Fermented German Gingerbread

[Matthew.Taylor]

https://www.wildfermentation.com/german-fermented-gingerbread-cookies/

 

I saw this link on a baking forum a year or so ago, and have been meaning to try it out ever since. Finally, I bit the bullet and got the stuff for it. There's a huge grocery store called Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati that has food from all over the world, and I managed to find everything there. Basically I translated the recipe as 1 cup Treacle + 1 cup Organic Honey + 2 cups Organic All-purpose flour. Fermented Gingerbread, it just sounds fascinating. My Great Grandpa Balzhizer used to make his own wine...and his own Sauerkraut....in the same room, which is probably the reason my dad can't eat Sauerkraut, but that's another story.

 

So this is out in the garage right now, and due to my paranoia, I decided to masking tape the thing shut, and I hope that won't be a problem. It's November 8th right, now, and I figure I'll try baking it around December 20th.

 

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

[DesertTinker]

29 minutes ago, Matthew.Taylor said:

https://www.wildfermentation.com/german-fermented-gingerbread-cookies/

 

I saw this link on a baking forum a year or so ago, and have been meaning to try it out ever since. Finally, I bit the bullet and got the stuff for it. There's a huge grocery store called Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati that has food from all over the world, and I managed to find everything there. Basically I translated the recipe as 1 cup Treacle + 1 cup Organic Honey + 2 cups Organic All-purpose flour. Fermented Gingerbread, it just sounds fascinating. My Great Grandpa Balzhizer used to make his own wine...and his own Sauerkraut....in the same room, which is probably the reason my dad can't eat Sauerkraut, but that's another story.

 

So this is out in the garage right now, and due to my paranoia, I decided to masking tape the thing shut, and I hope that won't be a problem. It's November 8th right, now, and I figure I'll try baking it around December 20th.

 

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

 

I wouldn’t seal the entire rim of the container with plastic tape like that, maybe just a simple cross tape x, and put it on some sort of tray, should it become very active and try to escape the container. I’d rather have an oozing overflow than an explosion of goo.

[heidih]

Right - some air is good. Do report back. 

[Matthew.Taylor]

Ok I’ve taken your advice and have replaced the tape with an X of tape across the top. Some air probably would be good. It’s out in the garage right now, and it’s pretty cold out there. 

[pastrygirl]

Ratios by weight do not equal the same ratios by volume. Honey is dense and the 1 kg honey should be about 3 or 3.5 cups. Flour is light & fluffy so the 2 kg flour equals about 13 or 14 cups. I think you need more flour. And a scale  

[Matthew.Taylor]

Probably, it was pretty loose when I put them together. My understanding of baking ratios is usually defined more by cups then grams, so I’ll consider taking this down. Let me see if there’s any reaction first.

EDIT: I really don’t want to throw this away, how much flour would you suggest to make things more even?

Edited November 9, 2019 by Matthew.Taylor (log)

[Matthew.Taylor]

12 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

Ratios by weight do not equal the same ratios by volume. Honey is dense and the 1 kg honey should be about 3 or 3.5 cups. Flour is light & fluffy so the 2 kg flour equals about 13 or 14 cups. I think you need more flour. And a scale  

OK, I added a cup and a half more flour to it, and it does look a lot more like a cookie dough now. I'm just gonna wait now and see what happens.

[keychris]

if it's any help, a cup of flour for me is about 180g (a cup of water is 250g). A cup of honey is about 400g.

[Matthew.Taylor]

Ok I’ve talked some with the people who originally posted that link on another forum. I used a cup of Black Treacle and a cup of Organic Honey. So in order to balance it all out, I will need to add just slightly less than two more cups of flour. Judging by my research, the original listed “lager dough” recipe can be translated as follows:

 

1 kg of treacle = 2.97 cups

1 kg of honey = 2.94 cups

2 kgs of All-purpose flour equals 16 cups.

 

So to lower the amount you need 1 cup of treacle, 1cup of honey, and 5 and 1/3 cup of the flour. After that there is the fermentation period, then the adding of spices/salt and fillings, then finally the leavening.

Edited November 11, 2019 by Matthew.Taylor
Misspelling. (log)

[Wholemeal Crank]

Inspired by discussion in another forum, I found Jeffrey Hamelman's recipe for lebkuchen on ckbk.com (from Bread), which is quite similar but richer than the version linked above from Wild Fermentation.  I used Hamelman's as my starting point, and decreased the quantity because it was an experiment, used fresh-milled whole rye flour because that's how I roll, and it was quite an interesting process.  

 

I mixed honey and flour without heating the honey first, and put the quite firm dough into a half-gallon mason jar (I would not do that again because it was quite hard to get it back out!), put on a lid but left it a bit loose.  And then I put it on a bottom shelf of the kitchen, and put a reminder on my calendar to check it out in 3 months.  It did not visibly change in that time.

 

Then I prepped everything else to be mixed into the dough.  I chopped dried pears (I prefer dried fruit to citron in confections) and candied ginger (TJ's 'uncrystallized ginger' is softer and less sugary than more easily available harder versions with thicker coatings of sugar) in the food processor with some unbleached all-purpose flour to keep the pieces separate.  Unfortunately the pears were softer than usual and I was wary of adding too much flour so they were more pasty separate/fluffy bits.  

 

I dissolved the ammonium carbonate and the baking soda in cream instead of milk because I had some extra cream.   

