square in his hand that Fidelis took at first to be a picture of some sort, but it was blank. When he saw that it was bread, shaped with a precision that could only be the work of fanatics, Fidelis entered the circle of men to examine it. The thing was sent in a package from distant relatives...Machines had kneaded and baked and then sliced it. Or were these everyday American bakers? That was the argument. Fidelis inspected the bread when, passed hand to hand, it came around to him. He noted the fine texture and wondered at the treatment of the yeast...It seemed an impossible thing to him, an artifact from some place that must adhere to an impossibly rigid order."

Lebkuchen!

What a good activity for a rainy wintery Berlin day...We made the dough a few days ago, and it was chilling in the fridge, waiting to get rolled out. We found a recipe on a German site called "Omas Lebkuchen" (Grandma's Gingerbread) and decided that one must be good and traditional.

Ingredients: 500 g rye flour, 300 g spelt flour, 400 g sugar, 12 T honey, 4 eggs, 90 g butter, 2 t baking soda, 20 g Lebkuchen spice, 1 t cinnamon, 1 t ground cloves, peel of one lemon, 20 g unsweetened cocoa powder, 100 g candied orange peel (chopped), 60 g candied lemon peel, 100 g raisins, 140 g ground hazelnuts.

Delicious!

from our kitchen to yours...

...Happy St. Lucia Day!

I wish we could send the scents of freshly baked Lussekatter your way...cardamom and warm yeast bread...nothing better! Our family used to celebrate our Swedish heritage this day with our mormor and morfar, bringing them rolls and coffee, and pepparkakor early in the morning, before the sun rose. It's the darkest day of the winter in the old Swedish calendar. And it's pretty dark and rainy in Berlin these days...



Mormor and mom, this is for you!  Lots of love!

Weihnachtsbäckerei

Okay, I will admit I was a bit disappointed about the Christmas baking class. I had very high expectations. Also, I realized earlier today that the instructor is the same Bäckermeister who I took a few baking classes with two summers ago. So I was really excited. But when we got there, he had a pile of ingredients, and a bunch of recipes out on the table, and was basically like, "Have at it. Pick a recipe and make it." Which we could do at home, in our own kitchen. While drinking wine, and reading a book while the cookies bake. So, not so cool. 

Zimtsterne, not ours.

This one woman, obviously upset, said first quietly, then louder, "Wait, we aren't making Stollen? Because I could bake Christmas cookies at home..." (Reading our minds...) So the baker decided to change plans and add Stollen to the list. This woman ran to the supermarket across the street to get some yeast. Elisabeth and I were also excited to make Lebkuchen, but I guess the dough needs to refrigerate overnight, so that wasn't an option either. Sad. So I chose Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) from the recipes on the table, another German classic, picture to the left (how they are supposed to look).


Turns out Zimtsterne are really hard. First we beat 5 egg whites and added 450 g powdered sugar (a lot). It makes a cement-like paste, then we added 500 g ground almonds, 2 T spices, and 2 T kirsch. It makes a sticky mess, which you refrigerate until you can roll it out. It was ooey and gooey and some of the nicer, humorous people were laughing at our ugly cookies. But they were mostly sympathetic, saying that they had tried them before at home and they're really difficult. And afterwards, they said they were the best tasting, even though they weren't the prettiest. Elisabeth learned to say hässlich aber lecker, ugly but delicious.

In Elisabeth's words, the baking class was like a cookie exchange except you have to wait for all the other (11 total) people to bake their cookies in two ovens, instead of just gathering at a party and trading. But, if you had a cookie exchange with your friends, would you get to spend four hours with older German ladies named Helga, Irmtraud and Dagmar? Or watch a master baker rolling out Marzipan? 

Eisenbahnschienen, from lecker.de

Best moment of the night: one woman comes over to Elisabeth and says a mouthful of something Elisabeth doesn't understand. Elisabeth says, "Sorry, ich kann kein Deutsch."  And the woman looks at her and gestures as if pressing down on a hand mixer and says "BZZZZZZZ!" Elisabeth pointed her towards the cupboard containing the mixers. haha! Communication success!


And we did come home with quite a few cookies, a bit of Stollen, gingerbread cake, and some brownie-like thing (pictured above). Elisabeth's favorite was Eisenbahnschienen (railroad tracks), a sugar cookie with marzipan and jam cut like railroad ties. I liked the Bobbes, a sugar cookie with marzipan and apricot jam inside, with a pressed almond on top. The white cookies with powdered sugar are called Schneeflöckchen, snow flakes, and then you have our little Zimtsterne. 


So we will have to make Lebkuchen at home. 

Some more pictures of classic German cookies, from lecker.de, which has really pretty cookies!

Brot backen

This weekend I visited my friend in Hamburg and we did a lot of baking...so I finally felt brave enough to try some conversions and make bread. There are lots of variables...because the flour is different, the oven is different (convection ovens are very common here to save energy), and of course I had to find gram measurements or use a German recipe. At home, I use the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes method (the authors/bakers are from Minneapolis!) and I found a German blogger who converted the measurements and gave tips on how to do it successfully in Germany. The results: