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German Baker's Coffee Cake
4 pounds of light bread dough. 8 ounces of sugar. 8 ounces of butter or lard. 1 egg (Not essential.) Take the dough at noon and mix in the ingredients all slightly warm. Knead it on the table with flour sufficient. Set to rise until 4 o'clock. Knead it again by spreading it out on the table with the knuckles, folding over and repeating. Roll it out to sheets scarcely thicker than a pencil, place on baking pans, brush over with either water or melted lard, or milk. Rise about an hour. Score the cakes with a knife point as you put them in the oven to prevent the crust puffing up. Bake about 15 minutes. One of the attractions of this plain cake is the powdered cinnamon and sugar sifted on top after baking, the cake being first brushed with sugar and water. Cut in squares and serve hot.
The foregoing makes a sheet of cake large enough to cover a stove top.
This is a bakery formula scaled for a shop: four pounds of already-risen bread dough enriched with fat and sugar, then sheeted thin and baked fast. Everything about it assumes you have bread dough on hand and a large flat oven.
- The dough"Light bread dough" means a plain white yeast dough already through its first rise. Four pounds is roughly a batch made from 9 to 11 cups of flour, depending on hydration; scale the whole recipe down by half for a domestic kitchen and a half-sheet pan.
- Enriching a risen doughThe hinge of the recipe. Sugar and fat added after the yeast has established itself will slacken the dough, so work them in gradually and expect to add flour as directed. Have the butter and sugar slightly warm, as the recipe directs, rather than cold, or they will be harder to incorporate.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Fifteen minutes for a sheet the thickness of a pencil points to a hot oven; something around 400F is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- Butter or lardLard was the cheaper shop choice and gives a softer, shorter crumb; butter gives more flavour. Either works, and modern shortening is not an improvement on either here.
- The scheduleNoon to four is a four-hour second rise, which suits a cool bakehouse. In a warm modern kitchen the dough will be ready in one to two hours; go by volume rather than the clock, and refrigerate if you need to stretch the timing.
- ScoringPricking or slashing the surface as it goes in lets steam escape so the top crust does not lift away from the crumb in a single blister. Do not skip it on a sheet rolled this thin.
- The toppingSugar-and-water glaze brushed on hot, then cinnamon sugar sifted over, gives the crackly finish. A rough guide is a tablespoon of cinnamon to a cup of sugar; apply while the cake is still warm enough for it to stick.
- Yield"Large enough to cover a stove top" suggests something close to a full sheet pan, around 18 by 26 inches, cut into a few dozen squares. A half batch fits a standard half-sheet pan.
The German-American bakeries of the nineteenth-century Midwest and the eastern cities knew this kind of economy well: a coffee cake that costs almost nothing because it is made from the same bread dough already mixed for the day's loaves, sweetened and fattened after the fact. It belongs to the broad family of Blechkuchen — baked in a tray and cut into squares — and specifically to the plain cinnamon-sugar end of it, without the fruit, streusel or custard that a fancier version would carry. Books like The American Pastry Cook were written for working bakers rather than housewives, which is why the recipe is given in pounds and run on a shop clock. The egg is left optional, though the book does not say why.