Berta's Bergisches Berliner Bread

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 4 m.-sized eggs
• 4 tbsp water
• 500 g caster sugar
• 150 g apple syrup
• 2 pinches of clove pepper
• 2 pinches of cinnamon powder
• 500 g flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
• 200 g dark chocolate shavings
• 1 kg almond(s), unpeeled

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest period approx. 5 days; Cooking/baking time approx. 2 hours; Total time approx. 5 days 3 hours

a crunchy crispy experience, similar to Italian Cantuccini, for about 120 pieces

Makes about 120 cookies. It is correct that there is NO fat in the dough. Preheat oven to 175°C fan/convection oven. Wash the almonds thoroughly and several times until the water runs clear. Mix the remaining ingredients in a large bowl until you have a fairly firm, gingerbread-like dough. Fold in the dripping-wet almonds with a sturdy (!) wooden spoon until the almonds are evenly coated in the dough. Line the baking sheet with parchment paper. (This dough is enough for about 3.5 baking sheets.) Place about 1/3 of the dough in two or three piles on the parchment paper and spread it evenly and thinly with a spatula. Don’t worry about a few white spots on the parchment paper; they will expand during baking. Bake in the hot oven for about 20 minutes. When it starts to smell, first pierce an almond on the edge of the sheet with a sharp knife to see if it’s slightly browned (the almonds in the middle usually don’t brown too much). Caution: With the dark dough and the relatively high amount of sugar, the line between browned and burnt is thin and barely noticeable. Remove the baking sheet from the oven. Immediately slice the contents of the sheet onto a stable, heat-resistant surface with a knife. Once the entire sheet has cooled, it will be hard and impossible to cut. Grab the edge of the baking paper, turn it over, and peel off the baking paper. It should peel off easily. If there’s still a lot of dough stuck to it, return it to the baking sheet and place it briefly in the oven (1-2 minutes). I slide the entire sheet, complete with baking paper, onto a large wooden board and use a cleaver/kitchen hatchet to cut it into rectangles measuring approximately 6 x 5 cm or 7 x 6 cm. If you’re baking alone, you can bake the next sheet while you’re cutting and tearing off the paper. There’s no other way to bake and cut while the cookies are still hot from the oven. Of course, two people can work faster and even work on two sheets at once. Let the cookies cool slightly on a wire rack. Then place them in the cookie tin, where they’ll begin to crumble after a few days, allowing the flavors of clove pepper and cinnamon to develop. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk. Despite the name, this is a specialty of the Bergisches Land region. Every housewife in the Bergisches Land probably has “HER” recipe for Berliner bread. Some like it soft and thick. Some with hazelnuts (this could be varied here), some with icing…