Almost every European country has developed it’s own speciality yeast bakes based on a variation of sweet dough. Here are a few: Bee-sting Pastries, Home-made Doughnuts, Hungarian Bubble Loaf, Panettone, German Stollen, Yugoslavian Nut Roll, Chocolate Babka, etc.
Basic sweet dough
2 x 8 g sachets instant yeast
4 x 250 ml cake flour
500 ml mildly lukewarm milk
125 ml sugar
125 ml butter or margarine
5 ml salt
2 large eggs
10 ml vanilla essence
± 500 ml extra flour
- Mix the yeast with the first measure of flour.
- Add all the remaining ingredients except the extra flour and mix well.
- Add sufficient of the remaining flour gradually to form a dough which is quite soft but no longer sticky and knead the dough 3 to 4 minutes in the bowl of an electric mixer with the dough hook or turn out onto a floured surface and knead 5 to 6 minutes with floured hands until smooth and elastic.
- Return the dough to a floured bowl, cover and allow to rise about an hour or until completely doubled.
- Knead down and continue as explained for the individual recipes.
Note
In most cases only ½ recipe of the dough is required for the speciality cakes made, leaving the other half for another product or a plain sweet loaf or buns as explained below.
Dough Knots
1/2 recipe Basic Sweet dough, risen and punched down lightly
125 ml melted butter
125 ml sugar
10 ml cinnamon
- Divide the dough into gholf ball size portions and roll each portion into a rope about 10 cm in length.
- Place the meted butter and combined sugar and cinnamon onto two plates and roll each rope of dough in the butter and then into the cinnamon sugar.
- Tie into knots and place onto a baking tray. Allow to rise until almost doubled and bake at 180°C for about 18 to 20 minutes until firm and cooked through but not too dry.
- Allow to cool and serve as is or buttered if preferred.
Recipe for Sweet Dough by Carolié de Koster from the Art Of Cooking recipe book page 848.