I needed some baked goods for a morning meeting at work and decided to try Luisa Weiss' "Mohnzopf (Poppy-Seed Braid)" from Classic German Baking. It's a faux braid made from a very unusual dough -- a combination of yeasted dough and short-crust dough kneaded together that is called Zwillingsteig (twin dough). Weiss says that Zwillingsteig is richer and moister than regular yeasted doughs and keeps longer as well.
The short crust dough is easy to make; you just mix sugar, flour, baking powder, softened high-fat butter, and an egg yolk. You shape the dough into a disk and set it aside. For the yeast dough, you combine instant yeast, salt, sugar, warm water, vanilla, room temperature butter, an egg, and flour, and mix and knead until smooth and elastic.
Then comes the strange part. You roll out the yeast dough, place the disk of short crust dough on top, wrap the yeasted dough around the short crust pastry to encase it, and then knead the two doughs together until combined. This took a bit of time and effort, but finally I ended up with a homogeneous ball of dough that I set aside to rise for an hour.
To make the filling you bring ground poppy seeds, sugar, semolina flour, salt, butter, and milk to a boil; cool the mixture; and add an egg,vanilla, and rum. My final poppy seed mixture was quite runny.
To assemble the loaves, you divide the proofed dough in half, roll out each portion into a rectangle, spread on poppy seed filling, and roll it up tightly. The recipe specifically say to cover the entire dough with filling, leaving no border. That created a huge mess when I rolled up the dough, because the filling was so thin that it was seeping out of the roll from the sides and the end and it was difficult to pinch the roll closed. The problem became even worse when I formed the faux braid by snipping through the roll at 1-inch intervals and pulling alternating segments into opposite directions. Poppy seed filling was spilling out everywhere. I let the loaves rise again for about a half hour before baking them. Although the recipe says to bake the bread for 40 minutes, I pulled my loaves at 25 minutes when they were already golden brown and I tested the internal temperature and decided that they were done. After the loaves were cool, I brushed on a glaze of powdered sugar and water.
My finished loaves did not look much like the photo in the cookbook, which is the same photo that appears with this online version of the recipe, where the loaf almost looks like a bunch of cut rolls baked closely together. Mine looked a lot like the photo that Weiss included in her online collection of photos for recipes from her cookbook. I wasn't able to get each snipped segment of the loaves turned to face upwards. In any case, after slicing the loaves, you could clearly see a nice swirl in the bread and I thought it looked attractive.
This bread was very popular with my tasters. I did think that the bread was a bit dense and I wished it was fluffier and lighter. But I'm not sure if this is just the way that Zwillingsteig is supposed to turn out -- or if my bread was underproofed, which is a definite possibility. I wish Weiss had provided a description of how much the bread was supposed to rise during each of the two proofing stages; my bread didn't rise that much but I wasn't sure if it was because it was mixed with short crust dough or if it needed more time. I'm don't think I would make this bread again, but I was happy with the way it turned out. And I can't attest to how well it keeps, because my tasters ate every last piece!
Recipe: "Mohnzopf (Poppy-Seed Braid)" from Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss, recipe available here at Extra Crispy.
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The short crust dough is easy to make; you just mix sugar, flour, baking powder, softened high-fat butter, and an egg yolk. You shape the dough into a disk and set it aside. For the yeast dough, you combine instant yeast, salt, sugar, warm water, vanilla, room temperature butter, an egg, and flour, and mix and knead until smooth and elastic.
Then comes the strange part. You roll out the yeast dough, place the disk of short crust dough on top, wrap the yeasted dough around the short crust pastry to encase it, and then knead the two doughs together until combined. This took a bit of time and effort, but finally I ended up with a homogeneous ball of dough that I set aside to rise for an hour.
To make the filling you bring ground poppy seeds, sugar, semolina flour, salt, butter, and milk to a boil; cool the mixture; and add an egg,vanilla, and rum. My final poppy seed mixture was quite runny.
To assemble the loaves, you divide the proofed dough in half, roll out each portion into a rectangle, spread on poppy seed filling, and roll it up tightly. The recipe specifically say to cover the entire dough with filling, leaving no border. That created a huge mess when I rolled up the dough, because the filling was so thin that it was seeping out of the roll from the sides and the end and it was difficult to pinch the roll closed. The problem became even worse when I formed the faux braid by snipping through the roll at 1-inch intervals and pulling alternating segments into opposite directions. Poppy seed filling was spilling out everywhere. I let the loaves rise again for about a half hour before baking them. Although the recipe says to bake the bread for 40 minutes, I pulled my loaves at 25 minutes when they were already golden brown and I tested the internal temperature and decided that they were done. After the loaves were cool, I brushed on a glaze of powdered sugar and water.
This bread was very popular with my tasters. I did think that the bread was a bit dense and I wished it was fluffier and lighter. But I'm not sure if this is just the way that Zwillingsteig is supposed to turn out -- or if my bread was underproofed, which is a definite possibility. I wish Weiss had provided a description of how much the bread was supposed to rise during each of the two proofing stages; my bread didn't rise that much but I wasn't sure if it was because it was mixed with short crust dough or if it needed more time. I'm don't think I would make this bread again, but I was happy with the way it turned out. And I can't attest to how well it keeps, because my tasters ate every last piece!
Recipe: "Mohnzopf (Poppy-Seed Braid)" from Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss, recipe available here at Extra Crispy.
Previous Posts:
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