Let's start cooking Easter cakes right after breakfast. First, take out the oil so that it has time to soften. Then let's start preparing the dough. On a low heat, warm the milk slightly. It should be warm, but not hot - about body temperature (we check with a clean finger), in too hot the yeast will die and the dough will not rise!
Take a large bowl for the dough - take it with a large margin, since the dough will still fit. Pour milk with yeast into a bowl and pour half of the flour into it (in this case- 1 kg).
We cover the bowl with the dough with a towel and put it in a warm place to approach. The dough should double in size. It takes from 40 minutes to 1 hour - very dependent on the room temperature. Now we have time to wash and wipe the forms for Easter cakes, do household chores, drink tea.
When the dough rises, mix everything well.
Beat the yolks with salt, vanilla, cardamom. Gradually add sugar and continue beating until the yolks are slightly white.
Cover the bowl again with a towel and place in a warm place. The dough should double in size again. Now it will take more time - from 1.5 to 3 hours. You can have time to cook dinner and maybe even have lunch!
At the same time, you need to wash the raisins, peel them from the sticks and let them dry.
We check the dough. Oh, it really went up a lot! It's a wonderful yellowish color and it has an amazing aroma!
Leave the cakes to rise in the molds until the dough rises by 3/4 of the height of the mold.
(Here, for those who made a full portion of the dough, some difficulties arise - after all, such a number of Easter cakes will not fit in any oven at the same time! There are several possibilities:
- Instead of a large number of small molds, take a few large and tall ones. The area occupied by the forms will be less - everything will fit.
- Divide the cakes into two parts, preferably also in size. We leave one part to approach, put the other in the refrigerator to slow down the process. During baking of the first part, we take out the remaining Easter cakes and put them in the heat to rise. We bake after the first.
Those who bake half or quarter portions will not have such problems).
So, the dough filled 3/4 of the form. Preheat the oven to 160-180 degrees and bake the cakes for about an hour. In no case do not open the oven before the Easter cakes are browned, otherwise the dough may fall from the temperature drop!
We check the readiness of the Easter cakes by piercing them in several places with a long wooden knitting needle. If the dough doesn't stick to the needle, the cakes are ready!
Let them cool and decorate with frosting. Ready Easter cakes are stored in a sealed container or in a bag without staleness, up to a week!
Here is a day in pleasant worries and has come to an imperceptible end!
Cooking:
For making wet cottage cheese cake by Easter, all products should be at room temperature. Butter should be completely soft. Cottage cheese is better to take soft, but not very watery. Soak raisins in boiling water for 15 minutes, then dry and roll in flour.
First you need to make a brew. In warm milk (milk should be at body temperature) crumble 25 gr. live yeast (can be replaced with 6 gr. high-speed), add a teaspoon of sugar and 2 tbsp. spoons with a hill of flour. Cover with a towel and leave for 20-30 minutes. The dough will rise by 2 times and will be covered with bubbles.
Beat the butter and sugar into a homogeneous light mass, one at a time, continuing to beat, add the eggs. Beat well until smooth.
Add cottage cheese vanilla sugar and salt. Also beat thoroughly. Connect the approached dough into curd mass and mix with a spatula.
Add 300 gr. (2 cups x 250 ml) double-sifted flour. Flour should be added gradually. Mix the dough well for 10 minutes. The dough should be mixed with a spoon. It should mix with good effort. If the dough is easy to knead, then it is liquid, you need to add a little more flour.
Cover the dough with a towel and leave for 15 minutes. The yeast will raise the dough a little and make it easier to knead. Now we need to add the prepared raisins. Knead the dough with raisins well for another 5-10 minutes until smooth.
Grease cake molds with butter or vegetable oil. paper forms, if you do not plan to remove them immediately, you can not lubricate. Now you need to fill the baking dishes 1/3 with the dough. It is most convenient to do this by lubricating your hands with odorless vegetable oil, soft dough will not stick to hands.
