Hungarian Milk Bread

Tejes Kolacs

A Hungarian family recipe from the 1800's!

Both my grandmas made this sweet bread, so I know that it dates from the late 1800's.  They probably got it from their own mothers.  They served it for Shabbat (the sabbath) and for other holidays during the year (excepting, of course, Passover, with its food restrictions).

When Tante Grete, my dad's sister, came here from the UK (where she and Uncle Longy lived as soon as they could get out of Austria),  she took over the baking from my grandma.  I remember that hers was always a bit dry and over-baked.  Then my mother started making it after Tante Grete could no longer do so.  Mom's bread was good, but she was never comfortable baking bread.  Me, I love baking bread, so I grabbed the recipe from Mommy and took off with it.  She immediately gave up baking it.  

On my mother's side, Zinn Grandma baked it too.  In her later years, she also had to watch her fat and cholesterol intake, so she modified the recipe, too.  I never had her recipe, but I do remember that it was just as tasty as the full-fat one.

 I only make it for Rosh Hashanah and for fast-breaking from Yom Kippur.  I've modified it for the way we eat now.  The original recipe called for lots of butter, whole milk, sour cream, and all those other lovely, cholesterol-laden goodies.   Here is my recipe, adapted for the bread machine, 'cause it kneads better than I ever can.

Note:  this is not totally exact.  I bake it the way the family did, a bit on the free-form side, but you can easily fix it up if you are so inclined.

• 1 large egg, beaten
• 1 heaping TB low-fat sour cream.  (don't use the non-fat one; it's awful)
• 1 scant tsp kosher salt (kosher salt has less sodium than regular table salt and tastes better)
• 1/2 cup water - I put the egg and the sour cream into my measuring cup and then add enough water to make it to 1 cup.
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 cups all purpose flour (more or less, depending on humidity, too much liquid, etc, etc)
• 3 TB dark brown sugar.  You can use regular sugar but I like this taste better.
• 3 TB non-fat dry milk.
• 1 tsp sweet butter, cut up into little pieces.
• 1.5 tsp yeast.  I usually use only 1 tsp, but this takes forever to rise, so the extra half gives it a bit more oomph
• 1 tsp butter, melted.
• 6 oz mini chocolate chips 

1. Beat your egg, put it into your measuring cup.  Add the sour cream and enough water to make one cup liquid.
2. Dump into the bread machine.
3. Add the kosher salt, and the vanilla extract.
4.  Measure in 3 cups of all purpose flour.
5. Add the brown sugar, the milk powder and the sweet butter
6.  Make a little indentation in the top and put in your yeast.

• Put your bread machine on the "knead" cycle.  Don't even think of baking this in the machine.  Ever. 
• Watch it as it kneads.  If it's too wet, add little bits of flour until the dough cleans the sides of the machine.  I do this by sprinkling flour onto the soggy dough while it kneads.  You want it just to clear the sides, not too soggy but also not too dry.  As it's kneading, it should become as smooth and soft as a baby's bottom.  That's the egg at work here.  Yeah, egg!
• Let it rise to the top of the pan.  This will take considerably longer than when the machine dings.  All that sweetening gives it a long, long rise.  It's OK.  If you have to run out to do other things, you can always deflate the dough, and let it rise again.
• When it's risen, deflate it and place onto a floured dough board, kitchen counter, whatever you use to roll out either pie crusts or bread.

1. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray or grease it with butter.  Make sure you get into all the nooks and crannies; otherwise you'll have to scrub all that out.  Yech.
2. Roll out your dough.  If it resists, let it rest a little bit.  Because you are using all-purpose flour rather than bread flour, the dough will roll out so much easier.  
3. Spread that 1 tsp of melted butter all over it.  Yep, just that little bit of butter makes a big difference.
4. Spread the chocolate chips all over the dough.
5. Roll up tightly, if you can.  I never get it tight enough.
6. Press the ends together so that it looks like a giant doughnut.
7. Place gently into the Bundt pan, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and let rise for 30 min.
8. At the end of the 30 minutes, begin heating the oven to 450 degrees F.
9. After 15 minutes, the oven should be hot enough.
10. Place the pan into the oven, shut the door, and lower the heat to 400 degrees.
11. Bake for approx 30 minutes.  
12. Check to see if the bread is done.  I use the "knock on the loaf to hear that hollow sound" method.
13. Remove bread from pan and onto a wire rack.  Cool off.
14. Enjoy.

