By Published Oct. 28, 2016.
In Bread Illustrated—our first book devoted to bread—we show that baking a perfect loaf is no mystery: It’s just a matter of breaking recipes down into essential steps that demystify the art and science of this age-old process. After rigorous testing, we have created a roadmap to baking more than 100 foolproof breads, each accompanied by step-by-step photo tutorials.
Seasoned baker Sarah Kieffer of The Vanilla Bean Blog is addicted to kolaches. Lucky for her our newest release, Bread Illustrated, contains a recipe for these palm-sized sweets so she can make them at home whenever a craving may arise. “When I first came across them in Bread Illustrated, I instantly walked to my kitchen cupboards and took out all the ingredients needed: flour, yeast, butter, cream cheese, milk, sugar, lemon,” said Sarah. As Sarah notes in her blog post, kolaches have a ‘cult-like’ following. In fact, multiple towns in Texas claim to be the ‘kolache capital,’ and hold kolache festivals.
While I worked the dough on my counter top, my mind jumped to purchasing a nearby corner bakery for the sole purpose of filling it with kolaches.
What else did Sarah have to say about our recipe for kolaches?
“While I worked the dough on my counter top, my mind jumped to purchasing a nearby corner bakery for the sole purpose of filling it with kolaches. There would be trays lined with rows and rows of beautiful circles, all topped differently: cream cheese, chocolate and white chocolate, jam and fresh fruit, extracts, vanilla bean, meringue, whipped cream, ice cream. They would compete with local doughnuts shops for breakfast, boasting both simplicity and extravagance in every dozen sold.”
“Of course, such day dreams are not able to become reality at this point, but each bite I take convinces me otherwise.”