Filled forms must be covered cling film and a towel, and so leave the Easter cakes in a warm place to approach. It can take from 40 minutes to 1.5 hours, it depends on many factors. My Easter cakes came to the top of the molds in 40 minutes.
Easter cakes should be baked in preheated to 180 ° C. The baking time depends on the size of the cake. I baked small cakes 7 cm high and 7 cm in diameter for about 35 minutes, 15 minutes at 180 ° C and further at 160 ° C. To prevent the top of the cake from burning, with a slight blush, you can cover it with baking parchment. The readiness of the cake can be checked with a wooden stick.
If the dough was not dense enough (for example, very wet cottage cheese), the Easter cake caps may become flat. This time, I did. It did not affect the taste of the cake in any way. Ready cakes should be cooled on a wire rack. If the Easter cakes are tall, they should be cooled on a clean, dry towel on their side, turning often to keep the correct shape of very delicate Easter cakes.
For decorating cookies, I used icing sugar from 120 gr. powdered sugar and 3 st. tablespoons of lemon (can be orange) juice. Powder with juice should be thoroughly mixed until smooth with a silicone spatula. Apply glaze to slightly warm cakes. Then the icing will spread beautifully on top of the cake. On top of the icing, you can decorate with store-bought toppings for Easter cakes. When hardened, the glaze turns white. It fits perfectly with these cookies.
From the indicated number of products, I got 8 small Easter cakes with a total weight of 960 grams. If you decorate Easter cakes with protein glaze, then you can put 1 whole egg and 2 yolks in the dough, and leave 2 proteins for glaze. For inexperienced housewives in baking, I recommend making training baking of Easter cakes in order to feel the dough, determine the baking time in your oven, and evaluate the result.
For lovers of wet baking, this is a wonderful cake. Moist, with curd taste and at the same time light. In the photo, the cake is in a section. Husband and child ordered this Easter cake this year.
Of course, not a single Easter is complete without Easter cakes (in our family they are called Easter cakes). Traditionally, my grandmother always bakes them, and now I have “joined” the ranks of conjurers on holiday kitchen. Grandma's Easter cakes are light, layered and very tasty. But I also like heavy, “wet” pasques. I, in fact, propose to bake them for lovers of wet dough.
- Flour - about 3 kg
- Fatty sour cream - 0.5 l
- Live yeast - 100 g (dry equivalent - about 35 g)
- Margarine (or butter, or both in a 1: 1 ratio) - 400 g
- Milk - 0.5 l
- Granulated sugar - 1 kg + 300 g for glaze
- Egg - 10 pcs.
- Raisins (optional) - 1.5 tbsp.
- Vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg- taste
For yeast dough it is better if all products are at room temperature, this is important, since yeast does not like cold.
We measure the yeast and dissolve it in warm (but not hot!) Milk, adding a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a glass of flour. So we help the yeast to “earn” faster. We put in a warm place for 20 minutes, during which time a foam cap should appear on the surface of the mass, which means that everything is in order with the yeast.
Beat egg yolks with sugar, do not be lazy, give the process five minutes. Pour the egg-sugar mixture into the milk-yeast mixture. Add sour cream melted butter or margarine (not hot!)
Eight egg whites (reserve two for icing) beat into a strong foam and send it there. We sprinkle raisins, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg (these last two spices are optional).
Now it's time for the flour. Gradually add it (sifted!) And knead the dough. Depending on the size of the eggs and the type of flour, it may take a little more or less. Focus on the sensations - the dough should be elastic, soft, but at the same time not stick to the table or to the hands.
Knead the dough for at least 10 minutes. We send it to a large container, cover it with a towel (it can be damp) and put it in a warm place for an hour and a half.
We take out, punch down and again send the dough to rise. Once again we crush and lay out in molds greased with margarine (lard). We line the bottom of the molds with circles of the appropriate diameter from oiled baking paper.
Important: fill the molds with dough by about a third. Let them rise in a warm place for about half an hour. We send it to the oven, heated to 180 ° C, and bake for about an hour until the hats are golden.
