linbakesbread

Good afternoon fellow bread-bakers.

I’m getting caught up on writing up past bakes. Two weeks ago, I attempted to make my Mom’s Dill Kuchen – which, along with my Dad, I absolutely love! I knew the dough was the same as our Nusskolacha dough and I kinda knew what was in the filling based on casual conversations with my Mom, so figured I’d give it a try.

Here is the recipe. Please bake Dill Kuchen with me.

Special Tools you will need:

KitchenAid Mixer

Dough:
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
½ cup sugar

1 package (2 ¼ teaspoons) dry yeast
1/3 cup lukewarm water

2 eggs, slightly beaten
4 ½ cups Montana Sapphire flour
Extra sugar to sprinkle on top

Filling (for half of the dough):
1 15-oz tub cottage cheese
1 egg yolk
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup chopped fresh dill
¼ cup sugar

Directions

Make dough: Heat milk in microwave for about 2 minutes (until it’s hot but not boiling). Meanwhile, in bowl of mixer, put in the stick of butter, ½ cup of sugar and salt. Pour in hot milk and stir. Let it sit for about 10 minutes to cool, stirring every now and then to melt the butter.

Meanwhile, dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. Add this to the cooled butter-milk mixture. Add in the beaten eggs and about 3 ½ cups of the flour. With dough hook, mix for a few minutes. Keep adding flour until the dough starts to pull away from the sides. This should take about 10 minutes (you might not use all of the flour – a soft dough is what you want.).

First rise: Lightly sprinkle flour in a medium size bowl. Put in the dough and sprinkle the dough lightly with flour. Cover and let rise until double, 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Mix topping ingredients: In a medium bowl, mix together the cottage cheese, egg yolk, sour cream, dill and sugar. Set aside.

Shape the kuchen: After dough has risen, dump it out onto a work surface and cut it in half. Working with one half at a time, roll out into roughly the size of your half sheet pan. Lightly grease the sheet pan and transfer the dough onto the sheet pan. If dough shrinks back, pull it to fill the pan. Spread the filling onto the dough.

Second rise: Cover kuchen loosely with saran wrap and let rise about 30 minutes.

Bake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake kuchen for about 30 minutes, until it starts to brown around the edges.

The baked kuchen - a little disappointing!

Reflections on this bake: I definitely need to get my Mom’s proportions on the filling. Mine was good, but not nearly as gooey and luscious as my Mom’s. I think she must use the larger tub of cottage cheese and add more egg and sugar. Also, as you can see from the picture, for the second piece of dough, I made a simple apple filling with apples, cinnamon, butter and sugar.