Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Butter poppy seed rolls

Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | Cooking

These rolls go by a couple of different names in Danish: tebirkes, smørbirkes or Københavnerbirkes, and it seems that no one really agrees on how to make them. They also have no official translation to English, so this was the closest I could dream up. In the traditional bakeries near Copenhagen, most kinds are filled with remonce, but most bakeries will also have savoury kinds without the remonce. The recipe I’ve found is a typical home-baking recipe from Denmark using a full package of fresh baker’s yeast (50 grams), which means that it’s quickly done, has little flavour and mostly only taste good warm out of the oven. However, the rich butter dough (which I’ve replaced with margarine) does taste awesome fresh out of the oven. The day after, however, it is hard to stomach.

It’s a very easy thing to make: basically you just throw together some flour, butter, egg, salt and yeast and presto, you have the dough after some kneading. Brush with eggs, fold twice and brush with eggs again and add some poppy seeds and this is what you have. The lighting sucks in the photos, I’m afraid, as I made them late in the evening and our artificial lighting in the kitchen is fairly lacking.

After a relatively quick proofing and bake they turn out a tad more voluminous. In the professional bakery versions the layers are usually somewhat more visible and there’s even a hole showing through the sides of it. No such thing here.

Cutting it up it shows a very dense crumb, which is heavy with butter and egg. Very good warm, otherwise… not.

Tags: baking, pastry

No comments yet.

Leave a comment