We take out the finished Easter cakes from the molds, cool and decorate with glaze, which we make from two whipped proteins with 300 g of sugar or powdered sugar.
By the way, if you want to bake something original for Easter, I suggest Italian. It looks gorgeous on the table, and it tastes wonderful thanks to the salty filling of olives, olives, cheese and smoked sausage.
Short description
I'm back with my Easter itch :) I recently had a situation: one local coding shop invited me to hold Easter cakes for the MK staff. I came to this bakery with my favorite sourdough panettone recipe according to Peter Reinhart, we kneaded, baked, the Easter cakes turned out delicious, airy, fragrant. They tried it, but did not appreciate it, it turned out that they were expecting a completely different result - not a delicate layered structure, but density and heaviness, “like a grandmother baked”, so that they were heavy, rich, moist, juicy. This puzzled me: firstly, it’s too subjective a criterion, you never know how you can imagine grandma’s Easter cakes, after all, everyone had their own grandmother and every grandmother had their own Easter cakes. Although latently I imagined this "grandmother's" cake: rich in taste, a little moist, heavy, as if with cottage cheese. I myself, when I tried to bake my first Easter cakes a few years ago, wanted to get just such, but it turned out to be sweetish buns. Therefore, until now, I have lived with an unfinished Easter cake gestalt.
And now, it so happened, I again had to return to the image of my grandmother's Easter cake, and I decided to just bake, observe and think: how to comprehend this difference. After another attempt, the family tried my fresh still warm Easter cakes and said: “You have this fluffy bun, soft like that, crumbles and exfoliates on the cut, but it is necessary that the cut be even, dense, like a cake. And then it dawned on me. Like a cupcake! But “grandmother's cakes” were precisely this that differed from a bun - in structure! I have mentioned several times on the blog and in workshops that if sweet dough do not develop gluten during kneading, the output will be a sourdough cake, that is, the structure of the crumb will be exactly cake: dense and juicy, not lacy.
Inspired by a conjecture, for several days I reviewed modern and old recipes for Easter cakes, ran through brioches and panettone, looked at guests and TUs, and this is what I understood. In most cases, the recipes for Easter cakes are similar to each other, moreover, both modern and old, grandmother's. They have approximately the same amount of muffin: butter on average 20-35%, eggs about 20-25%, sugar 30-35%, in addition, cream, sour cream or milk is sometimes used as a liquid, but in small quantities. All of them, of course, are designed for yeast, and the dough is made in the sponge method, the sponge is placed either overnight with a third of the flour and a small amount yeast, or in the morning with all the yeast and part of the muffin. But at the same time, cakes are different for everyone! Grandmothers - heavy, dense, wet, and modern housewives - dry, lush, airy, bakeries. Why???
The work of the Swedish artist Anders Zorn "Cooking bread"
The reason, it seems to me, lies in the conditions, in everyday life. How did our grandmothers or even great-grandmothers live? Most in the villages, no one had either Chinese or Swedish dough mixers, there were hard-working hands, a large family, relatives and neighbors, for whom, as tradition and master's duty demanded, it was necessary to bake Easter cakes for a week in advance. Therefore, grandmothers baked a lot, kneading manually straightaway a large number of sweet test. Have you tried to knead at least bread with your hands, not butter dough from, for example, 3 kg. flour? Seven sweats will come down until you manage to somehow develop gluten, I’m not talking about the gluten window, you can’t even remember about it. I recently had to knead exactly this amount for french bread. I puffed for at least 40 minutes, bouncing and pushing and rubbing the dough with all my might, it was so difficult, but I could not achieve a good result. And kneading sweet dough is even more difficult! Now imagine: grandmothers in the village kneaded pastry from 4-5 kg. flour., oil was sometimes added immediately, sometimes melted, and all these features of adding oil most directly influenced the result. And, it seems to me, it was precisely because of the peculiarities of the kneading, because of the underdevelopment of gluten, that the cake obtained this dense, moist structure desired by many, because during fermentation such dough could not grow so much upwards, could not stretch and hold a lot of air, therefore it turned out dense, as they say in Ukraine, "Paska". And it's not that the grandmothers put a lot of muffin, muffin was, as usual, as it is now, brioche, for example, has even more butter, and stollen / panettone, which is on the blog, there is also a lot of butter (almost 50%, unlike the Easter cake 30%), but the Easter cake is dense and moist, and the panettone is airy and lacy. It seems to me that the kneading technology, or rather, the kneading features, play a decisive role in the structure of rich products and, in order to check this, I decided to conduct an experiment :)
I recently showed you the recipe mom's cake on seeded homemade flour, but in this recipe there was only one option that I baked, the second was left behind the scenes. Here I want to show you the second one and compare it with the one I have already shown. The composition of the dough is the same, the difference is only in the kneading method, and, accordingly, in the behavior of the dough and the result. But in both cases, it turned out incredibly tasty. In the first version, I kneaded, trying not to strongly develop the gluten of the dough, immediately adding almost all the sugar to the oil. Kneading a second time, first achieved a smooth elastic dough, and then brought in the muffin. The difference is very noticeable!
