SC - Recipe: Spanish babka (was cinnamon rolls)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Hullo, the list!

There are certain parallels to modern recipes in the Stuffed Tortillon
recipe, which might help modern cooks (i.e. us) understand what's going on.

The number of eggs required to accurately reproduce the recipe is a
legitimate question that I'll leave to others. I was intrigued by the
reference to cutting the rolled-out dough around the edge; it reminds me
a great deal of most strudel recipes I've seen, because they involve
stretching the dough by hand, with the assistance of gravity, rather
than rolling it out with a rolling pin. So, the edges tend to be thicker
than the center. Ask a metalworker about the effects of raising a piece
of sheet metal; the same thing happens. Removing those thickened edges
suggests an extreme delicacy, a meticulousness to the cuisine. Now, if
this is inteneded to be rolled with a rolling pin, why remove or cut the edges?

As for the instruction to roll it upwards, with one end tighter than the
other, I wonder if the line about starting from the long edge of the
pastry could imply starting from one end of the roll to be, in other
words putting uneven torsion on the two ends of the roll-to-be. (Which
might explain the emphasis on not letting the rather short dough tear.)
This would not only cause one end to be tighter than the other, but if
the end _not_ under pressure from the hands remains slightly stuck to
the board, the end in your hands would tend to spiral, to some extent,
around the open end. It's beginning to look to me like the final form of
the tortillon could be a double spiral, with a raised center where the
looser-rolled end lies.

The liner pastry might or might not be intended to be eaten; it brings
to mind some of the tracta stuff we've been discussing in connection
with Cato's placenta cheesecake recipe. It might be that this has to go
into a fairly hot oven, and the plan is for this layer to be allowed to
bake a little bit darker than is palatable, then the snail-like covering
only be eaten. The basting instructions suggest the upper portion should
be slightly crisp but tender, not too crusty. The final instructions
about the shape of the pan seems to support the idea that this cooks
fairly quickly, which in turn might suggest a moderately hot (what more
modern cooks would call a quick) oven. Whether or not that's consistent
with the instructions about baking it under an earthenware cloche, I
don't know.

Seems rather a lot like a stollen...lovely stuff!
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================