So it should come as no surprise that with so many spirits in the wheat and Ancient Goodness in the land, we have made a special effort in this cookbook to invoke only the best ingredients, Pennsylvania grown, since they represent our cultural authenticity as we know it – and perhaps are one reason many Pennsylvania Dutch are known to attain such a great and fruitful age. Thus, in every recipe we have used wherever possible locally raised, harvested and milled non-GMO organic flours and other local ingredients. Pennsylvania is the third most important agricultural state in the country, and the leading source of fresh produce on the East Coast. We represent a special niche in American cuisine. It may be no exaggeration to suggest that American Cookery was invented here (a tale of culinary fusionism that I intend to take up in a future book on Philadelphia cuisine).
For those unfamiliar with this aspect of American history, the fusion of different early immigrant cultures first arose in colonial Pennsylvania, a region where free-minded Quakers encouraged different peoples and religions to settle side by side, to intermarry and share the bounties of the Peaceable Kingdom together. While the Pennsylvania Dutch managed to retain their own distinctive identity, their culinary traditions were quickly Americanized, and that is why the recipes in this book represent a New World culinary tradition unique among all other American regional cookeries.
The roots of Pennsylvania Dutch cookery trace to Southwest Germany and Alsace in such foods as New Year’s Pretzels, Lebkuchen, or Adam and Eve Cookies. But through the blending of Old World regionalisms and New World realities an entirely new culinary expression was born. Old Germany knows nothing of Fish Pie or Whoopie Cakes, Chinquapin Jumbles, Boskie Boys or Peanut Datsch. The inventiveness of the Pennsylvania Dutch housewife has taken these heirloom baking traditions into areas unknown to their Old World ancestors. The end result is cookery as thoroughly American as Shoofly Pie.
From a technical standpoint, Pennsylvania Dutch baking is highly developed and based on the idea of interchangeable parts. This harks back to the innate frugality of the Dutch themselves, who waste nothing and find creative ways to repurpose leftover food. Thus, dough for one type of bread can be reinvented with additional ingredients to make something else. Crumbs from cakes can be used to dust bread or cake pans, crackers are turned into pie, pie crusts can be transformed into cookies or into the ever-pragmatic Slop Tarts that Dutch children find in their school lunch boxes.
Since there are many technical dialect terms in Pennsylvania Dutch cookery, I have included a glossary (page 163) illustrated with pictures of traditional baking tools and ingredients. You do not need to own these utensils to bake the Dutch way, but it helps to know what they look like so that you can find substitutes if you want them.
About the photography: Pennsylvania Dutch food, especially farmhouse cookery, has an appearance that is unique; it looks best straight from the oven in settings that represent the spirit of its long tradition. With that in mind – and with an eye long trained in the cuisine and the tonalities of the ever-changing seasons – I photographed many of the recipes at the historic Sharadin Farmstead, home of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University.
Pennsylvania Dutch cookery, whether savory meals or festive baking, is highly seasonal and pegged inevitably to the phases of the moon, as outlined in our old-time almanacs. These traditions are probably best expressed in the folk tales about our Waldmops, who represents the Earth in all its diversity and fertility. By leaving Antler Cookies for him in the woods each Fastnacht (Fat Tuesday), we remind him of our respect for the Green World around us and that we are friends and allies in making this land a better place.
While the Waldmops was certainly no baker, his protective supervision over the grains that produced the flours used in our baking tradition was considered vital to the outcome of every baking day. The so-called “spirits in the wheat” connected his natural world with that of the table.
The spirituality of Pennsylvania Dutch food, whether folk belief or religious, is doubtless best expressed by our bread, which is the subject of the first chapter.
Saffron Bread
ONE
FESTIVE BREADS
Fescht Brode
If we reduced Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse culture to one iconic dish, it would be sauerkraut without a question; yet eye-catching, delicious-tasting breads also define the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch table, with their remarkable range of festive shapes and flavors. During the colonial period, Pennsylvania became the breadbasket of the English colonies. The main growers of that wheat were the Pennsylvania Dutch. They measured their wealth in bushels of wheat, they paid bills with it, and their bread baking was legendary. Any farmhouse worthy of the name possessed a beehive bake oven in the yard not far from the kitchen door. It was the weekly task of the mistress of the household to bake bread, pies and cakes – often on a massive scale. Baking was generally undertaken on Fridays so that there would be plenty to eat for Sunday dinner. However, when the holidays drew near or a wedding loomed on the calendar, the baking frenzy went into high gear, usually with the help of relatives or friends from the neighborhood. The most traditional of these specialty items demanded their own shape, flavor and story. That is the subject of the chapter at hand.
The original Pennsylvania Dutch term for cake was Siesser Brod (sweetened bread), which in local parlance among the non-Dutch became “cake bread.” Siesser Brod implied that the Fordeeg (foundation dough) was bread dough, the very same used for making common loaf bread, except that the foundation dough was then elaborated with any number of additional ingredients, such as eggs, honey, sugar, spices, saffron or dried fruit. These dressed-up breads took many forms, perhaps the oldest and most classic being Schtrietzel, which was a loaf of bread shaped like a braid, or as some culinary historians would suggest, a head of grain. Regardless of the symbolic meaning, these were special occasion foods and some were only made once a year. Many did not contain much honey or sugar since they were meant to be toasted and eaten with jam – the classic spread being Quince Honey (Qwiddehunnich) as presented on page 11. One of the basic recipes in this category, which became a fixture of many Sunday dinners, is so-called Dutch Bread, in some respects a study in simplicity because it is not very rich in terms of ingredients. Our heirloom recipe was preserved by Anna Bertolet Hunter (1869-1946) of Reading, Pennsylvania. The Bertolets are one of the oldest and most distinguished Pennsylvania Dutch families in Berks County and have always been at the forefront when it comes to preserving local culture.
Aside from farmhouse baking, there are period records from before the Civil War of bakeries in large towns that specialized in festive breads like the New Year’s Pretzel, large gingerbread figures and Hutzelbrodt – since these breads require an oversized oven. In rural areas, this task sometimes fell to local taverns, which possessed the bake-oven capacity and turnover of customers to generate extra money from seasonal sales. It was also common for people in the neighborhood to pitch in to help the taverns during the busy holidays – and get paid with Christmas baked goods in return for the work.
One of the earliest historical recipes for Siesser