Kneading without developing gluten. The dough is like a cream, it practically did not hold its shape.
Kneading with gluten development. I kneaded the dough without sugar and oil until elastic, gradually added sugar, added oil in pieces in several approaches. The dough turned out completely different: elastic, holding its shape.
See how different it turned out. The first is torn, creamy, the second is elastic, stretches.
And now how it showed itself in the process. Here are two cakes from different test at the end of proofing. Can you guess where the one from the dough with developed gluten is? The one above!
But finished, the difference is noticeable :)
And structure. The first cake on the cut is even, does not crumble, does not exfoliate. The second is airy, soft, like a pillow!
They are really different in structure and in how the taste manifests itself in this structure. Both are very tasty though. It seems to me that on Easter cake made of white flour, this difference is even more noticeable. Here, for example, are dough products with developed gluten.
And here are the Easter cakes, from which I wanted to get a kimenno dense Easter cake structure. They are certainly not like cupcakes, but much closer to the truth than the ones above. But those above were baked according to European recipes, where airiness and lace inside the roll are welcomed.
I hope the principle is clear, but I will say a few more words. It seems to me that the tradition of kneading Easter cakes with your hands is explained precisely by how the hands act on the dough - not very much, not very quickly. And the way it was easier to do, kneading with your hands: they quickly added butter to the dough so that it finally began to peel off the table and hands. But in almost every old recipe, housewives are advised to knead until the dough starts to come off the table and hands already after adding oil. At the same time, after adding oil, it is very difficult for the dough to develop gluten, and it begins to stick off the table not because it develops it, but because of the added fat. Yes, and hands cannot work with dough as efficiently as a dough mixer, especially when compared with a planetary one, although the Swedish Ankarsrum is quite suitable for kneading dough for Easter cakes, because it kneads very carefully, for which its work is even compared with manual. True, now not every housewife will decide on such a feat - knead the dough for Easter cakes with her hands. My mother, for example, is just such a rare hero: from year to year she bakes her own delicious Easter cakes, kneads it with her hands, melts the butter, brings it in almost immediately, and it turns out soooo tasty! These were her pasques last year.
And, by the way, they can be stored for a very long time. We usually put them in enamel pan lined with wrapping paper and cover with a lid. It turns out a whole large saucepan Easter cakes that we treat neighbors, give to relatives, send by mail to friends, and still have a week left for ourselves in advance. And then two!
I bought a book about cookies. I’ll tell you more about the book in a separate post, but now I’ll say that I love to bake Easter cakes and every year I bake a lot (I give them away): I don’t forget old recipes, and I try new ones.
As I understand it, there are two types of Easter cakes - dense and airy, and there are people who are used to one or the other. Last year I baked Easter cakes for my friends. One of them, Lena, called me and said: "Very tasty, we ate in one sitting. But it is too airy, it looks like a panettone, but not like a cake." And behind her, the second girlfriend called, Marina: “Oh, Olechka, how good your little girl is! Mom and I ate, and mom, like me, thinks - real cake like our grandmother used to bake."
