Kringel – chocolate and bread heaven

‘All sorrows are less with bread.’ Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote. I pinched this from the irrepressible MsMarmitelover’s blog spot The English Can Cook (check out the picture of her high heels abandoned by the Aga). Maybe I should amend this to ‘all sorrows are less with chocolate bread’ as I attempted to make Kringel – a bread recipe decadently laden with butter and drizzled with melted chocolate.

It was my first adventure with Fresh From the Oven and I was school-girlishly excited to be part of this group of global, baking bloggers.  Curious to see whether I could actually get fresh yeast in Dubai I put out a few tweets and then hit the streets.  The Lebanese Bakery on Al Wasl Road produced none but did provide an really entertaining 20 minutes trying to describe it in pigeon Arabic (from my side) and limited English (they knew everything to do with taking an order).  It was a great excuse to have cheese bread (manakish or manaeesh) for lunch .   On another day, Park n Shop in the Safa Centre yielded some of the crumbly, brown stuff , a nice chat about bread-makers with the baker and some delicious ciabatta.

I hadn’t made anything like the Kringel before so was intrigued especially as it has an Eastern European origin (my Dad was Polish but I’ve cooked very little from that region).  I wasn’t confident that I could mix the ingredients together in a bowl so I used my usual counter-top method, making a large well in a pile of flour and bringing the liquid in gently from the edges with a fork.  I then switched to my favourite bread making tool.  When I first moved to Saudi Arabia in 1995 I had so little to do, my guilty pleasure was watching daytime American cookery programmes.  The benefits of a flat metal wedge with a wooden handle was espoused by an Italian cook called Biba when she demonstrated pasta making and I give thanks everytime I use it.  Sticky dough fingers are a thing of the past.

I decided not to used raisins as I’m the only one who likes them in our family (and for that reason it doesn’t seem that long ago that I finished eating  the Christmas cake).  I only used about 500 gms of flour, probably due to using medium sized eggs.  It still made quite a stiff dough – if you are feeling weak in the arm department you might be tempted to use a machine and a dough hook.  Otherwise, say goodbye to bingo-wings. It’s a great way to destress too (Rosie my Border Terrier agrees).

My 11 year old daughter’s reaction to the kringel means I’ll definately be making it again. I’d make the swiss roll even longer and thinner and twist it to make it prettier.  I also found savoury version online which sounds interesting.  Thank you to Jo of Jo’s Kitchen who found the Kringel.  Here’s the recipe which is from The Hairy Biker’s, with a few comments from me thrown in. Stop Press: I now realise that you are supposed to cut the roll in half lengthways – aaahh!

Kringel

Ingredients (Makes 1 Loaf)

Dough

• 40g fresh yeast (or 20g dried)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 250ml milk, lukewarm
• 2 egg yolks (large)
• 50g butter, melted
• 600-700g flour (I used a mixture of plain and strong flour)

Filing

• 100g butter, softened
• 3 handfuls of raisins (I left these out)
• 10 tsp sugar (I used vanilla caster but demerera would be nice)

Topping (makes a lot!)

• 150g dark chocolate (at least 50% cocoa solids)
• 75g butter

Method

Mix the yeast and sugar in a bowl. Add the lukewarm milk and egg yolks, then mix in the flour and melted butter and knead well. Shape the dough into a ball, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200°c/Gas 6. Dust your work surface with flour. Take the dough out of the bowl, knock it back and roll out to a thickness of 1cm. Spread the softened butter evenly over the rolled sheet of pastry, then sprinkle with raisins and finally sugar.

Roll up the dough like a swiss roll (i.e. lengthways) and cut it in half with a sharp knife. Starting from the uncut end, plait the dough, lifting each half over the other in turn. Finally, shape the plaited bread into a B shape and transfer to a buttered baking tray. Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden.

In the meantime, prepare the chocolate topping by melting the chocolate and butter in a bowl over boiling water. Once out of the oven, let the bread cool down a bit, place on a serving plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce.

Cheese Kringel

To make a savoury version, leave out the raisins and sugar and sprinkle the Kringel with grated cheddar instead. Add more grated cheese on top instead of the chocolate sauce.