[Sca-cooks] Spiesskuchen

[Martinsen at ansteorra.org]

That was going to be my next question - about the yeast. 
 It seems more like a sweet bread recipe than a cake.  So 
the Baumkuchen isn't were I need to look.  The dough is 
definite a "dough" not a "batter" like you would need to 
do the cake with.  Thanks for the translation.  I'll throw 
mine up tonight for comparison.

Cooking it on a spit would make it go faster than an oven 
- and you don't necessarly need a closed box to cook it 
in...hum...maybe I'll have some fun with hubby's grill in 
a few days...It has a rotissary function.... Now I 
actually want one of those auto rotating things you see on 
TV.

On the Baumkuchen - 
I'm waiting on some responses from companies that make 
them, but the earliest reference I've got is from these 
folks:

http://www.eitelbach.com/about.htm

They brag about a 500 year history.  I've emailed them to 
ask for details. More later.

Vitha


On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 12:43:18 -0700 (PDT)
  Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Wow! So close and yet not so close. 
>
>Here is my translation:
>
>Take warm milk and beat eggs into them.  Make a dough 
>with good white flour. Take a little barm 
>and add butter to it. Let it stay a little while under 
>the oven until it rises.  Punch it down. 
>Add a little salt. Roll it out cleanly.  Throw black 
>raisins there on.  Take a warm rolling pin 
>and smear it with butter and lay [or roll] it over the 
>dough. {Probably to work the raisins into
>the dough.}  Wrap the dough therewith and bind it with a 
>piece of cotton together so that is does
>not fall off.  Lay it on the fire and turn slowly about 
>so that it is evenly baked.  And when it 
>is brown, take a basting brush [or stick] and stick it in 
>hot butter and smear the cake with it
>until it is a good brownish and when it is baked, take 
>out the rolling pin spit and wrap it [the
>cake] with the clean cloth so that the heat thereby 
>remains, so let it remain until it become 
>cool. So present it cold to the table when it becomes 
>crisp and good. And one calls this spit
>cake.
>
>This could be an ancestor of baumkuchen in that it is 
>cooked on a spit, but that is the only
>likeness that I can see.
>
>Baumkuchen, which I have not been able to trace farther 
>than the early 19th Century, is a batter
>cake which is poured layer by layer over the spit.  Each 
>layer gets browned and cooked before
>the next layer is poured on.  This is why it is called 
>"baum" or tree cake, because it has
>rings like a tree when you slice it open.  I would love 
>to know where you found references to
>baumkuchen that are earlier than the 19th Century.  Would 
>you share please?
>
>This spit cake is a yeast cake which is rolled out and 
>has raisins added to the dough.  I have
>not found a baumkuchen recipe that uses raisins.  It 
>presumeably has only one layer, although
>I am sure the dough gets wrapped multilayered around the 
>rolling pin, but each layer doesn't
>appear to get browned separately, so it doesn't appear to 
>create a ring effect.
>
>This recipe does sound delightful in and of itself.  It 
>appears to get served as a tube, but
>the recipe doesn't say if anything gets put inside the 
>middle, like you would a canole.
>
>Huette
>
>
>Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for 
>they shall never cease to be amused.
>
>
>		
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