Here I will put a selection of three recipes. Since I myself am a hunter air cakes, then two recipes are dedicated to them, and the third one is dense, similar to a cupcake. I don't like this one too much yeast baking but I love this cake. Its taste redeems everything: it has an amazingly rich, festive taste.
Two recipes - my reconstruction old Easter cakes, and the third is my reconstruction of the Italian Easter bread - Colomba. Unlike many other colomba recipes, this one can be baked in the shape of an Easter cake, and it holds up well. In the photo - Easter cake is baked from this particular test. It is very large (20 cm high) and heavy, over 2 kg. All of these recipes were popular on Cooking. RU. A lot of people have burned them, and if you follow the links and scroll forward, you can find a lot of reviews. Publication of Russian Easter cakes, publication of Easter cake-colomba. I put prescriptions without changing.
Old Zavarnoy Kulich Lace
This is the result of my experiments with the Old Custard Cake recipe. If you follow this technology, you get a very light, fluffy, lacy dough with a typical cake, but a mild taste. If you like very sweet cakes, I advise you to add sugar. From this amount of dough, I baked 2 Easter cakes: large, it weighed a kilogram of two hundred grams (I baked it in tin can from under peeled tomatoes with a bottom of 18 cm and high) and a small 300 gr. But, as always happens with Easter cakes, the large cake turned out to be better in structure: it was very fibrous, juicy, with a richer taste. Small cakes always turn out a little dry.
Strong flour 400 gr.
Butter 130 gr.
Vegetable oil 2 tbsp. l.
6 big eggs(6 yolks -115 gr, 3 proteins 120 gr)
plus an extra egg for lubrication.
Sugar 150 gr.
Honey light and mild taste (floral) 2 tbsp. l.
Salt 1 tsp
Fat Cream 100 ml.
Milk 50-80 or even 100 ml (as flour will take).
Raisins 150 gr (soaked, dried and rolled in flour).
Fresh yeast 20 gr.
Fragrance of choice - vanilla, lemon peel, orange peel, almond essence, cardamom, rose water.
24-48 hours before: Thick sourdough .
Mix 100 g flour, 55 g water and 1 g fresh yeast.It is not necessary to knead well, as soon as a dense piece of dough is formed, you can leave it to ferment at room temperature 24 hours (not very high temperature, say at 18-20 degrees), lubricated grows. oil and under the film, so as not to wind. During this time, lactic acid bacteria (the same that are found in lactic acid products) will develop, which will give the dough its delicate flavor and help the dough rise better. This dough will act as a starter.
Liquid brew.
Now that the thick dough-sourdough is ready, we will prepare the usual liquid one. Dissolve in a saucepan 130 gr butter(you can brown it if you like) creamy taste became stronger) and put 100 gr there heavy cream(I had a fat content of 40 percent), 1 tbsp of honey, mix with a whisk. Brew with a boiling mixture of 50 grams of flour. Let cool for about 20 minutes, tea leaves should remain up to 25 degrees. Put the perfume in there.
Pour activated yeast into warm brew. Mix. Beat egg whites to soft peaks and fold in gently with a spatula, mixing from bottom to top with gentle movements. Put the tea leaves in a warm place to approach. For me, it increased in 30 minutes in a warm oven with a jug of boiling water 3 times. But it may take longer depending on what kind of yeast you have and how favorable the fermentation conditions are. Do not rush the tea leaves, let it rise 3 times.
Dough
If your leaven was in the refrigerator, take it out now. Rub white yolks with sugar and salt, pour in 100 ml of warm milk, beat a little and mix with 250 g of flour, put tea leaves and start kneading. You need to knead the dough very well, it depends final result, this is a common recommendation when mixing Easter cakes. I knead for about 30 minutes on speed 1.5 of a Kenwood mixer. Check if the dough is well kneaded by tearing off a small piece and stretching it: it should stretch into a thin film, the so-called window, through which large objects can be seen. Manually, the dough must be beaten out for a long time with a spatula, it is sticky and watery for a normal batch. In the old days, it was beaten out with a butter churn.
