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German Coffee Bread
⅓ cup butter, or butter and lard ¼ cup sugar ½ teaspoon salt 1 egg 1½ yeast cake dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm milk 1/2 cup raisins stoned and cut in pieces Add butter, sugar, and salt to milk; when lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake, egg well beaten, flour to make stiff batter, and raisins; cover, and let rise over night; in morning spread in buttered dripping-pan one-half inch thick. Cover and let rise again. Before baking, brush over with beaten egg, and cover with following mixture: Melt three tablespoons butter, add one-third cup sugar and one teaspoon cinnamon. When sugar is partially melted, add three tablespoons flour. 1 cup scalded milk 4 yolks of eggs 3 eggs 2/3 cup butter Coffee Cakes (Brioche) ½ cup sugar 2 yeast cakes ½ teaspoon extract lemon or 2 pounded cardamon seeds 4⅔ cups flour
An overnight sweet yeast dough baked flat in a sheet pan under a crumb topping — essentially a streuselkuchen. The legible German Coffee Bread portion works well once the old yeast measure is translated.
- YeastCompressed cakes were sold in more than one size, so any equivalence is approximate; taking a cake as the modern 0.6 oz, one and a half cakes is about 1 tablespoon of active dry or instant yeast — generous for a long overnight rise. Two teaspoons of instant yeast is ample if the kitchen is warm.
- The milk quantityThe quarter cup is given only to dissolve the yeast, yet the method also directs butter, sugar and salt to be added to milk, so a separate milk quantity for the dough seems to have dropped out of the printed list. Something in the region of a cup will likely be needed to bring the flour to a stiff batter.
- FlourNone is specified for the main dough. Plan on 3 to 3½ cups of all-purpose flour — enough for a batter too thick to pour but too slack to knead.
- Overnight riseThe recipe simply says to let it rise overnight, in what would have been a cool kitchen. In a warm modern room a dough this rich and this heavily yeasted may over-ferment and turn sour over eight hours, so the refrigerator is the safer place for it.
- Dripping-panA shallow rectangular roasting or sheet pan. A half-sheet pan (13 by 18 in) spread half an inch deep is the right scale.
- The toppingMelting the butter and stirring in sugar, cinnamon and flour gives a paste, not a crumb. Work it with the fingertips once it cools slightly, then scatter it in pieces so it bakes into distinct clumps.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the topping is set and the dough springs back. The egg wash browns fast, so watch the last five minutes.
- Raisins"Stoned" means seeded — modern raisins are already seedless. Chop them so they distribute through a batter rather than sinking.
- YieldOne half-sheet pan, about 20 squares.
Sweet yeast sheet cakes brushed with egg and finished with a butter-sugar-cinnamon crumb are the everyday coffee cakes of German and Austrian baking, brought into American home kitchens by nineteenth-century immigration and absorbed into cookbooks like this one under the loose label "German." The overnight dough is the older practice: a rich dough was often set the evening before so a slow, cool fermentation did the work while the household slept, and the morning's task was only to spread, top and bake.