Ellis Hutzelbrot

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 600 g pineapple, chopped, sweetened and dried
• 500 g apricot(s), dried
• 500 g plum(s), dried
• 100 g mango(s) cut into strips, dried
• 100 g papaya, dried
• 300 ml schnapps (fruit brandy), clear
• 1 liter apple juice
• 150 g brown cane sugar
• 400 g flour
• 1 tbsp anise, ground
• 1 tbsp cinnamon, ground
• 1 tsp, stripped ginger, ground
• 1 tsp, sautéed cardamom, ground
• 2 packs of dry yeast, or 42 g fresh yeast
• 1 pinch of salt
• 250 g nuts as desired
• 250 g flour

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Rest time approx. 1 day 2 hours; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour 5 minutes; Total time approx. 1 day 4 hours 5 minutes

Fruit bread with pineapple and without raisins

Halve or quarter the plums and apricots. Place a total of 1.8 kg of dried fruit of your choice in a pot, cover, and let stand with brown cane sugar, fruit brandy, and apple juice. Bring the pickled fruit to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Then drain the liquid, collect it, and set aside. This should yield at least 400-500 ml of liquid—if it’s too little, simply top up with a little more brandy and apple juice. Mix the flour with the ground spices, salt, and dried yeast, or dissolve fresh yeast in the still-warm liquid in a well in the flour and spice mixture. Then, knead the slightly cooled liquid with the flour to form a not-too-firm yeast dough, leaving 30-100 ml of liquid left over, depending on the dough’s firmness. Cover the dough and let it rise for one or more hours near the radiator or in a slightly warmed oven. If the dough is too firm, it will be very difficult to knead in the juicy fruit and nuts, so it’s better to leave it softer at first than too firm, otherwise the fruit will just end up mush. Dust the work surface well with flour and have enough flour ready so that you can knead the dough together with the fruit and nuts into a firmer mass. The dough is then allowed to rest for another half hour, while we wash our hands and have a cup of water ready. With moistened hands, shape the dough into hand-sized loaves and place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. I always make two baking trays, each with 5-6 loaves, which I bake together on the top and bottom racks at 180°C fan-assisted oven for about an hour. Halfway through, I swap the trays, so the top one is down and vice versa, and rotate them. After 45 minutes, I cover the loaves with parchment paper so they don’t get too brown. To test for doneness, take a loaf of bread and tap the bottom. If it sounds hollow, it’s done. Remove all the loaves and brush with the remaining cooking liquid. Most Hutzelbrot breads are topped with raisins, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, dried pears, and figs. Try my delicious version!