When the dough is well kneaded, cut the starter into small pieces and mix it into the dough. Most likely, you will have to mix for another 5 minutes. That's it. The dough is ready. The dough will be soft, homogeneous, slightly sticky, shiny and silky to the touch. Nice dough.
Coat it with vegetable oil and set it to rise in a warm and moist dough.
For me, it tripled very quickly - in 1.30 hours.
Now besiege him with smeared rast. oil with your hands and pull a little in different directions without removing it from the bowl. It can be proofed in molds and baked now, but I preferred to put the dough in the refrigerator overnight. The taste and texture of the muffin improves from cold and the dough is easier to handle while it is cold. So it sticks less.
Proofing and baking.
If the dough was in the refrigerator, you need to take it out, knead the raisins into it and arrange it in molds (it is better to do this while the dough is cold, so it is less sticky), filling only 1 third. This dough increases very much, and let it warm up first. If you did not put it in the refrigerator, you still need to mix raisins into it and pour it into molds. Put to part in a warm and humid place.
When the dough fills 2 third molds, put the molds in the oven, heated to 180 gr, where you put a tray with 80 gr very cold a minute earlier, ice water. After 30 minutes, quickly open the oven door, release excess steam, lower the temperature to 160 and bake on it. If the top of the cake is browning too quickly, cover it with foil.
Here in the photo it is made with sourdough, not yeast. I put a piece of sourdough in the dough, and then did everything as written.
Antique Custard Cake Improved
This cake is the exact opposite of everything I like about baking, and yet I bake it year after year; it is very tasty, just wonderfully tasty, in my opinion. It is dense, heavy, with a dark yellow finely porous crumb. Most of all, it looks like a cupcake, not a bun. Rise slowly and reluctantly. But the taste, the taste is extraordinary!
Necessary:
Strong flour 350 gr
Butter 70 gr
Fatty cream 140 gr
2 eggs (of which one for lubrication)
Yolks 4
Sugar 170 gr
Honey 1 tbsp. l.
Salt 0.5 tsp
Fresh yeast 20 gr
Flavor vanilla, cardamom, lemon peel, etc.
Raisins, candied fruits.
24 hours before kneading the dough, prepare a thick sourdough starter:
100 gr. flour mixed with 60 gr. water and 1 gr. fresh yeast. Cover with foil so that it does not wind up and leave to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. During this time, lactic acid bacteria (the same that are found in lactic acid products) will develop, which will give the dough its delicate flavor and help the dough rise better. This dough will act as a starter.
It is possible to prepare the starter of the day in 36 or 48 hours, but after 36 hours of fermentation at room temperature, it is better to put it in the refrigerator.
Liquid brew.
Now that the thick dough-sourdough is ready, we will prepare the usual liquid one. Dissolve 70 g of butter in a saucepan (you can brown it if you want the creamy taste to become stronger) and put 140 g of heavy cream there (I had 40 percent fat), mix with a whisk. Brew 100 g of flour with a boiling mixture. Let cool for about 20 minutes, tea leaves should remain up to 25 degrees. Put perfume – ; best put in warm butter before mixing with cream.
While the brew is cooling, prepare the yeast. Taken 19 g of fresh yeast, slightly mash with a fork and pour 1 tbsp of honey. After a while, the yeast will become active: it will become liquid and bubbles will appear on them.
Pour activated yeast into warm brew. Knead soft dough – ; I was hooking "K" Kenwood – ; the one for mixing, not the one for the test. Put the tea leaves in a warm place to approach. For me, it increased in 60 minutes in a warm oven with a jug of boiling water 3 times. But it may take longer depending on what kind of yeast you have and how favorable the fermentation conditions are. Do not rush the tea leaves, let it rise 3 times.
