Fresh From The Oven: Kringel

This month’s Fresh From The Oven challenge was chosen by me and I was quite nervous about it. Would everyone like it? Should I do something that I have done before or should I be brave and choose something new for everyone? In the end, I decided to try something new for everyone and as soon as I saw Kringel, featured on the Hairy Biker’s Mum’s know best BBC series, I knew I had found this month’s challenge.

Kringel is an Estonian sweetbread made with butter, raisins and chocolate. The Hairy Bikers also suggest a savoury version using cheese instead. For the challenge, everyone could do what they wanted, either savoury, sweet or if they wanted too, have a go at both. I decided to stick with the original sweet version.

Overall, I think the Kringel worked out quite well. I used dried yeast instead of fresh and halved the quantity. My only problem was when I tried to shape it into a B shape, there did not seem to be enough dough to make it, therefore I ended up with a ‘polo’ shaped bread (round with a hole in the middle). This did not seem to affect the taste at all, as my work colleagues loved it. It seemed quite similar to Stollen and it is something I intend to make again.

Kringel

Ingredients (Makes 1 Loaf)

Dough

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

Filing

• 100g butter, softened
• 3 handfuls of raisins
• 10 tsp sugar

Topping

• 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 bow, 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 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.

Happy Cooking!