 

And I added extra cream and water because the long-aged/fermented dough was just too hard to mix; my fresh whole grain flours need more water than the usual refined flours and I expected this.  I should have broken the hard dough up smaller first, and I added the spices, liquid and dried ingredients all together so again, the dried fruit and ginger got pulverized by the long mixing needed to really break up the aged/fermented dough.

 

Finally, I overbaked the result, so there is a relatively hard crust on the outside.  

 

But despite all that, they're pretty good, and while I usually find cookies made without butter and/or nuts sadly lacking, these have a fine depth of flavor that must come from the long aging.  I also expected them to be very sweet--equal weights of honey and flour, oh my--but they feel well balanced.  I'm now very curious to know if there is some enzymatic or microbial activity that breaks down some of the fructose so it isn't so sweet.

 

Another surprise:  I was quite far along in the process before I realized that this version includes no ginger or cloves--unlike virtually every gingerbread recipe I've encountered before.  But mine got the candied ginger and maybe that's enough.  I like them enough to try again...but I'm not sure if I'll use ginger or cloves this time.  I've got several months to decide!

 

Here's what I ended up doing....but as noted above, I'll do some things differently next time.  

500 grams fresh whole rye flour
500 grams honey

Mixed until smooth and aged 3 months covered but not super tightly sealed in my Los Angeles kitchen with temps 60s-70s throughout.

 

When preparing to bake the lebkuchen:

 

100 gram TJs uncrystallized ginger
1 tablespoon unbleached flour

Chopped in food processor to very small individual bits

 

200 grams dried pears
1/4 cup unbleached flour

Chopped in food processor (may need a bit more flour next time to avoid pear paste)

 

about 75 grams (4 large) egg yolks

 

1 teaspoon salt
about a tablespoon of lemon zest
1 teaspoon ammonium carbonate
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground aniseed
1/2 nutmeg, grated (about 1 1/2 teaspoon of grated nutmeg)
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, ground

 

1/2 cup cream
1/4 cup water

 

I scooped the dough out of the jar (bending a few spoons and spatulas in the process, maybe I can wrap the dough in a cylinder of plastic wrap and stick that inside the jar, so it still gets the protection against insects from the canning-jar lid but is easier to remove at the end for next time) and broke it up to no more than walnuts sized pieces in the bowl of my kitchenaid mixer.

 

I foolishly added the chopped pears and ginger and eggs at the same time, and it was ugly lumpy solids-in-wet stuff for a very long time, mixing on low power (with one or two breaks to cool down my mixer--this was HARD work for the moter).

 

I dissolved the spices and leavenings in some of the cream, and mixed that in, and kept adding a tablespoon more here and there, ran out of cream, and added water, and mixed  until the dough was more or less smooth--but still firm enough that  never left low speed.   The ammonium rendered it unpleasing to taste so I wasn't sure what I had at that point.

 

I scaled the dough to as carefully as possible match Hamelman's recommendations of baking it in loaf pans to speed baking and avoid overdone crusts, and ended up doing a bunch of algebra to figure out how many grams to a muffin cup when I didn't have enough loaf pans.  I pressed the dough into the pans by hand--and was surprised afterwards to see how lumpy the bottoms were when the tops smoothed pretty nicely.

 

I also messed with the baking temps because I was too lazy to remove my baking steels from the oven.  I won't be so lazy next time.  And I probably will not use the convection setting either. The thickness of the crusts on this first batch are not very pleasing.  I baked them 350 for 15 minutes and 20 more minutes at 300.  

 

In spite of being less than beautiful, and some foolishness planning out the recipe, they're really quite tasty.  They're dense but chewy and fruity and spicy.  

 

The recipe made enough for 2 narrow loaf pans (8.5 x 3 inches) and a dozen muffin-sized pieces (2 inches diameter standard sized cups).  It's about 1/2 inch thick.

 

(cut with serrated knife one direction, and torn open the other way)

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Wholemeal Crank
added link (log)

[Wholemeal Crank]

I forgot to report back that I did a second experiment with Lebkuchen in which I compared the standard preparation with a version where I did not mix and ferment flour and honey together.  I prepped a batch with 500 grams of rye and 500 grams of honey, and at the same time I milled another 125 grams of rye that I vacuum-sealed and stored in the freezer.  I pulled that out and mixed it with honey and then did my best to keep things as even as possible from that point, grinding the spices and mixing with leavening, and whisking liquids for both and then dividing for the two batches of flour/honey.  I can't find the photos I took to compare them at the moment--there's been a switch of laptops, and when I find them I will post, but what I recall is that the fermented/aged dough was smoother when baked with a less cracked surface; it was slightly denser texture; and it has a subtle increased depth and richness of flavor.  I brought a few slices for a taste test with my sister and my mother, and the fermented ones disappeared, and the non-fermented were leftover for me to finish on the drive back home.

 

So the fermentation was really doing something, but I'm wondering now whether the practice of starting it months ahead was developed for the subtle improvement in flavor, because honey was harvested in the late summer or early fall, or....?

[heidih]

You do keep thongs interesting. Now I have a craving for it. I do recall the 'smoothness" the one time I had it.

[Wholemeal Crank]

I think I can hook you up with some.....I've got quite a bit still hanging about in the cookie jar, and you live in Los Angeles.

[heidih]

1 hour ago, Wholemeal Crank said:

I think I can hook you up with some.....I've got quite a bit still hanging about in the cookie jar, and you live in Los Angeles.

Big city! I'm up in Rolling Hills but thanks for the offer