Dough
If your leaven was in the refrigerator, take it out now. Rub white yolks with sugar and salt, pour in, beat a little and mix with 150 g of flour, put tea leaves and start kneading. It is necessary to knead the dough very well, the final result depends on it. I knead for about 30 minutes on speed 1.5 of a Kenwood mixer. Check if the dough is well kneaded by tearing off a small piece and stretching it: it should stretch into a thin film; a window through which large objects can be seen. Manually beat the dough with a spatula for a long time; it is sticky and watery for a normal batch. In the old days, such dough, according to Molokhovets, was beaten out with a butter churn.
When the dough is well kneaded, cut the starter into small pieces and mix it into the dough. Most likely, you will have to mix for another 5 minutes. That's it. The dough is ready. The dough will be watery, like thick sour cream, sticky, yellow from yolks and fats and homogeneous. Stir in candied fruits and raisins at low speed.
Pour it into one mold; it only doubles and it is better to bake it in one large cake. Put it overnight (or for 7-8 hours) in a warm place (I put it in a warm oven with a 1.5 liter jug of boiling water). It comes very slowly. When it doubles in size (it took me 8 hours, all night) you can bake.
Proofing and baking.
In the morning it is better to cross-cut the top of the cake. Light the oven and sprinkle it well with water. The cake will grow in shape as the oven heats up. Set the thermostat to 180 degrees. When you see that the cake has begun to brown, quickly open the oven door, release excess steam, lower the temperature to 160 and bake on it. If the top of the cake is browning too quickly, cover it with foil. It baked for me for about an hour.
When the cake is ready, let it cool for 20 minutes in the form, then carefully take it out and put it on a pillow, where it rolls until it cools and gets stronger.
Colomba newly found - Colomba ritrovata
I promised this year to give a colomba to my husband's friends from Sicily. Last year, I already gave them Colomba Adriano, and this year I again wanted to surprise them with a new taste.
I searched the Italian blogs and forums that I read regularly, but found nothing. People mostly bake either Colomba Adriano or Colomba according to the recipe of the Simili sisters. This last one didn’t suit me either, because I already baked it (I rebaked almost everything from this book) and it is inferior in taste to Colomba Adriano.
I was desperate and was about to return to win-win recipe Adriano, but then I found in my Italian notes a strange recipe without end and beginning: I had a set of ingredients written down, but neither the amount of yeast nor how the dough had to be made was indicated. I began to remember where such an incomplete recipe could come from, and I remembered that several years ago, on my favorite Italian forum, Gennarino, people showed the culinary records of their grandmothers, aunts, mothers. Often recipes were written down as memory notches rather than precise instructions for action; for people who have cooked for them more than once and who only had to remember what to put.
I wanted to try making the recipe work. I sat down, took a pen and laid out the recipe into "bricks" - multiple sourdough and dough, from which the magnificent building of Italian baking is traditionally erected. I entered the amount of yeast that could raise such a rich dough.
Let me just say that it worked out well. Colomba's recipients liked it very much, and they completely praised me. From part of the dough, I baked Easter cakes. I will show them. I can’t show Colomba: she left as a gift, of course, uncut.
Necessary
800-850 gr very strong flour
285-300 grams of milk (I put water and 3 tablespoons of powdered milk. Water is easier to work with, and powdered milk gives a particularly sweet taste)
10 eggs (1 egg and 9 yolks are used in the test, 1-2 proteins from the remaining ones are used for coating)
250-300 sugar (for my taste 250 gr is enough)
250 gr butter
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp rum
20 gr fresh yeast
Perfume: I took the zest of 1 large lemon and 1 very big orange, vanilla and 0.5 tsp orange blossom flowers.
250 gr candied lemon and orange, raisins soaked in rum or dessert wine and strained, dry cranberries, chopped dark chocolate. Put everything in a bag, pour 2 tl of flour there, tie the bag and shake until all the pieces are covered with flour)
Coating colomba: a little ground almonds or hazelnuts, sugar, cornstarch, almond leaves or whole, 1 protein.
