Troubleshooting Berliner/Kreppel/Krapfen ; Old-School German Jelly Doughnuts
I've got an old recipe straight from Germany for Berliner or Kreppel or Krapfen or whatever your German friend calls them. A thick jam is actually added to the center of the Kreppeln before frying. Problems: mine were 1) absorbing the jam during proofing and therefore coming out as raw dough on the inside, and 2) splitting themselves in two, opening up in the oil to become an open clam shape rather than, well, a closed-clam shape. Maybe my oil needs to be hotter to prevent the splitting. Maybe if my dough was wetter they would fuse at the seam rather than split. Or if I try to proof them a little less maybe it will give the jam less time to soak into the dough. I'll try to find the "dryest" jam I can, but I'm trying to think if there's another possible solution besides "your jam was too wet". Thoughts?
Use a Bismark piping tip to fill the Berliner or Kreppeln after frying.
Oil temp 350degF minimum, this might take experimentation. You are using an oil thermometer, correct?
Folded shaping doesn't sound right.
What is the provenance of the recipe?
back in the old days piping bags/tips would have been unavailable or at least tricky to make, for the average cook. (But what do I know?) Anyway the existence of such a recipe seems to suggest that home cooks back then found it easier to do it the fill-before-frying way. So my question is not, what's a good recipe for Kreppeln, but: what could have caused the recipe to work for the recipe's author and not for me?
The cookbook concerns "Old Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia".
Sometimes cookbooks publish recipes that don’t really work. Are you sure this one did? Filling after frying is much more commonly recommended, probably for good reason.
I can't help, but I can commiserate. Decades ago, I made jelly doughnuts with jam added before frying. Like yours, they came out uncooked in the middle. The combination of heat, sweet jam, and yeasty undercooked dough made them go very bad, very fast. The interior was not a pretty sight (although quite colourful.)
I guess I would experiment with frying longer, at a lower temp, to cook the insides thoroughly. Not "I", literally; "I" is done with jelly doughnuts.
Yep this recipe is from a very good cookbook full of other foolproof recipes; the kind compiled by the children of the classic old-school German moms and grandmas who could cook up a feast with their eyes closed. With a cookbook like this I tend to assume I am doing something wrong because of modern cooking assumptions I bring to the recipe, rather than the recipe being wrong just because it is old.
This time around I was able to solve both problems! I just wiped the rims of the dough disks with water before sandwiching them together. That made a huge difference.
As for the second problem, I don't know how "I solved it". . . . they just turned out perfect somehow! Glorious hot glob of jam in the middle with fully cooked, airy, chewy-crisp bread all around it, so puffy, so full of holes. The flavor was everything you dream of when you think, "I just know doughnuts can be even more delicious than they look."
Maybe what solved the soggy middles was this: I used clear flour this time. Last time I think it was bread flour. This time I ground and bolted some soft white wheat, and then sifted some store-bought hard red whole wheat flour. So is it possible that, due to the bran/germ that gets through the sieve, clear flour absorbs liquid more slowly? Thus the jam did not have time to get absorbed into the dough during the proofing? Either way it worked so beautifully, I felt like the satiny, elastic dough and the smooth, feather-soft fried result were exactly what a doughnut-scientist is looking for. Knowing German flour in general, but especially the way it used to be done in the dorfs, I suspect this bolted red/white combo is just the kind they would have used back when this recipe was taken down.
What is the title of the cookbook, and who is the author? It's OK if it is in German. Google Translate to the rescue! ;)
Thanks! :)
Could you share this recipe? I have some clear flour, but could just sift the whole grain flour too.
The way you described your doughnuts reminded me of those from a doughnut shop that was once written up in the Bay Area as the best!
Congratulations for getting the solution!
Good for you.
Did you do anything different with the frying? Longer, cooler, just the same?
The title of the cookbook is Bavarian Cooking by Ollie Lieb.
I'd be glad to share the recipe. I also tried it with sour milk instead of milk, reduced the yeast (ADY) to about 1.5~2 tsp, and added 1/2 tsp baking soda - with immense success. I love how these transition from a crisp exterior to a soft interior, yet with no apparent "crust".
I didn't do anything differently with the frying as far as I know.
Notice I used the extra cuttings from the rolled-out dough to tie little knots - super fun tidbits to munch!
Thanks very much, all.
Thanks. With respect, I don't see this as a professional-grade recipe.
The book, respectfully, appears to be recipes from family and friends "assembled" into a cookbook. How much testing and vetting did Leeb do to confirm the recipes' performance?
Note that if you do not achieve a good seal between the two layers of dough in Leeb's instructions, you will have delamination.
Buy a Bismark piping tip and make these the right way by filling after frying.
Quantifying the amount of testing that goes into a recipe that has been around for generations, and was born organically out of the broader tradition of fried sweet doughs and pastries enjoyed at Carnevale across most of Europe for centuries. . . . an impossible feat.
And as for whether this is a professional recipe. I guarantee you the average skilled housewife back in the day in working-class Germany spent more time in the kitchen than any overworked paid chef you can name. And she would have started as soon as she was old enough to hold a spoon. So forgive me for reiterating but this is an old-school recipe made by people who did not have a convenient shop to go to or way to make a beautiful Bismark piping tip. For the humble down-to-earth momma dedicated to her kitchen, this is the right way.
@Bronze,
I agree. I suspect people look back at that time through a view tainted by their more recent experience of "housewife". Their basis point is really the hollowed out end of that role as it had once been. By the time they came into being, the deep professional skill component had already gone - the role had already fundamentally changed as had the the skill set they needed.
The social networks and gatherings so often derided as 'tea parties' were regular and essential exchanges of technique, methods and a brutal testing ground. Traditional recipes are centuries of evolutionary testing (what would now be seen as akin to machine learning) by tens of thousands by practitioners.
One thing to beware of in recipes and books like this is the possibility of transcription or translation errors. I couldn’t help but notice that this traditional Bavarian recipe includes Americanized measurements and equipment. There are many potential pitfalls when using folk recipes.
im often reminded of the hand-written recipe my grandmother once gave me for a cake. I tried it and it was dreadful. When asked about it she told me that she copied it from somewhere and never made it herself. Obviously… something in the recipe was wrong because she was a fantastic home cook.
In addition to the assumed knowledge component. (No-one writes down the remember to keep breathing in an instruction).
Also don't discount people wanting to keep their secrets. Even if you shared a recipe due to social etiquette...does not mean you really want to share all of it. Remember they had to live in their social network and they would know full well what social slights would make life difficult for them.
Even teaspoons and tablespoons may vary a lot between countries. For example, an Australian tablespoon is about 1/3 larger than a US tablespoon.
Bronze, I'm glad your doughnuts turned out so well eventually.