Kugelhof 2 Moister, more lemon cranberry
Version 2.0
Last week I made a lemon cranberry kugelhof and quite enjoyed it. However, Naturaleigh mentioned getting more out of my lemon zest by mashing it with the sugar. I started wondering what other innovations I could try to amplify flavour, loft and richness.
Modifications
I modified last week's recipe as follows:
- doubled cranberries from 80->160g
- quadrupled lemon zest and juice from 1 to 4 small lemons
- quadrupled nutmeg from 1.4->5.4
- doubled vanilla
- prepared enriched dough the night before
- food processed the zest, spices, sugar and butter to make a flavour paste
- incorporated the flavour paste into the basic enriched dough
- let the enriched dough sit overnight in the fridge
- reduced bake time 5 mins 40->35
Original Inspiration
adapted from: https://www.my-weekend-in-alsace.com/kugelhopf-recipe-kouglof/
Modified Recipe
INGREDIENTS
- 500g flour
- 10g instant dried yeast
- 200g milk, lukewarm
- 125g butter, softened
- 100g sugar
- 1 Tahitian vanilla bean seeds
- zest 4 small lemons (10g)
- juice 4 small lemons (132g)
- 5.3g fresh ground nutmeg
- 160g dried cranberries (soak in the lemon's juice)
- 2 eggs, room temperature, beaten
- 50g almonds
- 10g salt
- tube mould for baking
METHOD
Night Before
- Soak fruit in lemon juice or rum overnight
- Set out eggs, milk, butter to come to room temp
- Food process lemon zest, vanilla, nutmeg and sugar until caster fine paste
- Food process softened butter into sugar mix to make smooth paste
- In separate bowl, beat eggs into 100g milk, then stir in salt, then 400g flour and mix into dough low speed
- did for 10 minutes but was probably way too long
- Incorporate sugar butter mix into dough (may turn into a paste, but ensure it's well blended)
- Place dough in fridge overnight
Next Day
- Allow dough to come to room temperature
- Add yeast to 100g of warm milk, add 100g of flour and mix and let rise
- Mix doubled levain into dough (high speed, 10 mins until cleans bowl)
- Cover and let rise (about 1 hour)
- Stretch dough into rectangle on work surface
- Sprinkle dough evenly with fruit
- Roll up dough into long cylinder
- Roll cylinder in sliced almonds
- Butter mould
- Fit cylinder into mould and pinch ends together
- Let dough rise second time, until above edge of mould (about 1 hour less preheat time, e.g. 15 mins)
- Preheat oven 180°C (350f)
- Bake 35 minutes (until top is dark brown)
Process
This was the major innovation: while the cranberries soaked in lemon juice, I made up the spice mix with the sugar with fresh vanilla and fresh nutmeg and lots of lemon zest.
ECB2A5F6-1ABE-4CF9-B444-75A0787BF3B6.jpeg
I then blended the sugar spice mix into a paste
I added the butter and creamed everything together. This was a major change: instead of making the basic enriched dough with sugar and then gradually adding butter to it, I would have to combine this entire paste with the sugarless and tighter dough.
The basic enriched dough now lacked any sugar. It was quite tight. I might have kneaded it too much.
I blended the butter sugar flavour paste into the dough.
I don't have a picture for what happened... it turned into a paste and wouldn't come together. I was quite concerned and tried manual folding of the paste. It had some strength but not much. I put it in the fridge overnight.
The next day, I let the dough warm up. I made the levain from instant yeast, flour and warm milk. It quickly doubled and tripled and I combined it with the paste and put my mixer on high speed.
Hurrah! Within 10 mins it all came together in a dough ball.
More good news... it rose nicely within the same 1 hr as before.
I spread out the dough thinking it was more extensible and less elastic. Made sense if I damaged the gluten network with my altered process. I added the 2x cranberries and rolled it up, rolled the roll in almonds, then fit the roll into my silicone tube mould and pinched the ends together. I tried to move the dough around to make it more even than last time.
This time I buttered the mould but did not add any almonds to it directly.
Hurray again... the dough lifted without problems.
I reduced bake time by 5 mins from 40 to 35. Still got a nice lift and browning,
I waited until the following afternoon to cut in. It's a moister and more flavourful version. Plenty of fresh, natural lemon power in the fruit and bread. Lovely crumb. More yellow colour.
I'm quite happy with these improvements.
One issue is I left the bread in its mould after it bake. This may have resulted in keeping the outside moist and allowing the bread to shrink a bit. It's possible that if I had removed it right away that the crust would have remained rigid and kept the loaf a bit more lofty.