Technology.
I immediately take out and weigh out all the flour, sugar, put eggs, salt, butter, etc. as a reminder. Everything I need, I take from already measured products; otherwise, with a multi-stage method of constructing a test, it is easy to make a mistake.
The day before. 1 Opara. Knead 100 g of flour and 70 g of water with 1 g of fresh yeast. Leave to ferment all night (I knead in a bread machine and leave it there). If you don't store raisins in rum or dessert wine, soak them now.
Next day. 2 Opara.(I start hours in the afternoon)
Pour 1 tbsp of honey 19 g of yeast. Wait until the yeast becomes liquid (about 20-30 minutes).
At this time, mix 300 grams of flour with 140 grams of water, 2 yolks. Leave to swell.
1 Dough.
Combine 2 dough and a mixture of 300 grams of flour and eggs. Mix well. Leave to rise until doubled in size
2 Dough.
Combine 1 Dough (night) with 250 g of flour, 75 g of water, 2 yolks. Mix well. Leave to rise until it doubles in size.
1 Dough.
Take the fermented dough and gradually add 3 yolks, without ceasing to knead. After each yolk, stir in a handful of flour. When all the yolks are mixed, the dough is smooth and lags behind the walls of the mixer, stir in 125 g of sugar, zest and vanilla. Continue kneading until the dough is smooth again. Check for the mica window. Stir in 125 g of soft butter, cut into pieces. At the end of kneading, the dough should be smooth, shiny, very elastic, pleasant to the touch. The dough is soft but not runny! Control the amount of liquid and flour.
Put in a warm place to ferment (I put in the oven or microwave with a jug of boiling water. If it takes a long time, I periodically change the boiling water. In a closed small cell, the dough will be warm and humid, it will be great. It is only important that the jug of boiling water does not touch the dough itself directly). Should increase three times.
2 Dough.
Stir in the dough gradually 3 yolks, without ceasing to knead. After each yolk, stir in a handful of flour. Gradually stir in 150 g flour and 1 egg white. When all the yolks are mixed, the dough is smooth and lags behind the walls of the mixer, stir in 125 g of sugar, rum and orange flower water. Continue kneading until the dough is smooth again. Check for the mica window. Stir in pieces of soft butter (125 g). At the end of kneading, the dough should be smooth, shiny, very elastic, pleasant to the touch. The dough is soft but not runny! Control the amount of liquid and flour.
Put to wander in a warm place. When 1 Dough is ready, combine both doughs and knead until completely smooth. Dump the dough out onto the table and fold while sipping the dough: like you're folding a business letter in three. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Put back into the mixer bowl and mix in the candied fruit, etc. at low speed.
Here, probably, you can send the dough to ferment again, but it was already late and I sent it to the refrigerator for the night in the largest saucepan, which closes tightly. To do this, I rounded the dough into a ball, cut a cross on the top, smeared it with vegetable oil so that it would not stick and put it in the refrigerator to ferment in the cold. It's good that I took a 6-liter pan: the dough completely filled it overnight, and if I slept longer, it would be better to lift the lid!
In the morning
I dumped the dough out of the pan and cut it into 3 pieces. large pieces. She turned one into Colomba, and the others into Easter cakes. She smeared Colomba with her native coating and sprinkled with almonds. At Easter cakes, she cut the top with a cross, rather deep, cm 2, put a piece of cold butter into the concentration of the cross; in the end it turned out a wonderful round hat without cracks. I smeared it with protein, since there were a lot of them left. She let go. When it doubled, I set it to bake at 180 gr with steam.
When the dough stopped rising in the oven (it grew great there), I lowered the heat to 160 and made a small gap between the door and the walls of the oven by sticking a teaspoon.
Checked for readiness. After I considered that they were caked, I held it for another 10 minutes in the switched off hot oven.
She took it out, let it cool until it was still warm, and only then took it out with all the precautions. Here is a piece.
