December baking: BBB Modern Lardy Cake

Bread Baking Babe Lien from Notitie van Lien chose "Modern Lardy Cake" for us Buddies to bake along this December. A festive recipe for a sweet bread (cake?) with sweet/buttery/spicy/dried fruit layers. Luckily there's no lard to be used at all, because that part in particular didn't appeal to me. The recipe is by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra from her book "Warm Bread and Honey cake". Since I love one of her other books "Het Nederlands Bakboek" (The Dutch Baking Book) I had to try this Lardy Cake.
The dough was really easy to handle, that is to say, to start with ... Once the filling was in, the rolling, folding and turning became a little (lot) more tricky.
As Lien suggested I used a little more salt and spices and a rectangular baking pan to bake the cake in.

Rolled out dough before the filling was spread on
(Ken Forkish' loafs next to it, another post another day)

So far so good, albeit a bit flat ....

The inside of the cake/bread turned out to be beautifully layered and the taste reminded me of stollen.
A proper festive bread, perfectly fit for December.




RECIPE (from "Warm Bread and Honey Cake" by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra)*
Visit Lien's post for helpful pictures of the filling, folding and rolling-out process.

Dough
375 gr strong white flour
1,5 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
35 gr butter, melted and cooled
200 ml milk, warmed

Filling
130 gr butter, softened
75 gr soft dark brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
0,5 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
75 gr currants or raisins (I used mixed dried fruit)
beaten egg, to glaze

24 cm (9 in) round cake tin (I used a rectangular one)

Put all the dough ingredients in a large mixing bowl and knead (preferably with a dough hook in a heavy duty mixer) until smooth and supple. Bring the dough together in a ball and return to the bowl. Cover with cling film and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size. (Or use the dough program on your bread maker, which I did.)

To make the filling mix butter, sugar and spices together until creamy.

Knock the risen dough back and re-knead it briefly. Roll it out to a rectangle about 50 x 25 cm (20 x 10 in). Spread the filling evenly over two-thirds of the dough sheet, leaving one outer third empty and about 4 cm (1,5 in) on all sides. Sprinkle the dried fruit over this and press down to embed. Fold the empty third over the middle third and the remaining third over this. Pinch all edges well to seal in the filling. Cover with a sheet of cling film and leave to rest for about 5 minutes to relax.

Give the parcel a quarter turn and roll it into a rectangle about 30 x 15 cm (12 x 6 in). Fold into thirds again and leave to rest for 5 minutes. Repeat this procedure three more times, turning the dough by a quarter and rolling and folding. If you find you're loosing too much filling omit the final turn. This is a delicate, difficult and messy job as the filing oozes out in weak spots. Patch them up as good as you can and continue to work. All the oozing bits will caramelise nicely as the cake bakes. You don't want to lose too much filling as this creates the laminating effect.

Grease the tin and put the dough packet in, flattening it with your hand to fit. Cover with cling film and leave to rise until almost doubled. (Mine hardly rose at this stage.)

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180C (350F/165C fan).
Brush the dough with the beaten egg. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until brown (mine took 35 minutes). Remove from the oven, but leave in the tin for about 5 minutes. Carefully release the cake from the tin and leave to cool further.
Enjoy lukewarm or cold, buttered. Of course.

*For Dutch-reading bakers: get this book ('Zelfgebakken') NOW from Bol.com for a fantastic price.
(I JUST DID!!)