You can see from my pics that the dough split.  I always manage to do this, but the taste is fine, and you get to eat any chocolate chips that escape as the bread cools.  MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm!

The Yarnarian Has Too Much of a Good Thing!

I have so much yarn for sale. Where have all the buyers gone? Long time passing? ...
I think this is going to be a very turbulent ride in terms of yarn sales. Why? I'll tell you why:

1. The economy, the economy, the economy: When you or your significant other have lost your job, you certainly are not going to spend your very precious money on yarn. Well, I wouldn't.

2. Saving money: People seems to be tightening their belts, even if they are fully employed and in no danger of being laid off. Given the rate of debt in this country, this is a good thing.

3. Stash. Every sock knitter I know has enough sock yarn to knit for the next 27 years. We've all reached the explosion stage.

4. Competition: There are so many indie dyers out there now, plus the big online yarn shops, that little dyers like me can get lost in the confusion.

But, this leaves this poor lonely dyer with an excess amount of yarn to sell. What to do? I love dyeing, so I'll continue to do so. If people buy, they buy. If they don't, I'll swipe yarn for me. I may dye at a slower rate or not. I think I'll just continue as I have been doing. I like it, and why should I stop? It's fun. So I won't get rich? Who in holy hell gets rich in this business? Nobody I know. We do it for the love of it. Otherwise, we'd all go out and get a 9-5 job someplace. Not me, though. I'm lucky to be retired, so whatever I make on this (at a rate of about $2/hour!!!) goes towards whatever I want or need.

I hear more people say: I want to quit my job and do this dyeing full time. Um, maybe not a good idea. It's physically hard, the rate per hour is dismally low, and you get no benefits. No health plan, no sick days, no vacation. You go away for a week or two and close your shop, and then you worry that people will forget about you.

And the glamour of the job? Are you kidding? You should take a look at us when we are in dyeing mode. The grungiest clothing, the respirator. Ah beauty. The dyeing is the fun part of the operation. But you have to do the business end too, which is necessary but not great fun.

So why do I do it? I love to play with color. This is like a kid getting a brand new box of crayons. You have to try them all out. You have to mix and match and play and play some more. I never get tired of it. The result is that I have way too many skeins of yarn, and so I sell them.

Well that was a major ramble into something or other. Anyhow, I have lots of pretty yarns if you want. And if you don't want, I still have lots of pretty yarns. ;-)

And now that I've put you to sleep, let me wake you up with a cooking story. The Hubbo and I love Indian food. I can eat it at least once a week. Give me cilantro and I'm in heaven. Bring on the biryani, the tandoori chicken, the masala dosa, the malai kofta, the kheer, the carrot halwa. I get hungry thinking about it.

So the other day I wanted to make plain old spaghetti and sauce for dinner. Nothing beyond that because I was tired, and anyhow, we had been eating out a lot. The cupboard was bare, and all I had was a jar of Trader Joe's organic spaghetti sauce. the one with no salt and no flavor. Blech. So, I diced an onion and sauteed it, added some balti masala (from scratch no less), mushrooms, cut up cherry tomatoes, and cooked that for a bit. Then I dumped in the boring sauce, cooked it up while the water was boiling for the pasta, sprinkled some garam masala (also home made) on top of it. Tossed in about a ladle of the pasta water with all its starchiness, and then mixed them all up. Topped with cilantro, and we had a wonderful feast. It's amazing how you can doctor up the world's most boring sauce and turn it into something wonderful.

Go look at the comments on the post of January 27th. Allison has an hilarious posting of the letter X!

Ria - I just got started on it, and then it just flowed along. I must have gotten my second wind. I told the Hubbo that he can buy more of that blah sauce just so I can doctor it up. Or else I could just use diced tomatoes combined with tomato sauce and then blend it together in the blender, etc, etc. Nah, the boring TJ sauce works well.

Jen - Let's hope he can do something with this mess.

MamaMay - Thanks for the information.