Pack the filling tightly into a couple of warm, sterilised jars. It is important to make sure there are no air bubbles in the mixture, so tap the jars gently on a work surface to disperse any bubbles. If you notice a bubble at the side of a jar, push a clean spoon down into it so that it pops, then tap the jar again on the work surface. Seal the jars immediately.
Stored in a cool, dark place, this will keep well for up to 6 months. Once opened, refrigerate and use within 3 days.
VARIATIONS:
CARDAMOM AND PEAR
Replace half the apples with pears, and the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg with ¾ teaspoon ground cardamom. Follow the instructions above.
BAY AND JUNIPER
Replace the ground cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg with ½ teaspoon finely ground juniper berries and 2 bay leaves. Follow the same instructions as above. You can remove the bay leaves before jarring up the Strudel filling if you don’t want the flavour to be too strong (I leave mine in).
EVERYDAY SOURDOUGH WITH RYE AND WHEAT FLOUR
BAKING NOTES
Yeast – I use fresh yeast where I can because I find it produces a particularly good rise and flavour. Fresh yeast can be found in most supermarkets and food shops these days, and is very cheap. If I have no fresh yeast to hand, I will use dried easy bake/fast-action yeast instead. I always have a tin of dried yeast in the fridge door for occasions of late-night baking.
Salt – I always use fine sea salt for bread baking.
Oven – I use the convection (fan) setting when baking bread. The fan swirls the hot air around the oven to ensure an even bake.
BREAD
Each morning Omi would get up at daybreak and walk to her local bakery for rolls and a quarter loaf of rye bread. Whenever I was staying I would accompany her on these daily trips. The early morning Bavarian air smelt so alive and full of pine until we neared the bakery, which was when the Ofenduft (fragrance from the oven) smacked you in the face like an invisible wall in the air. Such a bold, seductive smell for such a small, unassuming shop – dimly lit, with not even a shop sign above the door, the Bäckerei could easily have been mistaken for someone’s house. I felt like we were part of a clandestine club, sneaking in through the side door for a dawn meeting.
German bakeries are straightforward; they have a no-nonsense air about them. Even as a small child I recognised them as an important part of German society. Although the output of these little, mainly family-run shops was quite large, the process was still wholly artisan, and as you left carrying your cotton bag stuffed full with warm bread, you couldn’t help but feel like the day was going to turn out all right. Sadly, these types of bakeries are now in decline; while they do still physically exist, pre-made dough is often brought in and simply finished off in the oven. This may speed up the process and make life easier for the baker, but convenience comes with a price, and it’s one I’m rarely willing to pay. I remain hopeful – hopeful that they won’t die out, they can’t die out, we need them – I know I’m not alone.
We bake our own bread at home daily, a task which has become so embedded into our everyday routine that I feel out of sync if for some reason it doesn’t happen. Watching a loaf of bread rise into a pillowy mound or a sourdough starter liven up into breathing bubbles with the addition of flour and water is life-confirming – it reassures us that nature is a driving force and connects us to the very process of life itself.
Bread-baking not only binds us with nature, it sparks imagination and brings a little bit of magic into our kitchen each day. Perhaps it sounds over the top, for there is of course a science behind it all, but I am still amazed each day when I watch the miraculous process that water and flour undergo to produce a loaf of bread.
In Germany there are infinitely more varieties of flour on offer in everyday shops than here in the UK. Many breads are made with a mixture of flours, Vierkornbrot (four-grain bread) being a classic example. The differences don’t just stop there, either: you can buy varying grades of each milled flour, some roughly textured and full of husk, others so fine they are like dust. It isn’t uncommon among those who bake bread daily to have a small flour mill in the kitchen. Rye flour is prevalent, which also means that many breads on offer are lower in gluten and higher in nutrients than regular wheat loaves.
BREAD ROLLS
BREAD ROLLS
Mum’s Omi Hedel used to live above a bakery in the East German town of Görlitz. This bakery was serious – it sold only two things: bread rolls – Brötchen – and Roggenbrot – rye bread made with sourdough. Hedel awoke each morning to the smell of Brötchen rising through the cracks in her floorboards – it is no surprise, then, that she never made her own.
When Hedel eventually became of an age where she would be more of a financial burden to the state than an asset, she was granted a move to the West. She went to live in Bockum-Hövel, Westphalia, with her daughter Ursula, my Omi. Before she left, though, she acquired from downstairs a jar of sourdough starter and the bread roll recipe, which I often bake as a standard white loaf. The rolls are deliciously light, yet have a chewy soft interior hidden beneath a crunchy crackling crust. When very fresh and cut through with a knife, the centre rolls up into a little dense cigar of dough – my favourite part.
These rolls are best eaten fresh the day they are made. In Germany they are mainly eaten as a breakfast roll at the weekends but it would require quite some dedication to get up early enough to make them for breakfast, so usually we make and eat these for lunch or dinner at home. I make a large batch, for the simple reason that this is the perfect bread for dumplings, which we make with the stale leftover rolls and eat the following day (see here for dumpling recipe). You can easily halve the recipe, though, if