Kugelhopf (TWD)

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Yolanda of The All-Purpose Girl: Kugelhopf. I had never heard of Kugelhopf before. It's part bread, part cake. Dorie explains that it is similar to brioche, but not as rich because there's less butter in it. What's left out of the dough, however, is made up for in the end - as the cake is soaked with melted butter and sprinkled with sugar after it's baked.


Apparently, there are special Kugelhopf pans available. They're called turk's heads or turbans, due to their slender shape and curves. I don't have room for another pan in my kitchen, so I used my Bundt pan instead. I have a 10-15 cup Bundt pan while this recipe calls for an 8-9 cup pan. Consequently, my Kugelhopf ended up more short and squat and not so much slender and curvy ;)


I have a 6 quart KitchenAid stand mixer, so my dough hook had some difficulty mixing the dough thoroughly. So I used the paddle attachment initially to mix everything up, then switched to the dough hook for the last ten minute knead. Instead of raisins, I used orange flavored cranberries from Trader Joe's, just because that's what I had on hand.


The dough was incredibly sticky to work with. When it came time to flop the dough to deflate it, it wasn't like the brioche dough we had previously made - it stuck all over my fingers.


If you're going to make this recipe, make sure you allow plenty of time. The dough needs to rise for at least 1.5 hours (mine took 2 hours to double in size), then you need to deflate it every 30 minutes for 2 hours. Then, it requires a final rest in the refrigerator overnight, followed by 2-3 more hours of rising at room temperature in the pan. Look at all those nice little bubbles that rose up...


The Kugelhopf was just okay, but not great in my opinion. (My husband actually said, "Honey, I love you, but that just isn't good.") I think I was expecting something sweeter, and this had a very mild, buttery flavor. Soaking it in butter and drizzling sugar over it definitely made it better - it would have been drab otherwise. Perhaps I would have liked it better with (gasp) more butter? :) The dried fruit was very good in it, but there wasn't nearly enough - I would recommend doubling the amount.


Thanks Yolanda, for choosing this week's recipe. It was an interesting experience making and tasting Kugelhopf for the first time. When it comes to such a long, drawn out process, however, I think I would much rather have brioche (or cinnamon rolls) than Kugelhopf, so I probably won't be making this again. If you would like the recipe, you can find it here. Make sure you visit the TWD Blog Roll to see what everyone else thought of this buttery treat.

*Recipe notes:
- I would recommend doubling the amount of dried fruit in this.
- I used skim milk instead of whole milk.
- I used salted butter and cut the amount of salt in the recipe in half.
- I also used salted butter to soak the cake - the salty taste of the butter combined with the drizzled sugar was fantastic!
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