It was an amazing encounter. I had just arrived in Hirakata-shi last summer when I entered a convenience store. And there it was: A slice of Baumkuchen, traditional East German pastry "Made in Kobe." Familiar things in an unfamiliar environment appear to be even stranger than Sushi. I just had to buy it and started wondering about the persistent Japanese Baumkuchen fad.
First of all Baumkuchen can be hard to find in Germany but seems to be an ubiquitous cake in Japan. It is considered to be something typically German, but it isn't. Its origins must have been somewhere between Cottbus and Salzwedel in the East. Funny enough Japan's big department stores import the real stuff from East Germany's most famous manufacturers. = As you may know the cake is made by spreading the dough on a roll rotating over the fire. So that's why there's a hole in the middle and that's where the circles similar to a tree's annual circles come from. In the days of the German Democratic Republic wood from beech trees was used for the baking process to add its peculiar flavour to the cake. Recipies varied from town to town especially as far as the amounts of butter and wheat starch used per kilo are concerned.
Fortunately I came across Hans Herrdegen who runs a pastry shop in Mannheim and is a Baumkuchen maker himself since 1953. His Baumkuchen won the gold medal of the Bavarian bakers' association fetching a stunning 46 out of a maximum of 50 points. He has been to Kobe himself visiting the "Freundlieb German Home Bakery" there and offered me his professional knowledge on the whole issue.
According to Mr. Herrdegen, whose Baumkuchen is still handmade, the Japanese bakeries use machines able to produce four up to six Baumkuchen at the same time. The factories will be able to manufacture even more even faster in a neverending baking process. Their machinery enables them to make Baumkuchen with 20 and more circles while handmade pastry of the same diameter has only 11 or 12 rings. But more circles doesn't mean better taste as the dark parts are also the dry parts of the pastry. So the more circles you have the drier it gets. Hans Herrdegen's pastry is 75cm long and has 18 circles. It is made with butter, "maruchipan" and real Rum. It is sold in 200g-slices. His shop which is close to the local Goethe Institute is always bustling with Japanese exchange students looking for the real stuff. = Unfortunately Japanese manufacturers weren't that communicative, but there's a list of ingedients on all their products, so judge for yourself. = Anyway I found a recipe for KTO readers interested in doing their own Baumkuchen in a cooking manual published in 1928. It works with a normal oven, so don't worry, take a day off and start with it.
The ingredients for a medium sized Baumkuchen cake: 500g real butter
500g sugar 10 eggs 375g wheat flour 125g potato flour 1 stick of real Bourbon
vanilla some ground Cardamom 60g ground almonds 3 spoons of real Rum minced
peel of 1/2 lemon baking-powder for 500g flour
First seperate yolk and white of the eggs. Warm the butter, but don't
heat it. Stir the butter until it becomes foamy, then add the egg yolks
and sugar. Adding one yolk followed by two spoons of sugar, then the next
yolk, etc, works best. The longer you stir the butter with the egg yolks
and the sugar the better the pastry gets. One hour would be fine, but 30
minutes should do as well. = Now stir the white of the eggs in a seperate
bowl until it gets really firm. Add the sieved flour (both wheat and potato),
the lemon peel, the Rum and the almonds slowly to the butter-yolk-sugar
mass and start adding one third of the firm stirred white of the eggs.
Finally you slowly add the rest of the white of the eggs and stir carefully.
If the white of the eggs hasn't been stirred properly or if you left it
on the shelf for too long the dough will become too firm. But never mind.
If I can do it, you can do it, too.
Start with filling two spoons of the dough in a well-buttered circular
pastry-mould and bake it in your oven. Take it out, spread a new layer
the same way and bake it again. Ovens enabling you to get heat from above
only are preferrable. To avoid the first layer from getting too dark or
firm you can put the pastry-mould in a vessel filled with hot water while
baking layer for layer in your oven. In the end the Baumkuchen should receive
a milk chocolate icing or a white sugar icing instead. Decorate it with
candied fruits or almonds, if you'd like to.
